This rumor is brought to you by Xitek, a Chinese photography forum. It shows a Pen-style interchangeable lens camera from Panasonic, apparently called the GF-1.

The pictures come from a PDF detailing the camera, and are either a rather good fake or the real deal. There’s nothing odd in the specs, for example, and the camera follows Panasonic’s Lumix design style perfectly. Standout differences between this and Olympus micro four thirds camera are a lack of in-body stabilization and the addition of a pop-up flash (it slides out whole from the type, just like the LX-3).

Those lenses are from Leica, by the way, which gets us very hot and bothered — the will fit on the Pen (EP-1) too, remember. In fact, we have a feeling that unless Leica can knock one out of the park with the M9 body, it should do a semi-Sega and give up on cameras, concentrating on kick-ass lenses for MFT. After all, the Pen is essentially to today’s DSLR what the original Leica was to the unwieldy Speed Graphics of its time.

All links to the original forum page now go nowhere, but the discussion lives in the DP Review forums and some details are preserved by Photo Rumors. It will have a 12.1 effective megapixels sensor, a three-inch, 460,000 dot screen, 720p video mode and dust removal. Size is 119mm x 71mm x 36.3mm, almost exactly the same as the Pen (120.6mm x 69.9mm x 36.4 mm). One odd thing to note is that little mini-USB shaped hole on the back, below the hotshoe? Is it for an optical add-on viewfinder? I sure hope not.

Panasonic GF1 (Micro Four Thirds) [Photo Rumors]

Panasonic new M4/3 GF1 [DP Review]