[CarlJF]

Yeah talk about apples vs oranges, as sensor size differs so much the f/2.8 vs f/2.8 argument is not really relevant.
If f/2.8 gives you what you need on Q, a f/5.6 or slower lens would give you the same advantages on the other systems with much larger sensors.

Absolutely not. The advantages of 2.8 aperture is speed, which become particularly important, if not limiting, the longer the focal length become, and has nothing to do with sensor size. It's a physical characteristic of the lens. At an equivalent of 200mm FL, on a not perfectly still subject, you're better to aim for at least 1/500 shutter speed, 1/1000 if you want to play it safe, to not get movement blur on your subject. You could easily get that with the Q and the 06 without cranking up the ISO. By using a 5.6 lens on m43 sensor, you're practically giving up any advantages this larger sensor could have given you. And even then, I'm assuming that the 5.6 telephoto zoom is even perfectly usable at its longest focal length, which often they don't. You often have to stop them down to f8 or smaller to get good results. So, for a telephoto lens, a 2.8 aperture at the longest FL is a very relevant characteristic.

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Last edited by CarlJF; 09-29-2016 at 10:20 AM.

[reh321]

I feel like Pentax needs to figure out a direction for the Q. Yes, it's small, but it needs something more IMO to continue being marketable.

Yes, I've repeatedly said that its natural niche is competing with Canon SX-50 or Nikon P-900, both of which have generated non-trivial excitement in communities larger than Pentax users. But Pentax has to have that vision.

Proverbs 29:18 is true apart from religious understanding: "Where there is no vision, the people perish"

---------- Post added 09-29-16 at 01:02 PM ----------

A very small sensor ILC system has always sounded like a contradiction in terms.
Carrying around a dinky camera with body and lens caps to mess with, no viewfinder and a bag of optics makes no sense to me. Small, for most folks, also means fast, responsive and conveniently and quickly available - none of which the Q is. If I want that I have Canon S95 or my Panasonic ZS50.

If it isn't self contained it's neither small nor convenient for all practical purposes.

With a 02 mounted, it provides more capability than most people expect. An EVF is the primary thing it needs to compete.

[CarlJF]

The leaf shutter makes a huge difference (1/2000 vs. 1/160 sync speed) between the systems. The Q lenses have an independent iris (and a ND filter) and are not "zoom-by-wire."

This an understated and too often overlooked feature of the Q. The 1/2000 sync speed makes the Q a champ at doing fill flash, which proves quite useful for casual portraits in daylight. With any other system, either you have to go with an external flash supporting HSS mode (and I don't see why someone would carry a huge and heavy external flash beside a compact system), or have to work your way out with the much lower sync speed, which isn't always possible or practical for a quick shot, assuming that one knows what is fill flash and sync spped in the first place and how to use them. The Q is really, really good at this. It's a charm to use fill flash with this system.

[CWRailman]

Once you start the carry a few lenses, the difference in size of the Q system become really obvious. And it's certainly not a costly system relative to a m43 or APS-C mirrorless once you go out of the kit lens. To give you an idea, in a bag design to hold a m43 body an a lens, I carry my Q and 4 lenses with an additional battery pack and a polarizer filter... To have the same capabalities with a m43 or a Sony APS-C, I would have had to carry a bag almost as big as the one I use for my DSLR...

Well, that's not exactly true. The 4/3 lenses designed for the GM-1 and GM-5 series are very small as noted in the video below. The Pany 12-32 at 24mm long is much smaller than the Pentax 02 lens which is 48mm long and at 50mm long the Pany 35-100mm lens is shorter than the Pentax 06 which is 56mm long. Even the short Pentax 01 lens which is 23mm in length and works out to be 40mm when mounted on a Q7 a is longer than the similar Panasonic 14mm lens which is 20.5mm long and works out to be 28mm. The GM-5 with the 12-32mm lens fits into shirt pockets while the Q with 02 lens cannot. The major difference is that with the Panasonic lenses you can upgrade/grow to a different body and continue to use the same lenses. With the Q series of lenses you are locked into that one series of current camera bodies. Had Pentax been looking into the future and designed these lenses to work with a larger sensor but used them on the small sensor then they might have had some wiggle room. I don't see that as possible right now though tomorrows technology might change that if it can be done within competitive pricing which is very important in todays market.

