Hi all,
Many Photokina 2016 reports around by now, each with its own accents. Here's mine:
Ricoh/Pentax:
- K-1 firmware: loved the 1:1 crop. works nicely with APS-C lenses as well, and I was very happy to see that all of my DA20-40's vignetting happened outside the 1:1 crop. I'm looking forward to a 1:1 crop compatibility list for APS-C lenses. This might pull me over to the K-1...
- K-1 general: nothing new that hasn't been written about of course, but it was my first time with a K-1. I loved the body, but only with the primes really. the one I handled had a FA31 mounted. Whereas I always found the FA31 slightly large on my K-3II and its predecessors, it looked almost tiny on the K-1, to the point of my not immediately recognizing the lens! I tried the K-1 with my FA77 as well: beauty!! But then I asked for some of the zooms... Wow: the size of those. I knew about this of course, but now I can confirm that hand holding the K-1 plus the DFA24-70 for a whole day just doesn't seem possible for me... Plus I would need to buy bigger bags (and my current set is already bigger than I would like them to be).
- Theta S: loved the feel of it! They showed some large (40x40cm or so) prints of "little planets" out of the Theta, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the excellent detail in these! Also, we challenged the stitching as much as we could, and could only identify stitching artifacts for objects within 50cm next to the camera. I'm getting one for sure!!
- 645Z: nothing new, but I can never resist getting my hands on one of these beauties at Photokina. I did also try the new Hasselblad X1D as well, and must say that this is much more hand holdable than the 645Z, though perhaps it might suffer a bit too much design over function... Couldn't try the new Fuji as I was hoping to to have a complete comparison between the feel of these three cameras... Don't know about the EVF however. Not up to OVF level yet IMHO, at least not in the Hassy.
- Q: I asked: is the Q system dead? Answer: Yes (no hesitation). Happy to hear PF Staff got confirmation in their backstage interview that Q isn't dead, but I think I'm going to take the safe option, and replace my original Q with the latest incarnation now I still can so I can enjoy the format as long as possible.
- goodies: got a small foldable reflector, some pins and a lens cloth.
Hasselblad: see 645Z comments
Third party lenses:
- Samyang: Asked about a hood solution for my 24/3.5 T/S: they are going to check back with their engineers and get back to me via mail. Not counting much on that, but who knows? No K-mount copy of the 20/1.8 for me to try. Shame, because that one has me very interested.
- Laowa/Venuslens: No K-mount copies. All lenses felt very well built (like my 60mm, but better). Looked closer at the 15mm macro/shift. Shift mechanism looks a bit cumbersome, but all in all nice lens. The 105 STF looks nice too, but I would have liked to try this one to get an idea of the bokeh... Communication wasn't easy, since most of the staff at the booth didn't really speak English very well. They were nice enough though.
- Irix: Great conversation about the features of the 15/2.4. Great optics in that lens. Great features too: focus lock, DOF scale with hyperfocal focus indicators (FF only), beautifully dampened focus ring, great IQ... and (first time AFAIK for a MF lens) it communicates its focal length to the body! That's a time saver compared to other MF lenses that require selecting the FL for SR every time we switch on our cameras. But: it's huge and heavy. Perfect for 15mm FoV on FF I guess, but for the FoV this lens offers on APS-C, I'll pick the Samyang 16/2 any time.
Tripods: Been looking for a new travel tripod, so I focused on that. I visited Gitzo / Manfrotto (right next to Ricoh), Rollei (got lunch there), and 3LeggedThing (got entry tickets from them). Gitzo has really impressive stuff, but expensive of course (I have a travel monopod of theirs), Manfrotto has a nice product with the befree (I like the clamps over twist locks of the others, but all in all too plasticky, esp the quick release system, so not up to my expectations in terms of ruggedness), the Rollei traveler surprised me as possibly the best budget option IMHO. However, the best impression I got at 3LeggedThing. Their Leo and Albert tripods are really nice. They have the best twist lock implementation IMHO. I also liked the dual panning in their AirHed 360, which can be very practical in rough terrain.
Bags: I only stopped at Peak Design to have a look at their new backpacks. Looking nice! Nice guys to chat to as well.
for the rest: I walked by the big stands fast except Fuji, which was the busiest place on the fair (the other big ones seemed very calm in comparison). My mate is a Fuji shooter, so... If ever all my Pentax gear would get stolen and Pentax would no longer exist, Fuji would probably be my next choice... But that will never happen...
hth, Wim
PS: Something I forgot to mention in my original post:
K1 VF: I didn't remember reading any comment on it, so I tested the K-1 with my O-ME53 VF Loupe on its VF, and I am happy to say that it covers the entire VF (note I don't wear glasses) as well as it does the K-3II's VF. Somehow I had expected the larger VF to be a problem for the Loupe, but it isn't.
Last edited by Ishpuini; 09-26-2016 at 11:34 PM.