[biz-engineer]

We heard, "the camera industry is down, it's because camera technology reached a plateau", ironically. Because, the more prints I make from the Pentax K-1 the more I think "I should never had purchased my five apsc camera upgrades between 2008 and 2016". I think so because prints from my Pentax K1 D-FA lens kit are so good and so much better than prints from all of my previously owned cameras.

Now, some people may say "I'm satisfied with the 10 years old gear I have, why should I buy a new camera in 2021?". While such reasoning seems to make sense, they may not be aware of what they are missing. I say I should never have bought all these cameras upgrades before, and with the money saved 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. Newer cameras and new lenses are so much better to focus, faster to capture instants (e.g. Pentax K3 III vs K200D are like night & day for focusing and speed), low light imaging quality, dynamic range, image details (e.g. Pentax K1) and low chromatic aberrations (new optical designs for the new D-FA glass, especially the new star lenses such as the D-FA*50 and D-FA*85), that the prints from recent camera models are simply jaw dropping, something I never quite experienced from digital cameras models from the early days of DSLR to about 2016.

Ironically, cameras of 2016-2021 are better than ever before, but sales are lower. It should be the other way around.

[dbs]

Hi Biz
Consumerism met the plateau for camera sales and now mobile phone tech is trumping them all. Only the semi - serious photographer is playing in the camera market , " mum and dad ' are just using a phone now.


Dave

[UncleVanya]

The plateau reached was brought about by many factors:

1) social media became the norm for sharing pictures
2) phone cameras became good enough to do the job above
3) connectedness trumped quality because most view the image on devices that aren’t close to good prints in resolution.

Freaks like us - who care about resolution on a print - are rare. Ironically the photo industry started the long slide when they began to make the technical aspects of photography less important. The trend towed towards automation and easy to use interfaces is a key reason there was a burst of sales in the film era (think ae-1) but the phone makers took the model and added to it in ways the camera companies were not prepared for.

[BigMackCam]

some people may say "I'm satisfied with the 10 years old gear I have, why should I buy a new camera in 2021?". While such reasoning seems to make sense, they may not be aware of what they are missing. I say I should never have bought all these cameras upgrades before, and with the money saved 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.

Many of us who are happy with our 10+ year-old gear also own (or have owned) much newer cameras... but we prefer the older equipment for one or more reasons. My excellent K-3, K-3II and full-frame Hasselblad HV are considerably more advanced and offer much higher resolution than my nearly-fifteen-year-old Samsung GX-10, but in suitable conditions I'll pick the latter because I enjoy shooting with it so much, I love the results it produces at lower ISO settings, and, really, 10MP is generally ample for my own needs.

In your case, if you hadn't owned your earlier APS-C cameras, you wouldn't have a benchmark in assessing how good the K-1 is for your specific use cases - so your investment of funds and time with those older models wasn't wasted. Still, not everyone needs, wants or would benefit especially from what the K-1 offers. For some of us, less can be more.

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Last edited by BigMackCam; 06-01-2021 at 11:11 PM.

[beholder3]

Ironically, cameras of 2016-2021 are better than ever before, but sales are lower. It should be the other way around.

Only not a single camera of 2021 produces significantly better photos than pretty much any one from 2010.
Without exception camera capability in the core feature has stalled long ago.
There is zero meaningful inovation in any recent camera.
And potential buyers do acknowledge that.

Add to it that for most applications photos from smartphones cant be told from ILC photos even on large prints and screens.

So it is all predictable and well deserved.

[iheiramo]

I say I should never have bought all these cameras upgrades before, and with the money saved 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.

That's probably true also in 2025 or 2030. Like with all electronics the best time to by is as late as possible, but before you need it

[Michail_P]

Upgrading our gear, when the technical gap is obvious and the leap is possible, is necessary. I think the financial crisis of the past decade is still ongoing in some ways. Salaries got cut, priorities recalculated. For us, hobbyists, there's no honey with no money. That , of course, in addition to the rapid technological development of the camera industry, that will make any model seem old in a couple of years.

