[Rondec]

At the height of the film era there were 1-Hour Photo kiosks in strip mall parking lots. Think about that - an Instamatic shooter was impatient enough that she dropped her 126 cartidge at the kiosk, did her shopping and expected her envelope to be ready with prints when she left the strip mall. These weren't the people who plumbed thier basements to build a darkroom. Why are we surprised iPhones that link to Instagram are so popular?

I for one could handle PS Elements 6. I can get around PS Elements 9. I cannot use Lightroom to save my life - can't abide the interface, can't see the dark-on-darker skin, can't use the controls, can't find the files if I figure out how to process something and I can't for the life of me do anything without clicking "Process in Photoshop Elements." On a modern laptop w/ plenty of RAM Boot Time (and then Boot Time for Elements) is so long that the whole thing is totally discouraging. I have for a year now simply shot in RAW+, accepted OOC jpeg's and stored the RAWs in case I ever figure out PP software. iPhoto doesn't help because I don't have an Apple computer. I have avoided getting a K5II because I just don't want to handle the files.

In short, I ahve come to hate processing image files - doing that has taken all the fun out of the hobby and I've been a net seller of lenses and SLR's / dSLR's for the last 18 months. I don't have a new dSLR and I won't buy one this fall. K-01 and Q are fun to use but the processing issue still exists.

When I had a Suburban I ran three children all over town, drove to work, drove five people to Colorado and new Mexico twice a year, went off-road once a month, took 5 Boy Scouts and 2 weeks gear to Canada, trailered, drove in 6" or more of snow once a year, hauled large items often and bought a hell of a lot of gasoline. A Subaru is a better all-around value but it is a pain to rent a truck or pay for delivery of large items and it most certainly isn't a highway car, so we fly now and rent an SUV.

The K-3 will split Canon and Nikon model positions and be a good features for price value in a comfortable, conservative, familiar body.

I've heard it said that everything invented after you turn forty begins to seem more and more foreign and more like magic. I have no problem with people shooting out of camera jpegs and you can do it as easily with the K5 -- probably better in fact -- than you ever could with cameras like the K10 or K7. The problem I run into is that I see how much more detail is available in the RAW files and so if I think a photo is worth saving and perhaps printing or, posting the forums here, I would like to work on it a little to see what I can get out of it.

In the film days, things were harder, if anything. I never did my own development, so I was pretty much dependent on my local drugstore/Walmart to do my developing, but I have read Ansel Adams trilogy and the work he put into making his prints makes my ten minutes of post processing seem pretty small.

[Rondec]

Is it really low quality?

Go to the Pentax Gallery or these forums galleries or Flickr and you can see excellent photos from most zoom lenses. Jay Maisel has used 18-200 and similar lenses to produce his body of work.

Don't confuse being a techno-lens snob with good photography.

I am no lens snob. I am a pretty big fan of primes as compared to superzooms. They can be old and cheap, but I can tell the difference between a lens like the DA 35 f2.4 and even a high end zoom like the DA *16-50. I know that there are plenty of photographers who use superzooms, but I just see their weaknesses too much when I am shooting and I guess I don't feel that restricted going out with a single focal length on my camera.

[mee]

[Winder]

I've heard it said that everything invented after you turn forty begins to seem more and more foreign and more like magic. I have no problem with people shooting out of camera jpegs and you can do it as easily with the K5 -- probably better in fact -- than you ever could with cameras like the K10 or K7. The problem I run into is that I see how much more detail is available in the RAW files and so if I think a photo is worth saving and perhaps printing or, posting the forums here, I would like to work on it a little to see what I can get out of it.

In the film days, things were harder, if anything. I never did my own development, so I was pretty much dependent on my local drugstore/Walmart to do my developing, but I have read Ansel Adams trilogy and the work he put into making his prints makes my ten minutes of post processing seem pretty small.

I first went digital with a Canon 5D Original. I shot JPEG just because my post skills were awful and the Canon JPEGs were much better that what I could do. It probably took me 2 years to get to where I could process RAW files better than the in camera engine. When Lightroom 3.0 came out it was a pretty big game changer for high ISO and overall IQ. I have gone back and reprocessed some 3200 ISO 5D original files with some really good results.

Modern RAW processors work better with higher MP sensors because they provide more information and help control random pattern noise. The current 16MP sensor is 4 years old now (or more.... I don't know how long Sony had it in development before it was used by Pentax). We could see a new 24MP. We could see the Olympus 4/3 sensor scaled up to APS-C for 28MPs, or we could see a new 32MP.

I'm pretty sure Ricoh/Pentax (or whatever then name is now) will give us excellent image quality. I have never really been impressed with the Pentax JPEG engine. Olympus has the best JPEG engine, followed by Fuji.

[Pål Jensen]

And I'm trying to find the source but I think last I read the average installed home PC had a 250GB hard drive and between 2 and 4GB RAM. This is what the market looks like after a 5 year slump. That's not going to last you long with a new DSLR shooting RAW..

Huh? I bought my current PC in 2005 in order to process my 310mb medium format scans. I have 2GB RAM....

