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02-07-2011, 01:54 PM   #211
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QuoteOriginally posted by ogl Quote
12.80 * 9.60 mm - 1" = crop 2.7.
~ 14.05 * 10.40 mm - crop 2.5
You think this would be 3:2 and not like most small systems 4:3 sensor?

02-07-2011, 02:48 PM   #212
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That would be quite the role reversal for 4/3's vs Nikon/Pentax if they both go with a 2.5x crop. In DSLR's most consumers obviously chose the larger sensor option. However now that I'm almost certain clean ISO1600 could be produced from a 2.5x sensor I wonder if that will hold true in mirrorless. I guess it depends on how much people care about DOF control.

For what it's worth I wouldn't personally consider a 2.5x camera unless they made a series of f/1 primes for it. 2x is the smallest size I will consider owning otherwise. Besides, math isn't my strong suit. It's much easier to calculate focal lengths when you're multiplying by 2
02-07-2011, 04:18 PM   #213
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QuoteOriginally posted by marcinski Quote
Thom Hogan says on his website that Pentax mirrorles will have 2.7 crop sensor. Sounds better than 5.6 but who knows if this is his speculation, or he actually knows something.
I suspect we're going to see MILC systems in 2 varieties for the next few years:

1) Cheap and small sensor for those who want IC lenses but P&S IQ (or a G12 with IC lens). Call it the Auto 110 retro.

2) MILC APS-C sensor either like what Fuji is doing, or IC lenses with backwards compatibility through adapters for those who do not want to compromise IQ and stay brand loyal.

Every M4/3 shot I have seen on a recent gen camera fails the IQ test for me. ISO and DR are much worse. You need significant PP to get them up to speed. It's a portable snapshot system with IC lenses. Wheee!

Most camera-happy soccer Moms I see (and I coach junior soccer) wield good ole fashioned DSLR's with big honking lenses. The whole portability factor is a non-factor for the minivan set. They've got a 3,500 sq.ft. house with plenty of wall space for quality family photos blown up big and IQ matters to them. I speak to them regularly about cameras and this is foot soldier basic market analysis. Back in the day Oly (I have a 35RC), Canon, Nikon, etc. made pocketable cameras with excellent fixed lenses that took great shots with any film as pro as you could put in your Nikon F.

Guess what? Big SLR's made Canikon far more money than this pocketable subset. Even the Pentax Auto 110, Contax, etc., for all their compactness, marketing innovation, and IQ improvements barely made a dent in the SLR juggernaut. This is just basic market history.

The statistical history of profits and success in this industry does not show the demise of larger format, larger sensor DSLR's anytime soon. Canikon are what they are precisely because they focus on such systems, sell them by the truckload, have entry-level models that sell extremely well at price points well below the current mirrorless group. This is not about market space or economic replacement, but complement. Canon is hardly a "frantic" company. They just released (gasp!) another entry-level DSLR at a bloodletting price point. Their marketing and development divisions know a thing or two that maybe most on this board do not. I suspect their patience will pay off. Thy have their own sensor fabs and can scale what they want when they want. The real issue is the balance between price, IQ, backward compatibility, and marketing. Odds are the'll bracket M4/3 both in IQ and price with s slightly smaller than M4/3 MILC and an APS-C version. That Nikon has also been hesitant speaks volumes. Unlike Oly and Panny, they have multiple lines; so if a marketing effort stalls in one, they have other revenue streams.
02-07-2011, 04:36 PM   #214
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i'll just mae one observation here canon has stated they sold more rebels than the entire mirrrorless contingent last year. for sure the soccer moms were a few of them.
REalistically for pentax or any other player entering the mirrorless market marketing will be what wins the day not whether it's the ideal system (or for that matter even appeals to anyone on this forum)
if canon's claim is correct then they killed oly at their own game. last fall in the run up to christmas the first ad that made me take notice was oly with the "this commercial was shot on" ad. Canon basically ripped the ad off and ran it 4 x as much. more crappy rebels sold.
sometimes what determines the winner has nothing to do with the best product for the money, or for that matter the best product (any old geezers like me remember beta definitely superior marketing came to late)

02-07-2011, 09:18 PM   #215
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QuoteOriginally posted by eddie1960 Quote
i'll just mae one observation here canon has stated they sold more rebels than the entire mirrrorless contingent last year. for sure the soccer moms were a few of them.
REalistically for pentax or any other player entering the mirrorless market marketing will be what wins the day not whether it's the ideal system (or for that matter even appeals to anyone on this forum)
if canon's claim is correct then they killed oly at their own game. last fall in the run up to christmas the first ad that made me take notice was oly with the "this commercial was shot on" ad. Canon basically ripped the ad off and ran it 4 x as much. more crappy rebels sold.
sometimes what determines the winner has nothing to do with the best product for the money, or for that matter the best product (any old geezers like me remember beta definitely superior marketing came to late)
Good points.

