[lesmore49]

My last phone was a Huawei P20 Pro. The camera may have said Leica, but it was in name only. My wife's iPhone had a much better camera.

My first digital camera was a Panasonic that said it had a Leica lens. Since 1982, I have had/used an old (1951) Leica llf rangefinder with a 50mm collapsible Elmar F 3.5 lens, which is even older than my 11f body. Great little camera and lens, sharp photos, etc.

In 2006 I bought my first digital camera and it was the Panasonic DMC -LC80 and right there on the lens was imprinted Leica DC Vario-Elmarit. I assumed it would be in the same company as my ancient Collapsible Leitz Elmar lens on the 11f. Well as the saying goes, when you assume something , you make an ......etc.

The camera clerk tried to persuade me to get a Canon G7 (if I remember right) at the time, but I ignored her good advice and bought the Panasonic instead.

What a mistake, shutter lag, images not to my standards of sharpness, etc. I eventually bought a Canon G 12 and for a small camera with a small sensor, this has been a very good unit.

I have nobody to blame but myself.

[Priscilla Turner]

I love to document the often very dark interior of old buildings and great churches. With my K-x, when it was the best I could afford after my initial K10D, I made numerous tack-sharp hand-held telephoto shots of such subjects that will blow up to 24 x 36 or larger. Recently I’ve realised that so many of these shots involved mixed lighting, sometimes from up to four sources, that balancing/conversion filtration would have produced something much closer to what the human eye-brain combo thought it saw, given that in real life we both focus selectively AND adjust to colour-casts instantaneously.* If I could get back to those places, I’d want to use filtration. But only something as new as my two K-3 IIs would afford sufficient IQ at the higher ISOs which I’d then have to use for similar tack-sharp hand-held telephoto shots. So for me there has been real advance with newer models.

Sometimes there is regress not progress. The K-x did no Geostamping. I as a small old lady now unaccompanied by an experienced Sherpa prefer an APS-C body. The K-3 III has lost the beautiful GPS that for me represented a real advance. That is a fundamental drawback of the newest cam.

*See my remarks at the start of this gallery: Priscilla Turner's Store : IWASTHERE11A (Page 1) See too this and subsequent pages: http://priscillaturner.imagekind.com/store/images.aspx?GID=7fc30483-5894-4d8...52e7e54&page=2 ; and all these pages: http://priscillaturner.imagekind.com/store/Images.aspx/8bc6771c-4b70-4932-b9...0/IWASTHERE11B . It hurts me very much that in this great church I was unable to capture the interior stone colour without distorting that of the glass.

[Thwyllo]

Camera market overall down by 87% since 2010. Significant DSLR development all but dead. FStoppers review headline "Pentax K2 III - A Great Camera Nobody Will Want". The industry is getting by with accessories and lenses and mirrorless sales to the Instagram generation but that won't last as phones continue their relentless development. Maybe Leica only has its name on smartphones, just as Panasonic makes its own Leica-badged lenses, but they're at least leveraging their brand while they can. And that, I predict, will be where the dregs of a once great industry will lie; that and a relatively tiny market of pro and specialist users who will have to pay through the nose for their equipment in years to come.

Yes a digital camera has more glass etc, we know all the pixel-peeper arguments (and let's face it, that's what we're about much of the time)

[BigMackCam]

FStoppers review headline "Pentax K2 III - A Great Camera Nobody Will Want"

Ah, good old FStoppers - the same online resource whose April article "Why I Won't Buy a Canon Camera" gave such reasons as they're "commonplace", "boring" and "ugly" I'd say you couldn't make this stuff up, but clearly someone did and got published for their efforts, undoubtedly generating thousands of page hits and 300+ comments in response (which, like the Pentax headline and article you refer to, was the whole point). It's the "Daily Mail Online" school of journalism, applied to photography

The K-3 III appears to be selling well by all accounts, amply demonstrating just how little credence we should give to opinion pieces in the photography press... especially those with click-bait titles.

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Last edited by BigMackCam; 06-08-2021 at 12:59 AM.

[biz-engineer]

The K-3 III has lost the beautiful GPS that for me represented a real advance. That is a fundamental drawback of the newest cam.

The K1 has a design weakness around the flash hotshoe, in order to fit a GPS antenna, and so users had their camera damaged at that weak point. That is why, i suppose, Ricoh designed the new K3 III without the GPS under the flash hotshoe and instead sells (and will sell) a separate GPS unit. The overall solution is probably more reliable than in camera GPS, which in a way isn't a "drawback", if not considering the cost.

[reh321]

FStoppers review headline "Pentax K2 III - A Great Camera Nobody Will Want".