Personally I believe that Pentax is not acknowledging that they are dropping the Q series because they have nothing to redirect their buyers to and financially they need to sell off existing inventory and provide some degree of protection for their distributors who still have inventory. They can't say we no longer manufacture the Q series so maybe take a look at the K series. That is a jump, though a logical move for anyone who has an interest in Photography. When Panasonic announced they were dropping the GM series they had similar products that were a bit larger they could redirect their customers to that still use the lenses which had been built and marketed specifically for the GM series. Little chance of customers jumping ship due to loss of a particular camera configuration. So far Pentax does not have that luxury. So will this be another story similar to the 110 or what? Concerning the Q series I would not put any weight on a statement or implication from persons or person representing Pentax or alluding to any association with Pentax unless they can provide documentation to support such statements. The Q series was a great idea but in typical Pentax fashion, at least here in the US, while they planted the seed they failed to water or otherwise nourish the product and it failed to grow and prosper. (I have that same affect on plants.)

You Tube

You Tube

[lytrytyr]

A very small sensor ILC system has always sounded like a contradiction in terms.
Carrying around a dinky camera with body and lens caps to mess with, no viewfinder and a bag of optics makes no sense to me. Small, for most folks, also means fast, responsive and conveniently and quickly available - none of which the Q is. If I want that I have Canon S95 or my Panasonic ZS50.

If it isn't self contained it's neither small nor convenient for all practical purposes.

The comments expressed in this post are totally contrary to my experience
of using a pair of Q7 cameras, one with the 06 and one with the 08,
as companions to the DA 20-40 on a DSLR in my compact kit.

The Q7's fire up very quickly, and are as responsive as the APS-C setup.
BTW, they do have viewfinders, right there on the back of the body!

[Fogel70]

Absolutely not. The advantages of 2.8 aperture is speed, which become particularly important, if not limiting, the longer the focal length become, and has nothing to do with sensor size. It's a physical characteristic of the lens. At an equivalent of 200mm FL, on a not perfectly still subject, you're better to aim for at least 1/500 shutter speed, 1/1000 if you want to play it safe, to not get movement blur on your subject. You could easily get that with the Q and the 06 without cranking up the ISO. By using a 5.6 lens on m43 sensor, you're practically giving up any advantages this larger sensor could have given you. And even then, I'm assuming that the 5.6 telephoto zoom is even perfectly usable at its longest focal length, which often they don't. You often have to stop them down to f8 or smaller to get good results. So, for a telephoto lens, a 2.8 aperture at the longest FL is a very relevant characteristics.

But why must you get much better performance out of a larger sensor when comparing cameras? Aperture f/2.8 do not magically get better than a slower lens. And the smaller the pixels are, the higher the requirement on the lens get, which most lens review show as Q lenses struggle to get the same resolution as lenses for larger sensors.

Using a larger sensor you can get the same speed out of a slower lens as the larger sensor produce images with much lower noise so higher ISO can be used.
Say you get acceptable result from 1/500s f/2.8 ISO800 on Q. You would get just a good image from m43 at 1/500s f/5.6 ISO3200 or on APS-C with 1/500s f/8 ISO6400.

m43 has more than 4x the sensor size of Q, so you can expect 2 stops better noise performance on m43.
APS-C has more than 8x the sensor size of Q, so you can expect 3 stops better noise performance on APS-C.

[monochrome]

I use Q7 and Q with 01, 02, 03, and 06, plus the K-mount adapter and Red Dot Sight for serious, intentional photographic work. I hope the line continues, but I have 2 of the original Q/02 $200 clearance kits held in reserve in case it doesn't.

My wife has a Q/02 that she used for a couple years as her primary 'kids and places' documentary camera, but when she upgraded to an iPhone6 she stopped using the Q - her phone takes better pictures, and it's already in her purse.

There's the rub.

[BigMackCam]

My wife has a Q/02 that she used for a couple years as her primary 'kids and places' documentary camera, but when she upgraded to an iPhone6 she stopped using the Q - her phone takes better pictures, and it's already in her purse.

Does it really, though? Maybe straight JPEGs viewed at screen sizes look better... I can believe that. But the Q's image quality (especially with a little careful post-processing) and focal length range when coupled with a few lenses would surely leave an iPhone6 in the dust...

[monochrome]

Does it really, though? Maybe straight JPEGs viewed at screen sizes look better... I can believe that. But the Q's image quality (especially with a little careful post-processing) and focal length range when coupled with a few lenses would surely leave an iPhone6 in the dust...

Which fully supports my point. Who actually develops Q RAW's in LR?

[reh321]

Does it really, though? Maybe straight JPEGs viewed at screen sizes look better... I can believe that. But the Q's image quality (especially with a little careful post-processing) and focal length range when coupled with a few lenses would surely leave an iPhone6 in the dust...