Not only that, but Oly and Panny will be the better part of a decade paying off their capital investments in M4/3. But Canon 's offerings are tweaks on well-established, sunk cost investments. They make far more profit per unit at each price point than the M4/3 group, and will for a decade. Then they'll take those profits and make a leapfrog entry into mirrorless and out-market the other guys. being first into this new tech may not pay off in the end. I think Pentax is very wise to be cautious here.

M4/3 will walk into an IQ wall within a decade, maybe sooner. Think of that when investing in lenses. Oly and Panny are companies that have walked from mounts and investments before (like the moribund 4/3). Want to invest glass $$ in that track record? And the whole "smaller is better" concept is waaaay oversold. When the iPhone first came out some critics said no one would go for such a large phone. Wrong. In clamshell/small candybar markets it took off just as well as elsewhere. In the 70's and 80's the rush on SLR's was smaller would outsell lager. Nope. In fact, Minolta, with some of the larger bodies on the market, almost pipped into 2nd place a couple of times ahead of Nikon. What people are saying here about how certain aspects mirrorless and M4/3 are market-defining is simply not borne out by market history and consumer preference.
02-08-2011, 12:09 AM   #216
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QuoteOriginally posted by mabelsound Quote
You're asking for technical innovations that lie somewhere between absurdly ambitious and impossible. There is no way this camera, if real, would be a DSLR-quality product. It will probably be marketed as a fun geeky toy. I actually think it could be a real treat--kind of like Instamatic in hardware form. If they can price it around $250 and offer a line of weird, cool optics and clever scene modes, it could be a hit, especially in Japan.
I was only trying to point out what would be needed to make a P&S-sensor camera the same as an APS-C camera in all respects. So, when we look at what's actually achievable (particularly in terms of lenses) we can get an idea of how much this would fall short of a DSLR.

Personally, I completely agree that a P&S-sensor based EVIL would be very attractive (we'd need some very good primes though). No more camera bags, you'd have a System In A Pocket!
02-08-2011, 01:38 AM   #217
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QuoteOriginally posted by Aristophanes Quote
Every M4/3 shot I have seen on a recent gen camera fails the IQ test for me. ISO and DR are much worse. You need significant PP to get them up to speed. It's a portable snapshot system with IC lenses. Wheee!
You must not see many m43 shots. If anything, it can be argued GH1/GH2 has better IQ than K-7 (both in subjective evaluation and objective ones like DxOMarks). Before K-5 came out most people on these forums defended the K-7 IQ - or at least considered it clearly as "good enough". Does the K-7 also fail the IQ test for you?

QuoteQuote:
Their marketing and development divisions know a thing or two that maybe most on this board do not.
Yes, they know they've just lost 20% of their home market share to mirrorless (much of it *gasp* to a smaller 4/3 sensor) and will keep losing more next year.

QuoteQuote:
I suspect their patience will pay off.
It's not patience, it's stubbornness and inertia. How well did the patience of Pentax in joining the digital era pay off?

QuoteQuote:
That Nikon has also been hesitant speaks volumes.
They have not been hesitant by choice. They will release their mirrorless before summer and that will speak volumes about where they think the market is. Oh and it will also have a smaller sensor than APSC.

QuoteQuote:
M4/3 will walk into an IQ wall within a decade, maybe sooner.
It will happen at the same time that APSC walks into an IQ wall. Which will be at about the same time Moore's Law stops working. I'm not holding my breath.

Aristophanes, you are simply spreading FUD here. You've not owned a m43 or even a mirrorless camera, and are obviously defensive about the whole idea. People who have (of which quite a few have posted in this thread) see the value and the trade-offs quite clearly, and for many the trade-offs come out positive on the whole.