I almost stopped reading at this point. Their writing had nothing to do with Pentax, and had nothing to do with the “K-3iii”, which lots of people do want. If Pentax later comes out with a “KPii” or {more likely} a “K-90” at $1000 but with the same focusing, even more will want it.

we know all the pixel-peeper arguments (and let's face it, that's what we're about much of the time)

Speak for yourself. I look at the whole picture, just as I shot slide film, and talk about prints was irrelevant to me.

[Wheatfield]

Camera market overall down by 87% since 2010. Significant DSLR development all but dead. FStoppers review headline "Pentax K2 III - A Great Camera Nobody Will Want". The industry is getting by with accessories and lenses and mirrorless sales to the Instagram generation but that won't last as phones continue their relentless development. Maybe Leica only has its name on smartphones, just as Panasonic makes its own Leica-badged lenses, but they're at least leveraging their brand while they can. And that, I predict, will be where the dregs of a once great industry will lie; that and a relatively tiny market of pro and specialist users who will have to pay through the nose for their equipment in years to come.

Yes a digital camera has more glass etc, we know all the pixel-peeper arguments (and let's face it, that's what we're about much of the time)

I imagine f-stoppers is written by people who think the extended bubble the camera industry has been in since the mid 1980s is the norm.
The industry is settling back into pre bubble numbers minus the point and shoot market.
Pentax appears to be able to sell everything they make, with people lining up at the door waiting for new production.
The industry is moving upscale to places that cell phones cannot reach, at least for the near future. I'm not going to try to predict how long it will take cell phones with their pin head sized sensors to equal the imaging quality of a full sized ILC, though I suspect we will be waiting for a while, even with the AI magic that cell phones are using to make things look better than they are.
We've seen relentless onslaughts on the ILC industry before. Funnily enough, ILCs are still here, it's the challengers that went extinct.

[reh321]

Significant DSLR development all but dead.

The K-3iii alone is proof that this statement is silly.

added: thus, in general, this whole rant is meaningless.

[biz-engineer]

Camera market overall down by 87% since 2010. Significant DSLR development all but dead. FStoppers review headline "Pentax K2 III - A Great Camera Nobody Will Want". The industry is getting by with accessories and lenses and mirrorless sales to the Instagram generation but that won't last as phones continue their relentless development.

The market is smaller, sure. Most other people may use their smartphone, but I don't think I'll use my mobile for my photography any time soon. I use my mobile for "utility" snapshots, as a recording tool, but not at all for my photography hobby or occasional paid jobs.The image quality of my mobile phone is way below my requirement and choice of lenses is very limited, essentially wide (or digital crop). So, I'm still in the premium camera market segment, and I enjoy the quality of the images. When I pull my K1 out, yes, it looks like a machine, or a brick with a handle, but the images are a long distance ahead of mobile images. It's just that a phone isn't primarily designed to be a camera, while a DSLR is designed purely with the goal of making high quality images. Mobile phone images are heavily processed to look good on small shiny oled display size, but zero room for editing. FF DSLR images, even apsc DSLR images have a lot more room for post-processing than mobiles. I edited K1 pictures with my phone and looking at them on the OLED display, they look stunning, and very crisp, in comparison with the images taken by the phone camera.

More and more, I'm now being asked by some people to take photos for them because they have their smartphones but no real camera. This happened much less back in the days (about 10 years ago) when everyone had a camera bag on shoulder with a Canon Rebel kit in it.

[BigMackCam]

The market is smaller, sure. Most other people may use their smartphone, but I don't think I'll use my mobile for my photography any time soon. I use my mobile for "utility" snapshots, as a recording tool, but not at all for my photography hobby or occasional paid jobs.The image quality of my mobile phone is way below my requirement and choice of lenses is very limited, essentially wide (or digital crop). So, I'm still in the premium camera market segment, and I enjoy the quality of the images. When I pull my K1 out, yes, it looks like a machine, or a brick with a handle, but the images are a long distance ahead of mobile images. It's just that a phone isn't primarily designed to be a camera, while a DSLR is designed purely with the goal of making high quality images. Mobile phone images are heavily processed to look good on small shiny oled display size, but zero room for editing. FF DSLR images, even apsc DSLR images have a lot more room for post-processing than mobiles. I edited K1 pictures with my phone and looking at them on the OLED display, they look stunning, and very crisp, in comparison with the images taken by the phone camera.

More and more, I'm now being asked by some people to take photos for them because they have their smartphones but no real camera. This happened much less back in the days (about 10 years ago) when everyone had a camera bag on shoulder with a Canon Rebel kit in it.