[noelpolar]

That's probably true also in 2025 or 2030. Like with all electronics the best time to by is as late as possible, but before you need it

mmmm.... sounds like your not as old as some off us.... or you might have added.... the best time to buy is "whilst you have the mental capability to make sense of it still"

Anyway.... my most enjoyable fishing gear is coming up to 50 years old..... but off course.... there were fish to catch back then.

10 years from now I'm going to look at my K1 and think..... wow.... I once knew how to use that.... let alone could lift it....

[BigMackCam]

Consumerism met the plateau for camera sales and now mobile phone tech is trumping them all. Only the semi - serious photographer is playing in the camera market , " mum and dad ' are just using a phone now.

The mobile phone market is heading in the same direction; it's just a few years behind. Manufacturers are having to add more and more unnecessary features (flexible screens, anyone?) to sell new phones. Current models are already capable of running demanding software and taking good photos. Most people aren't going to drop $1,000+ to replace them in a couple of years...

[Fogel70]

We heard, "the camera industry is down, it's because camera technology reached a plateau", ironically. Because, the more prints I make from the Pentax K-1 the more I think "I should never had purchased my five apsc camera upgrades between 2008 and 2016". I think so because prints from my Pentax K1 D-FA lens kit are so good and so much better than prints from all of my previously owned cameras.

Although the sensor in K1 II is on its tenth years by now. Unless you want to print really large, any 16+ MP sensor will be good enough for most people if paired with a great lens.

[iheiramo]

mmmm.... sounds like your not as old as some off us.... or you might have added.... the best time to buy is "whilst you have the mental capability to make sense of it still"

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

[tokyoscape]

May be, just maybe the industry needs a good marketer / salesman.
I used to have a Palm and my reaction to the first iPod was, Are you kidding me Mr. (Steve) Jobs? The Palm I have, can do a lot more than just listen to a music. Who want to buy that iPod. I couldn't be more wrong.
Who know what could happen to the camera industry If it had a salesman like Steve Job or today Elon Musk. And I used to laugh at Musk's idea of selling flamethrowers too, I though he was joking and the next thing I know, the guy sold 20,000 of them in just five days!

...Manufacturers are having to add more and more unnecessary features (flexible screens, anyone?) to sell new phones...

What deemed unnecessary for some, might be necessary to other and vice versa. I am not saying flexible screen is necessary for a phone but it sure necessary enough when talk about a camera to some people.

[Dartmoor Dave]

. . . the more prints I make from the Pentax K-1 the more I think "I should never had purchased my five apsc camera upgrades between 2008 and 2016". I think so because prints from my Pentax K1 D-FA lens kit are so good and so much better than prints from all of my previously owned cameras.

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.

[brewmaster15]

Hmmm.. I shot more images this past year with my pentax k10d and nikon d200 than I did with my k1, k3 and d500. Obviously I know which of these is more advanced and I know the limitations of the older k10d /d200... but.. I just enjoy using them and working a little harder at it. Often I will use a bellows or reverse a lens instead of using my newer macros..I'm not doing this to make money. Its a hobby for me.. its more about the process. I enjoy the whole experience and challenges ..not just the end product. Weird I guess.

AL

[madbrain]

I loved my K200D in 2008, and the K-30 that replaced it in 2012, as well as the K1 II I bought in 2018. I saw very meaningful improvements with each of them, and have no regrets about upgrading. The K1 II is undoubtedly the better camera, but it just didn't exist in 2008 or 2012.

I wouldn't want to go back to a CCD camera that maxed at 1600 ISO and was quite limiting shooting without a tripod. This isn't about print resolution, but being able to take the shot or not without shake/motion blur.

I'm not sure what it'll take for me to upgrade the camera next time. There's really not much to complain about, at least as a stills camera. Writing to the SD card could be faster, but that's about it. I expect the K1 III will fix that, but that change alone wouldn't be enough to get me to upgrade.

Video is another story. I think Pentax is hopeless in that area, though.