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03-23-2020, 01:19 AM - 1 Like   #211
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QuoteOriginally posted by redcat Quote
Milc has many advantages :
- Super fast and accurate AF (no front/back focus)
- Eye AF
- Correct exposure (what you see is what you get)
- Less moving parts (less point of failure)
- Bigger focus area
- Better tracking
- No blackout when shooting multiple frames
- Cheaper to produce (may leads to cheaper price in the long run)
.....

Leica is mirrorless now and has to team up with sigma & panasonic to compete with other players.
So, let me get this clear, point by point:
-Super fast AF: You skip the AF fine adjustment step and have AF go from "very" to "super" fast. BTW, the speed is not really dependent on MILC vs DSLR.

-Eye-AF: you get a feature that is a game changer... If you are shooting very specific types of photography and need all images to be super accurately focused at 100% pixel peeping levels. I have never felt the need for Eye-AF even on portraits, it's easy enough to get what I want.

-Exposure: this is lol. I took 1600 photos in a trip to India a month ago. There were.... 10 that had wrong exposure? And those were because I changed to/from a manual lens and was in the wrong mode. Ah, and in many cases I had a scene that really pushed the DR of the K-1 (where many MILCs suffer as they have to cripple their sensors with PDAF modules) to its limits; an EVF would have given up and have a bunch of solid white.

-Less moving parts is correct (and I already said it's the main reason manufacturers push them; it's cheaper). But not necessarily "less points of failure". Guess which type of camera overheats the sensor more often

-Bigger focus area: I, too, like my subjects in focus at the corner or the frame, because it's all about the TECHNOLOGY and not the photograph. Like Jesus, this particular argument is nonsense and proves that some MILC fanboys (particularly Sony fanboys, I've found) are more gearheads than photographers.

- Better tracking: true. But it's really at a point where it qualifies as "first world problems", so it is a moot point in the overwhelming majority of cases.

- No blackout when shooting multiple frames: as has already been said, only if you shell out a *lot* of money for a top level EVF (which also makes the battery go poof). DSLRs don't have *that* much blackout come on.

- Cheaper to produce (may lead to cheaper price in the long run): HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. May lead to higher profit margin.

Meanwhile, you conveniently ignore that:
-The EVF has limited DR and cannot show you what's outside of the exposure range, so you have to adjust settings to see everything in high-contrast situations.
-If you are moving the camera to compose you have to wait for the EVF to stop being a pixelated laggy mess (this applies up to the 2500€ A7iii, the EVF quality is nothibg compared to a decent OVF). God forbid you need to track anything while shooting.
-Extremely uncomfortable to use over long periods because glass is glass and any telephotos are going to make the setup very front-heavy. If you compensate by getting the rear elements very close to the sensor, the quality at the edges will suffer because of the angle of incidence (which is why Sony and Nikon have baked-in corrections for their lenses, and as we all know baking in stuff on raw is only bad when Pentax does it )

I asked for features that would compensate for the downgrade to an EVF. None of the ones you mentioned is worth enough to me, not even put together.

03-23-2020, 02:52 AM - 1 Like   #212
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QuoteOriginally posted by redcat Quote
Milc has many advantages :
- Super fast and accurate AF (no front/back focus)
- Eye AF
- Correct exposure (what you see is what you get)
- Less moving parts (less point of failure)
- Bigger focus area
- Better tracking
- No blackout when shooting multiple frames
- Cheaper to produce (may leads to cheaper price in the long run)
.....

Leica is mirrorless now and has to team up with sigma & panasonic to compete with other players.
Let's just say that if Pentax invested the amount it would take to get an MILC with better tracking than their current cameras, along with super fast auto focus, top end EVF and no black out when shooting multiple frames they could have a really top end SLR that had all of those features too. The only feature that you probably can't get is eye AF shooting through the viewfinder.

If you've ever used a K-01 or an A7 then you know that these features are not necessarily innate features of MILCs and have only come because the brands have invested millions of dollars in updating them through multiple generations to bring them to where they are today. And if you don't need 20 fps frame rates, you can get awfully good performance from SLR cameras that matches similarly priced MILC performance.

I guess I keep coming back to the point that Ricoh seems to be willing to keep Pentax going as long as they don't burn through more money than what they (their not making money), the theta and GR cameras pull in. That isn't enough to think about launching a new mount -- even if joining with the existing L mount.
03-23-2020, 04:22 AM - 1 Like   #213
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At some point in the future the proportions of new cameras and lenses between DSLR and mirrorless will stabilise. People will have made their choices, abandoning old mounts where desired or sticking with, or going back to, others. Where that point will be remains to be seen but I think it still has a way to go towards mirrorless. Combined with the lessened market for proper cameras, that will leave Pentax with a certain market share for their DSLRs and lenses, and they will need to look at the numbers and decide if it's worth continuing, moving into mirrorless (L-mount would be the sensible choice) or shutting down completely.