Any modern smart phone has prodigious processing power onboard - as I noted in another thread, they have much more processing power than was available to Neil Armstrong when he landed his Apollo spacecraft on the moon. I'm guessing they use that power to lots of "post processing" immediately post, to create the JPEG. In some sense, the K-70 appears to be following that same path. I was hoping that thinking would be applied to the next "Q" .... if there is another Q.

[BigMackCam]

Which fully supports my point. Who actually develops Q RAW's in LR?

Me I treat my Q and Q7 just like mini DSLRs, with exactly the same workflow. The results are far, far better than the in-camera JPEG engine is capable of... especially when you start getting into the noisier ISO settings. Same with my Panasonic TZ70 (ZS50) compact... all of the images from that go through the same Lightroom workflow too...

[BigMackCam]

Any modern smart phone has prodigious processing power onboard - as I noted in another thread, they have much more processing power than was available to Neil Armstrong when he landed his Apollo spacecraft on the moon. I'm guessing they use that power to lots of "post processing" immediately post, to create the JPEG.

I'm sure you're right. The problem I have with that is that I'm getting a fully baked image in JPEG format, and - most of the time - I want a RAW image with latitude for my own adjustments and optimisation. Doing it that way lets me get remarkably close (closer than I expected when I bought my Q7) to a DSLR-like experience...

[monochrome]

I understand, and I sometimes do as well. The questions then will be - if the market for Q is sophisticated users (given that the casual user likely now chooses a phone instead):

1. How large is the market of sophisticated Q users to upgrade or buy another $300 lens?
2. How does Q stack up against competitive small MILC's?

[CWRailman]

Me I treat my Q and Q7 just like mini DSLRs, with exactly the same workflow. The results are far, far better than the in-camera JPEG engine is capable of... especially when you start getting into the noisier ISO settings. Same with my Panasonic TZ70 (ZS50) compact... all of the images from that go through the same Lightroom workflow too...

Possibly you could put together a series of clinics demonstrating how you achieve these results so the rest of this forum can benefit from your experiences. I suggest this because while several folks have noted these results from post processing so far I am not aware of anyone who has graced us with a demonstration of the techniques they have used to accomplish these results with files generated by any of the Q series. I think you would have a good sized audience for this information.

By the way, I would like to point out that as of this writing there are already at least a half dozen cell phones that shoot in RAW formats and allow processing either in the phone using specific software or on the puter. Though I doubt many of the users take the time to do such processing but who knows.

[CarlJF]

But why must you get much better performance out of a larger sensor when comparing cameras?

Maybe because getting better performance is the goal of buying and using a larger sensor in the first place? If not, why would you want to buy one ?

Aperture f/2.8 do not magically get better than a slower lens. And the smaller the pixels are, the higher the requirement on the lens get, which most lens review show as Q lenses struggle to get the same resolution as lenses for larger sensors.

I can assure you that wide open, at its long end, the 06 lens fare much better than most consumer 5.6 zoom at their long end. I can tell you that my 06 on a Q7 can make a tough competion to my 55-300 on an APS-C. And I often prefer to go for the Q7+06 instead of the K500 + 55-300... I only use the 55-300 if I need the extra reach or better AF. In fact, this damned 06 makes me seriously think that I should upgrade the 55-300 for a 60-250 or 50-135... But that's another story...

Using a larger sensor you can get the same speed out of a slower lens as the larger sensor produce images with much lower noise so higher ISO can be used.
Say you get acceptable result from 1/500s f/2.8 ISO800 on Q. You would get just a good image from m43 at 1/500s f/5.6 ISO3200 or on APS-C with 1/500s f/8 ISO6400.

m43 has more than 4x the sensor size of Q, so you can expect 2 stops better noise performance on m43.
APS-C has more than 8x the sensor size of Q, so you can expect 3 stops better noise performance on APS-C.

Yes, but what's the point of getting a pricier, bigger, camera body to only get you to the same point of a smaller cheaper one only because you don't want to put a fast lens on it ? Sure, you can decide to use 5.6 lens on a m43 or a APS-C and crank up the ISO to compensate, but what's the point if in the end you don't get a significantly better IQ ? What is the point of getting a larger sensor body if only to tie it with lenses 2-3 stops slower ? What are you trying to demonstrate by showing that you could get results that are only as good as a small sensor with bigger ones ? I hope they do! It's the least they can do, but I expect them to be significantly better, not just the same.

And that's the point of comparing 2.8 lenses between these system. Because it's what will allow you to get a significantly better IQ with what is supposed to be the better sensor. If you only get "as good as" and want a compact system, you just take the smaller one... Because, it only make sense to get the larger one if you can get something better out of it, meaning using a lens that is at least as good.