Last edited by juu; 02-08-2011 at 05:01 AM.
02-08-2011, 01:44 AM   #218
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QuoteOriginally posted by juu Quote
* This all assumes NEX (or should I say Sony E-mount) is really an open, royalty-free standard. I read that it is on another forum, but initial Google searches did not find proof of that, so it could be that the famously proprietary Sony is keeping it proprietary (or perhaps has it documented, but still charges lots for using it).
New press release from Sony:
QuoteOriginally posted by Sony:
Sony has officially confirmed it will be sharing 'basic specifications' of its E-mount for free to manufacturers of lenses and mount adaptors starting April 1, 2011. A company statement says 'this move will open the way for manufacturers of various lenses and mount adaptors to develop products conforming to 'E-mount' specifications, allowing users of the NEX-3, NEX-5, NEX-VG10 and other 'E-mount' compatible Sony digital imaging products to be launched in the future to be able to use interchangeable lenses from both Sony and other manufacturers.' The company has not specified whether these 'basic specifications' will extend to the AF protocols or just the physical construction of the mount.
If all they share is the physical measurements that is fairly ridiculous and means nothing. If they share AF protocols and have it licensing cost / royalty free that is a game changer.
02-08-2011, 02:29 AM   #219
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Please stop with this moore BS.
Even though it is called so, there is no law at all: just an empirical observation and nothing else.
Moreover this 'law' concerns the number of transistors in a chip, there are a lot of possibilities on how to do this without changing the number of sensitive cells on a sensor.
02-08-2011, 03:05 AM   #220
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QuoteOriginally posted by thibs Quote
Please stop with this moore BS.
Even though it is called so, there is no law at all: just an empirical observation and nothing else.
Moreover this 'law' concerns the number of transistors in a chip, there are a lot of possibilities on how to do this without changing the number of sensitive cells on a sensor.
I agree that Moore's law isn't a law and also that it doesn't necessarily apply to camera sensor quality improvement. That wasn't my point, however, if you read what I wrote carefully.

My point was that m43 will hit an IQ wall at about the same time that APSC will hit an IQ wall, and that it won't be any time soon.

There is no reason why the IQ (as in, DR, high ISO) from a 12 MPix m43 sensor cannot match the IQ of a ~16 MPix APSC sensor - as long as you are ready to accept less pixels.

Aristophanes seemed to imply that there is something intrinsically wrong with the 4/3 sensor size which makes it only suitable for snapshots while APSC has magic pixie dust for good pictures that you can "blow up big". That's very far from being accurate.
02-08-2011, 03:35 AM   #221
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smaller sensor means smaller pixel size, means worse quality with the same optics.

imagine you'd have to use 100% crops instead of scaled down images. obviously sharpness will be worse in the end images unless you use very expensive, best of the best optics available.

i doubt they will put the best optics into cheap camera which means that optical quality will be worse with smaller sensor.
02-08-2011, 03:59 AM   #222
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QuoteOriginally posted by juu Quote
I agree that Moore's law isn't a law and also that it doesn't necessarily apply to camera sensor quality improvement. That wasn't my point, however, if you read what I wrote carefully.

My point was that m43 will hit an IQ wall at about the same time that APSC will hit an IQ wall, and that it won't be any time soon.

.
I agree, it is just that I'm annoyed at that 'law' being constantly thrown at just everything
The argument from Aristophanes isn't wrong per se but put of proportion (IMO). It even more true for apsc vs FF.
02-08-2011, 04:02 AM   #223
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QuoteOriginally posted by olenl Quote
smaller sensor means smaller pixel size, means worse quality with the same optics.

imagine you'd have to use 100% crops instead of scaled down images. obviously sharpness will be worse in the end images unless you use very expensive, best of the best optics available.

i doubt they will put the best optics into cheap camera which means that optical quality will be worse with smaller sensor.
Wrong. Smaller sensor means more pixels per area OR less pixels total.
If 10-12 Mpix is enough for someone, it should give the same quality in theory than an aps of 15-16Mpix.
It is all a matter of needs nothing else.
02-08-2011, 04:11 AM   #224
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QuoteOriginally posted by olenl Quote
smaller sensor means smaller pixel size, means worse quality with the same optics.
Or it simply means less pixels at the same other IQ properties.

I have no idea what you mean by your other points, they don't seem to make much sense to me.
02-08-2011, 04:19 AM   #225
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QuoteOriginally posted by thibs Quote
The argument from Aristophanes isn't wrong per se but put of proportion (IMO). It even more true for apsc vs FF.
That's a good point. For every APSC user attacking m43 on the basis of the size, consider that:
m43 = 225 mm^2
APSC = 370 mm^2, or 65% more than m43
FF = 864 mm^2 or 135% more than APSC

The difference in sensor area between FF and APSC is significantly larger than between APSC and m43!

zomg think about when APSC walks into its IQ wall!!!!1

And still with all that K-5 appears to play ball with current FF cameras in IQ - so it seems like sensor technology plays a very comparable role to sensor size in all this.

Last edited by juu; 02-08-2011 at 05:07 AM.
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