The advantages of mirrorless cameras are significant and many. The advantages of SLRs, while significant to many, are fewer. As time goes on the people who stick with DSLRs because that's what they're used to or invested in, will decline and eventually we'll end up with stable numbers where everyone has made a choice to use the type of system they have, rather than it being a hold-over from another time when it was all that was available.

For my part, I'm dubious of what will happen to Pentax. Perhaps they'll get more sales from people who aren't happy moving to mirrorless, or who tried it and decided they prefer DSLR. I suspect though that their sales will be reduced, and we will have to wait to see what changes that brings about.

I have reached the point where, when people ask me which camera system they should invest in, I find it very difficult to recommend any DSLR system. That's mainly because most of these people will be more at home will a mirrorless way of shooting and will get better results due to the inherent benefits of focus, exposure and white balance, and the lower weight will make them more likely to use the camera rather than leave it in a drawer. Someone would need to have some very specific requirements, which I think I could count on one hand, for me to recommend them a DSLR.

As for people considering a change rather than starting off, that would be for them to look at the available systems and assess for themselves what their priorities are.
03-23-2020, 06:36 AM   #214
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Maybe not Pentax but Ricoh will release the next FF mirrorless, Gr3 already has many things done right for the milc (egornomic, AF, touch screen...), Pentax can help with the lens design or Pentax/Ricoh can join the L mount club and fill the low-price body slot that Sigma/Leica/Panasonic are not interested in.

03-23-2020, 07:16 AM - 1 Like   #215
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QuoteOriginally posted by redcat Quote
Leica is mirrorless now and has to team up with sigma & panasonic to compete with other players.
Just want to point out it was the other way around - Sigma & Panasonic had to team up with Leica. L-Mount was Leica's baby. Sigma was completely adrift and desperate while Panasonic was ambitious and already had a relationship with Leica. Leica sales had increased in 5 consecutive years prior to forming the L-Mount Alliance. Leica's unique offerings and prestige status in the photography and cultural worlds mostly insulates them from the vagaries of the industry.
03-23-2020, 07:24 AM - 3 Likes   #216
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There are folks who physically cannot tolerate an EVF - for some folks EVF use results in eyestrain, eye irritation, vertigo. Some folks will always prefer looking through a "window" (OVF) versus looking at a "television" (EVF). Is that enough of a market for Pentax to thrive as a DSLR-only company? I don't know. But there is enough of a market there, I think, for them to not have to rush into MILC before they can sort out the technologies involved to their satisfaction.
03-23-2020, 08:07 AM - 5 Likes   #217
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QuoteOriginally posted by redcat Quote
Milc has many advantages :
- Super fast and accurate AF (no front/back focus)
- Eye AF
- Correct exposure (what you see is what you get)
- Less moving parts (less point of failure)
- Bigger focus area
- Better tracking
- No blackout when shooting multiple frames
- Cheaper to produce (may leads to cheaper price in the long run)
.....

Leica is mirrorless now and has to team up with sigma & panasonic to compete with other players.
@StiffLegged and @Serkevan have already covered most of the counter-arguments. A few more/ more comments include:

EVFs & motion sickness: A large percentage (about 20% are very sensitive and up to 75% have some sensitivity) of people can't tolerate the lag in an EVF. Lag creates eyestrain, headaches, and nausea for them -- they aren't going to like using an uncomfortable camera! This problem also plagues augmented reality and virtual reality systems which is why this seemingly awesome technology isn't spreading as fast as pundits had hoped. The threshold for problems seems to be about 10 milliseconds of lag which seems to suggest that frame rates of 100 FPS might solve the problem. But there's a catch with photography. That 10 msec maximum lag constraint must include the exposure time as well as the frame-rate lag! Thus to avoid discomfort for all users, a MILC must run at 200 FPS and never use a shutter speed slower than 1/200 second.

The cheaper MILC fallacy: MILCs may have lower mechanical part costs but they have higher electrical part costs in the high-frame-rate EVF screen and high-frame-rate/low-latency sensor-processor-graphics pipeline. Roughly speaking, a MILC requires at least 2X to 4X the CPU, RAM, and display subsystem performance. Moreover, the mechanical parts simply don't cost very much thanks to modern mass production. That's how Canon can produce an entire DSLR with kit lens and sell it for an MSRP of $400. It looks like the cheapest APS-C MILC (the 5-year-old Sony a5100) is about $50 more despite not having all these mechanical parts!