For Christmas 2020, I finally upgraded to a more photo-capable smartphone - an inexpensive Redmi Note 9 Pro... and whilst I'd wholeheartedly agree with you that the quality of modern phone photos doesn't begin to compare with what we expect and get from our enthusiast / pro ILCs, I'm finally using my phone for more than just snapshots. The photos are over-processed and over-sharpened, yes - but with a little post-processing they actually look quite decent on a display... not just small, glossy, phone and tablet screens, but on my HD 17" laptop and even my 24" QHD BenQ monitor. Of course, they don't stand up to close scrutiny, but at sensible viewing distances they look fine. I haven't printed any yet, and I'm not even sure I will...

There's no way I'd swap any of my ILCs - even my old 6MP models - for a smartphone, but I do think they're finally becoming valid and useful photographic tools...

[biz-engineer]

There's no way I'd swap any of my ILCs - even my old 6MP models - for a smartphone, but I do think they're finally becoming valid and useful photographic tools...

Personally, I now like to have both my mobile and ILC cameras. I used to use my DSLR on a tripod, camera lens down, to digitally scan documents at home, e.g. for sending electronically / attached to messages. But I don't do that anymore, I use my phone now, because I never need more than 2K resolution for scanning/mailing, and doing it with the mobile phone is quicker than using a camera. I use the ILCs for photos and c-type poster sized prints, that's different. I guess one could use his/her smartphone for the making of medium sized photo books, mostly DIN A4, and no larger than DIN A3.

[Thwyllo]

But the whole point about this significantly smaller camera market is that it means significantly less investment, especially in R&D, so much much slower progress. It also means unit pricing will go up as manufacturers struggle to maintain net revenues. They've made a killing on mirrorless in recent years but that too will fizzle, leaving, as I said before, a relativity tiny professional market and a not much bigger 'pro-am' user, all faced with much higher pricing and a much slower rate of development as regards technology.

I have around a dozen Panasonic/Olympus M43 cameras and while their output is pretty good on later models, their usability sucks. Give me a DSLR any day. Four thirds? Maybe. If you've handled an Olympus E-series (I have one of each of the last four models) I'd say they are. Reasonable compromise, but then the pixel peepers will still find them wanting in some ways.

Just as with film currently, we'll soon be in a digital golden age when terrific hardware is available at bargain prices. Enjoy it while you can be sure we're looking at the end of an era.

[Wheatfield]

But the whole point about this significantly smaller camera market is that it means significantly less investment, especially in R&D, so much much slower progress. It also means unit pricing will go up as manufacturers struggle to maintain net revenues.

It's the 1970s all over again.

[reh321]

But the whole point about this significantly smaller camera market is that it means significantly less investment, especially in R&D, so much much slower progress. It also means unit pricing will go up as manufacturers struggle to maintain net revenues. They've made a killing on mirrorless in recent years but that too will fizzle, leaving, as I said before, a relativity tiny professional market and a not much bigger 'pro-am' user, all faced with much higher pricing and a much slower rate of development as regards technology.

I have around a dozen Panasonic/Olympus M43 cameras and while their output is pretty good on later models, their usability sucks. Give me a DSLR any day. Four thirds? Maybe. If you've handled an Olympus E-series (I have one of each of the last four models) I'd say they are. Reasonable compromise, but then the pixel peepers will still find them wanting in some ways.

Just as with film currently, we'll soon be in a digital golden age when terrific hardware is available at bargain prices. Enjoy it while you can be sure we're looking at the end of an era.

You are being entirely too negative about things.

Beginning in 1969 with my first rangefinder camera - then in 1979 with my first Pentax SLR - I have used a total of ten primary cameras, over the twenty-four years 1983-2007. Of those, four either broke or didn't meet my needs in a way I quickly saw, so six cameras basically met my needs over that fifty+ year period. I now view cameras the same way I view computers - I may use one for five or so years - then it is time to see what the industry has come up with in the meantime. We have become used to the frenetic pace of development over the years 2005-2015, but that was not normal. Pentax should be able to periodically update three lines - K-1, K-3, and lower tier - and our purchasing should support that. The other manufacturers will also find a equilibrium level. The K-3iii certainly fits that model.

[BigMackCam]

Just as with film currently, we'll soon be in a digital golden age when terrific hardware is available at bargain prices. Enjoy it while you can...

Arguably, we're already there. For a couple of hundred bucks / pounds / euro (occasionally less), you can pick up a decent Pentax K-5 with plenty of shutter life remaining and enough resolution, high ISO performance and features to satisfy all but the most demanding photographers. It's silly low money for what you get. I still have my K-5, and - if I had to - I'd happily depend on it for everything I do. Equally, there are inexpensive gems to be found from all the other brands.

It's easy to believe photography is an expensive hobby when we see all the posts about new equipment, but anyone prepared to buy older, used equipment is spoiled rotten for more economical choices these days...