Originally posted by RonHendriks1966 So is the future to this smaller sensors, or is the future to bigger sensors? Is K-mount still good for a new generation of milc or is this going in different direction?
The future will be defined by companies able to remain alive. There's a number of different camera systems, but they all have so room for improvement, either their a large and heavy, or they are slow, or they have poor built quality, or they are not good looking.
There's still some simplification and also firmware improvement by leveraging sensor capability with embedded software etc. Sensors embedded processing is still nearly non existent, fairly basic. With large sensors, there is enough space to embark more hardware processing. Even today, P&S camera have convenient software features that a DSLR does not even have. In the long term, I really believe that image sensor can feature an embedded AF system (real time processing) to replace the current DSLR AF. Currently, the only reason with mirroless AF is slower than DSLR is because of the need to process image acquisition by software which is always slower than real time embedded software. You could well imaging a AF processor stuck a the back of the image sensor, and a limited number of selected pixel for the viewfinder. That will come. DSLR might completely disappear and be replaced by cameras smaller than DSLR, EVF, fast AF and battery life time closer to DSLR. That won't happen in the new few year, but ultimately, mirrors will be dropped, as image sensor will embed more and more of what today is on the mother board. Monolithic integration have been a general trend since the beginning of electronics, and I guess it will also happen to camera sensors. As far as the Pentax brand is concern , it's going to move up the high-end products bastion more and more in order to get revenue from less volumes.