VF DR: MILC's WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) is a double-edge sword. The limited DR of the EVF display and sensor limits what the photographer can see of the highlight and shadow details. EVF DR must be less that sensor DR (14 EV) but is probably down around 8 to 10 EV due to running the sensor in video mode, processing issues, and display DR limits. In contrast, with my K-1's OVF and a typical scene in my home office, I can simultaneous see the details in BOTH the bulb of a CFL light and the shadowed black front of a portable AC despite these being 18 EV apart in light levels! In EVF mode, the entire area around the bulb is either blown-out or the entire front of the AC is featureless black. It's a personal preference, but I like the WYSIWIT (What You See Is What Is There) of the OVF versus the WYSIWYG of an EVF.

Battery life: MILCs drain batteries continuously (especially in EVF mode) to run the sensor at high frame-rates, process the image, and run the high-frame-rate display. You can't put the camera to your eye, play around with compositions, play around with the zoom, take time to inspect the framing, track the subject, or wait for the subject to do something photo-worthy without draining the battery continuously. In contrast, you can do a lot of the zoom/framing/composition work on a DSLR with the camera off, and a DSLR uses very little power for AF, metering, and waiting while using the OVF.

Hot sensors: A side effect of continuous high frame-rates is higher sensor temperatures which doubles the dark current for each 8°C. It's not a problem for most shooting in either good light (fast shutter times have low dark current) or modest-contrast scenes (where dark current noise in the shadows does not matter). But if the shutter speed slows and the photographer wants the highest possible DR for shadow recovery, they will start to notice that a MILC thats been on for a while gets a noisier shot than a MILC that's been off for a while. In contrast, the sensor is off in a DSLR in OVF mode except during the shot.


Last edited by photoptimist; 03-23-2020 at 08:27 AM. Reason: added VF DR
03-23-2020, 08:55 AM - 2 Likes   #218
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Besides all this technical stuff and explanations I'd like to cry FREEDOM! ... for photographers to choose the tools they love to work and make their photographs with.

That for sure leads to diversity - and diversity is about us.

If economics and special interests come into play even better solutions can die - history tells.
03-23-2020, 11:20 AM - 1 Like   #219
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QuoteOriginally posted by luftfluss Quote
There are folks who physically cannot tolerate an EVF - for some folks EVF use results in eyestrain, eye irritation, vertigo. Some folks will always prefer looking through a "window" (OVF) versus looking at a "television" (EVF). Is that enough of a market for Pentax to thrive as a DSLR-only company? I don't know. But there is enough of a market there, I think, for them to not have to rush into MILC before they can sort out the technologies involved to their satisfaction.
I think that a person that always used nikon or canon, tried ML cameras and would come back to DSLR, will never choose pentax.
Pentax market will not improve: will be the same or will shrink.

So, why not try to have an alternative way?

Many would like to see pentax join the L mount and they could be right: It could become the budget part of the alliance.
Then continue to develop DLSR..
04-01-2020, 03:53 PM   #220
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I still have K-mount lenses on the shelf which I occasionally use with an adapter for my Panasonic GX85. I sold my Pentax DSLR a number of years ago. When will I buy another? When there's a mirrorless unit (APS-C is fine) that permits the use of my K-mount lenses. Mirrorless does not mean "new mount required".
04-01-2020, 05:09 PM - 1 Like   #221
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^^ Yes, Yes it does.*


* K-01
04-01-2020, 05:38 PM - 2 Likes   #222
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To me, Pentax glass is supposed to be pretty near the top in terms of optical performance, with a focus on being some of the physically smallest available. If they would focus on that, they would be a welcome addition to the L-mount group. But if they keep releasing large by huge lenses like the new D-FA*50, the upcoming *85, the 70-200 etc etc then I don't think they bring anything new to that party and would be duking it out with Sigma on price. At the same time, maybe it would be nice to be in an ecosystem where there are multiple players selling glass with the same mount, again. So who knows.

It would be interesting to see an AF adapter that would allow for k-mount, screw-drive AF glass, to work out of the box on L-mount cameras. Not sure what the market would be like for that though.
04-01-2020, 07:35 PM   #223
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QuoteOriginally posted by monochrome Quote
^^ Yes, Yes it does.*


* K-01
The K-01, besides being 8+ years old, wasn't a mirrorless camera in the sense we use that word today; one might as well call a Kodak Instamatic a mirrorless camera.
04-01-2020, 08:09 PM   #224
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QuoteOriginally posted by rumplestiltskin Quote
The K-01, besides being 8+ years old, wasn't a mirrorless camera in the sense we use that word today; one might as well call a Kodak Instamatic a mirrorless camera.
What does that even mean?
04-01-2020, 08:32 PM   #225
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QuoteOriginally posted by luftfluss Quote
What does that even mean?
As monochrome seemed to be responding to my post calling for a Pentax mirrorless APS-C camera (and pointing to the K-01 as such a beastie), I was simply pointing out that calling the K-01 a mirrorless camera was essentially calling any camera without a mirror mirrorless.

Hope I've clarified this.
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