[Fogel70]

I'm assuming that you mean "better" in terms of technical characteristics such as sharpness, resolution and noise. And of course if those are your personal priorities then it's completely understandable that the K-1 might be the best camera you've ever owned.

But another photographer might say with equal validity: "The more prints I make from the Pentax K10D the more I think I should never had purchased my five apsc camera upgrades between 2008 and 2016." Because all those later cameras had a rendering style in both colour and B&W that the photographer dislikes, and that particular photographer doesn't make huge prints that need a massively high resolution sensor. So, for that photographer, the K10D is still the best camera he's ever owned.

As you say, the big problem for the camera industry is that the technology has matured. It's getting harder and harder to convince people that they need to buy the latest camera on the basis of some huge technical advancement that it offers. It's a corner that the camera industry chosen to back itself into. For twenty years it was easy to market cameras on the basis of: "Look guys! Bigger sensor! More megapixels! Less noise!" and of course that was exactly what all the most vocal early adopters on all the internet forums were demanding. Now though, that's not enough. The technical improvements are becoming so small that it's hard to build a marketing campaign around them any more.

Fortunately, it looks like Pentax has chosen to start basing its brand image on the other side of photography. The side that isn't about megapixels and lines per millimetre. The side of photography that's about colour and light and composition. Pentax has chosen to make the high quality optical viewfinder a major selling point of its latest APS-C, and from the samples I've seen so far it looks like it's put a lot of work into the colour science too (the K-1's colour rendering makes me want to barf). So perhaps now, with Pentax, we'll have two big players in the industry who'll be basing their appeal on photography as an art form rather than as a race for technological bragging rights (Leica is the other one).

Who knows, maybe one day Pentax or some other manufacturer will take the plunge and release a camera with an up-to-date full frame CCD sensor? It'd no doubt have lower resolution and maybe (but not necessarily) worse noise, but I bet it would produce a colour rendering to die for. And it would cause such a kerfuffle in internet land that the marketing campaign for the darn thing would pretty much be a freebie.

The bubble of digital photography was destined to burst sooner or later. There have been earlier bubbles in the photography history and they also been short lived.
Now the camera industry is back to normal, like it has been most of the time the last 100 years.

The wild ride the camera industry had for a decade was nothing normal.

For me, the plateau was reached by the fact that the cameras I've got right now do everything I need a camera to do. I don't need "better", I'll be happy if what I've got keeps working. It's good enough for what I want to do, why incur the financial penalty for the "upgrade" when it's not really an improvement with respect to what I want a camera to do? Let alone the learning curve in figuring out how to get the best use out of it. (I'm one of those people who thought green dots on a black screen were good enough and I still resist having to use a "mouse".)

[BarryE]

For me, the plateau was reached by the fact that the cameras I've got right now do everything I need a camera to do. I don't need "better", I'll be happy if what I've got keeps working. It's good enough for what I want to do, why incur the financial penalty for the "upgrade" when it's not really an improvement with respect to what I want a camera to do? Let alone the learning curve in figuring out how to get the best use out of it. (I'm one of those people who thought green dots on a black screen were good enough and I still resist having to use a "mouse".)

The plateau being reached doesn't stop me from considering buying new gear. In fact I get tempted, because it's plateaued. My reasoning is I don't want to buy the extras that are constantly being crammed into new stuff I know I don't need. So when I've found something that I'm happy with the temptation is to buy two of them - then I get on and use it/them.

[Dartmoor Dave]

The bubble of digital photography was destined to burst sooner or later. There have been earlier bubbles in the photography history and they also been short lived.
Now the camera industry is back to normal, like it has been most of the time the last 100 years.

The wild ride the camera industry had for a decade was nothing normal.

That's a really good way of putting it. I agree with you.

I'd be perfectly happy if the camera industry settled down to something like it was when I started out back in 1980. Back then it was a mature technology with each manufacturer having an entry-level beginner's camera, an intermediate model for the "advanced amateur", and professional quality gear at the top of the range. It was quite normal for manufacturers to go three or four years between new models, so the upgrade path tended to be from one camera to another up a particular manufacturer's range rather than always wanting the latest new thing.

[Sir Nameless]

It's funny to me to be reading this post the very same week I'm contemplating picking up a roll of Gold 200 to run through my mothballed Phoenix P1 (think K1000 in 1990's polycarbonate). I don't print much but I have printed a few from my K-50 plus 18-135 or K-50 plus K50 combo at 8x10 and they are more than good enough. (Rereading that, some might reasonably accuse me of having low standards haha!)

Part of it may be I (and maybe others) don't know what I'm missing by not having a K-1 or KP or K-3III. I haven't shot and processed and printed any K-1 raw files, let alone a sufficient quantity to be jealous of it's probable noise and DR improvements. I haven't handled it, so I don't know experientially what I'm missing. And there are no stores that I know of near me with these wonderful machines in stock to put eyeballs and hands on.

On the flip side, I know that a K-1 will require a hefty investment in both the body and new glass that will be able to take full advantage of that new body. And I'll be less willing to haul that costly gear around and bring it places where it could get dropped onto large rocks. And I'd probably have to upgrade my computer and storage system to handle those raw files.

With those somewhat unquantifiable upsides and very quantifiable downsides, can you blame someone for hesitation?

It's like this for a lot of electronics, I think. Maybe we'll see another innovation uptick once the industry starts figuring out how to collect and exploit our personal data. Seems like that's where all the growth is now.

[AggieDad]

Yeah, I'm not there yet. I'm one of the young ones AKA under fifty

“Young ones.” Hah! That means AKA under 75 to me.

[StiffLegged]

....buy a camera model of 2021 because now it's so good that it's the best time to buy a new digital camera ever.
New digital camera are so much better now then they used to be when sensors were improving every year....low light imaging quality, dynamic range, image details

Only not a single camera of 2021 produces significantly better photos than pretty much any one from 2010.

Ha ha ha ha , some people are attempting a Pat & Mick routine! Thanks for the entertainment guys, gear talk is usually so boring!

[UncleVanya]

I would argue that if people had not spent their hard earned money on apsc upgrades, Pentax would never have made the K1…

[Sir Nameless]

I would argue that if people had not spent their hard earned money on apsc upgrades, Pentax would never have made the K1…

Good point!
- Demand for improved APS-C bodies signaled potential demand for full-frame
- Demand for APS-C bodies provided the R&D funds to bring K-1 to market

[AfterPentax Mark II]

There is no irony in the camera industry. Only thing I notice is that some companies are not able to run this marathon. Unfortunately Asahi Pentax was the first to get behind, given the late arrival in the digital camera run (which was unfortunate for us Pentax addicts). That is no irony, it is a decision and a company has to live with the result of it. Same thing is, and perhaps that is irony, the declaration of Ricoh that they go for the DSLR and not for the mirrorless run. It gives the impression that Ricoh now realises that it is not able to run that marathon as well and opt for a leisurely stroll. I hope they made a decision that will last long enough to assure us of high standard SLR photographing in the near future, because, let us be honest, most of us are not of the youngest people that like to make and take pictures.

---------- Post added 2nd Jun 2021 at 17:12 ----------

I would argue that if people had not spent their hard earned money on apsc upgrades, Pentax would never have made the K1…

I think the K-1 is the result of a careful chosen (planned) way to make flagship camera's: K-7, K-5, K-3 and finally a K-1. Only thing is perhaps they forgot that if people invested in APS-C lenses they will preferably continue in that line. The K-1 certainly is backwards compatible, but only to the level of the K-5. So eventually they had to come up with the K-3 Mark III, because of public demand. (that, perhaps, is irony) But you are right, without those excellent APS-C camera's there would not have been a K-1.

[Wheatfield]

Sales numbers for the camera industry have always been driven by consumer level (read entry level) cameras. The entry level is gone, killed by cameras in cell phones.
We upgraded our cameras during the Time of Great Improvements because the cameras were improving. In the Pentax world we went from 6mp in 2003 to 10mp in 2006, 15mp in 2008, and then a big jump in 2013 when we went from 16mp to 24mp, and then another jump in 2016 with the K1 and 36mp.
That is why we kept buying cameras. They were genuinely improving. Even the incremental improvement with the K5 and the siren song of improved high ISO performance got people to move from the K7 with it's soso high ISO performance.

The industry has been in a bubble since the mid 1980s and the introduction of the Minolta 7000 and the Canon EOS 650. Reliable and workable autofocus was a gamechanger that got people buying cameras by the wheelbarrow load (I know, I was selling the things at that time). About the same time that bubble would have burst, along came digital cameras in the late 1990s and started the whole growth thing again.
The film camera AF bubble hadn't really burst before the digital camera bubble started.
What this means is that anyone who has only been paying attention since the mid 1980s is of the opinion that exponential growth is normal for the industry simply because all they have seen is the maturation of infant technologies and the sales growth that goes along with it.

The digital camera industry is now a mature technology. Improvements are going to be more incremental that revolutionary.
The industry is desperately trying to pretend that mirrorless is something brand new that people have to embrace at the expense of their previous purchases. They need to get people to buy into that in order to keep their bloated infrastructures from failing.
The problem with this is that the results from mirrorless cameras are no better than the results from their SLR predecessors. The sensors are pretty much the same, the imaging potential is, therefore, pretty much the same.

Unit sales is what drives research. This is why SLR cameras kept getting better by leaps and bounds for the decade and a half from when they became something other than a curiosity to around 2016 when the market seemed to plateau somewhat. We kept rewarding the industry for their big improvements in camera technology, so they kept making sure that they had fresh meat to feed us.
At least until the inevitable happened and they got to the point where they ran out of things that could be improved by more than increments every year or so.

Sony saw this coming, and since they could no longer offer mega improvements to the imaging technology, decided to change the stuff surrounding it and start pimping that really hard. This is why there are so many Sony mirrorless zealots spamming websites like DPReview with their drivel. These are people who have drunk deep of the Kool-Aid from the well of Sony, or are paid shills, it's hard to tell the difference, but they aren't getting anything significantly better, only somewhat different. A different viewfinder does not improve the sensor below it.

Within reason, as was mentioned earlier, any camera made in the last decade can make a perfectly acceptable picture. One of my favourite pictures, and one that stands up to scrutiny at 11x14 is from the K20. I have similar pictures beside it taken with the K5, K3 and K1. I'm sure at the pixel level, they are technically better pictures, but print them to 11x14, put them behind glass and put them on a wall and it's hard to see why I bothered to upgrade.

[lesmore49]

I'm very happy with my DSLR camera bodies, which range from my K10D, include my Km, K5 and K1. I use them all, but my K5 and K1 are my favourites. What a change from my original Pentax S1a (1968), my Canon F1, etc. I have had good cameras since 1968 and I feel I'm just lucky to be alive and using, being part of the modern digital SLR world. Trust me, things are better, than they were 50 years ago in photographica.

[dms]

Unfortunately I am not supporting Pentax (or Nikon) with my not buying, and thus I hope many consumers do see a real improvement. Thus it will be possible to buy when and if there is a reason for me to buy new.

For myself, good enough is good enough. Thus I make a point of not comparing older to newer. When I decided I wanted full frame I purchased the least expensive but still viable [and usable with my (for) Nikon lenses], the Nikon D700. For my theatre photography (which is non-existant now) the K-5 (MF) and D700 (now usually AF) are good enough.

Of course if I regularly compared to newer equipment I could decide what I have is not good enough, but I actually think not. I am not in competion with anyone else, where a small improvement may actually have a large impact. (I did change from Photoshop CS2 to CS6, because the changes in camera raw were significant!)**

Actually I have gone back to film for my non-theater photography. Thus I probably am not the best example of the buyers today.

But (for most of today’s buyer) I think good enough is still good enough, and buying new equipment is hoping results will be much better, when improved technique (in taking and post processing) is where real improvements may be had.

_____
** Carbon fiber tripods, are an area where improvements over aluminum are huge, but (now) they are not that new, and the difference in older vs newer, and top tier vs mid-lower tier are again probably in the realm of "good enough is good enough." If (for example) my profession was wildlife photography, my views would be very different, but I and most buyers are not.

[jersey]

I think there is no plateau, it is just that consumer bubble vanished. You underestimate technology too much, there are great changes beyond the corner. I've read lately about Canon 1 megapixel SPAD sensor, smartphone makers will be implementing liquid lenses this year I think, there is HUGE potential for AI based image processing and I would be surprised if Pentax and/or Fuji wont be first to use this for "film emulation". Pentax to give better photo experience, Fuji to push further its classical film emulations.

Just because most camera companies are sitting there on classical tech new it does not mean that new tech developed for other industries will not trickle into ILS. Who would not want a camera with SPAD sensor? It would be gigantic leap forward.

[biz-engineer]

It's funny to me to be reading this post the very same week I'm contemplating picking up a roll of Gold 200 to run through my mothballed Phoenix P1 (think K1000 in 1990's polycarbonate). I don't print much but I have printed a few from my K-50 plus 18-135 or K-50 plus K50 combo at 8x10 and they are more than good enough. (Rereading that, some might reasonably accuse me of having low standards haha!)

Actually, some time ago I started looking at buying a large format 4x5 film kit. I looked for equipment , but then I decided to attend a workshop first to learn the "how-to"s of 4x5 film.
Having looked a scanned 4x5 film images, I noticed it was hard to find really good ones, and what surprised me was that enlargement from 4x5 film was 30" , best case. I asked and looked how much 4x5" ISO 100 film would resolve, and the answer was something like between 80 and 120 Mpixels digital if all good conditions are met (lens quality, limited aperture diffraction, exposure, focus, film quality, scan quality etc etc).

So I realized that what we get from recent DSLR is actually better than I initially thought, relative to 4x5 film. Plus the bonus that DSLR are small and image is instant compared to 4x5 film. I have lots of 30" sized prints from the K1, when exposure and focus are right (no motion blur), the print quality is great, and the effort to produce those images is much less than what it takes with 4x5 film equipment process.

It looks like apsc DSLR can produce prints equivalent of what could be produced with 24x36mm film, full frame DSLR can produce as good or better prints than what medium format film was capable of, and medium format digital can produce what 4x5" film is able to produce as prints. That's something to be aware of and to be grateful for.

So now when I use the K1, it's like using a medium format film, plus the autofocus , speed and convenience of digital. And if I'd use a medium format digital kit, it'd be like shooting 4x5 film, with regards to print quality (and without considering film grain aesthetics).

---------- Post added 03-06-21 at 15:38 ----------

Only not a single camera of 2021 produces significantly better photos than pretty much any one from 2010.

I find that to be mostly true, although I would take cameras from 2010. Sensors significantly improved from 2010 to 2011 (from CCD to front illuminated CMOS, my K-5 CMOS sensor was from 2011) and to 2016/2018 (BSI CMOS). Some of the glass designed for 2016 (case of Pentax) or 2018 (new mirrorless glass) has very low CA, really excellent.