Otherwise; i think you have a point. Add the fact of general digital camera saturation and the law of diminishing returns with increasing mp and you have a recepie for over-saturation of the higher end DSLR market. Did anyone say FF?
The more mp you have to start with the more processing power is needed in an exponential manner in order to get a significant increase in resolution. If the K-3 use a 32mp sensor you need 128mp to double its resolution.....

[Winder]

The more mp you have to start with the more processing power is needed in an exponential manner in order to get a significant increase in resolution. If the K-3 use a 32mp sensor you need 128mp to double its resolution.....

That assumes that we stay with the current technology and a Foveon type technology or organic sensor technology does not become mainstream. Or maybe a mirrorless system that uses a 3-CCD type technology with 3 dedicated color sensor that replace the mirror box.

[RonHendriks1966]

Huh? I bought my current PC in 2005 in order to process my 310mb medium format scans. I have 2GB RAM....

The more mp you have to start with the more processing power is needed in an exponential manner in order to get a significant increase in resolution. If the K-3 use a 32mp sensor you need 128mp to double its resolution.....

You are patient, modern people are not!

[Digitalis]

I bought my current PC in 2005 in order to process my 310mb medium format scans. I have 2GB RAM....

In 2006 I was working on 1.2 terabyte 10,000 DPI 8X10 large format drum scans in Tiff format on a PC system with only 8Gb of memory - drive flogging was inevitable. My current computer handles these images quite easily, these days I have a single empty 160Gb 10,000RPM drive that I use as a scratch disk, I keep my image editing programs are on a dual Corsair GTX 240Gb Sata 3 RAID 0 array.

[Cambo]

Huh? I bought my current PC in 2005 in order to process my 310mb medium format scans. I have 2GB RAM....

Otherwise; i think you have a point. Add the fact of general digital camera saturation and the law of diminishing returns with increasing mp and you have a recepie for over-saturation of the higher end DSLR market. Did anyone say FF?
The more mp you have to start with the more processing power is needed in an exponential manner in order to get a significant increase in resolution. If the K-3 use a 32mp sensor you need 128mp to double its resolution.....

I have five terabytes of storage space and I'm starting to run low...

Hi-rez video with 48Khz audio take a LOT of space. Not to mention BIG photos.

Cheers,
Cameron

[mecrox]

Hmm, I wonder if the K3 is going to turn out to be mythical. DSLR sales are down, so folks are saying, and Nikon and perhaps others are quite likely to have excess inventory which they could try to sell out at a discount in the fall. Not really a great time to be launching a fully specced 100-gun man-o'-war at a full price then. So perhaps we are expecting too much from a company now more focused on the mainstream commercial sweet spots and canny enough not to want warehouses full of unsold products. Perhaps the K3 will turn out to be one of the ghost fleet of El Dorado together with "FF" and all manner of other fabulous speculations.

Perhaps we should be looking at something more modest, slotting in between the K50 and current K5II - or a D5200 and a D7100. I doubt Ricoh would have the brass to use the same 16 mp sensor all over again, and they would really need to improve the AF system with more points, but most of the rest is already there (albeit in 12-bit form) on the K30/K50 - better live view, focus peaking, better video, etc. Up the specs and price too much and there'd be little point in buying a K3 anyway. For the same or little more, you could go to FF if that's what you want or to pro-spec on Canonikon if they replace the D300s and the 7D.

Admittedly I'm fairly teed off anyway because a quite expensive Metz flash jammed on the camera this afternoon. Borked locking pin lever. On close inspection with a magnifying glass and jeweller's screwdrivers, it turned out the locking pin assembly is made from the cheapest, thinnest metal Metz could find. That's a valuable item rendered not entirely useful thanks to a sheered 1 cent widget, I reckon. Gouged the top plate on the camera, too. Darn, just as well my K5 is about on its last legs anyway.

Anyway, add in the other things Pentax really need across the range, like DC motors on their kit lenses, and they do have a plenty to do in the midstream before they start reaching for the high end. I think I would happily settle for a K50+, a kind of K70, more than some super 32 mp high-ender few will be able to afford anyway.

[Quicksand]

I doubt Ricoh would have the brass to use the same 16 mp sensor all over again

Yeah, I thought the same thing a couple of 16mp cameras ago.

[monochrome]

I've heard it said that everything invented after you turn forty begins to seem more and more foreign and more like magic. I have no problem with people shooting out of camera jpegs and you can do it as easily with the K5 -- probably better in fact -- than you ever could with cameras like the K10 or K7. The problem I run into is that I see how much more detail is available in the RAW files and so if I think a photo is worth saving and perhaps printing or, posting the forums here, I would like to work on it a little to see what I can get out of it.

In the film days, things were harder, if anything. I never did my own development, so I was pretty much dependent on my local drugstore/Walmart to do my developing, but I have read Ansel Adams trilogy and the work he put into making his prints makes my ten minutes of post processing seem pretty small.

I am no lens snob. I am a pretty big fan of primes as compared to superzooms. They can be old and cheap, but I can tell the difference between a lens like the DA 35 f2.4 and even a high end zoom like the DA *16-50. I know that there are plenty of photographers who use superzooms, but I just see their weaknesses too much when I am shooting and I guess I don't feel that restricted going out with a single focal length on my camera.

I'd put my crossover point at closer to 55 but I'm a curious kind of guy. I wrote my own programs in C++ in the late 80's and early 90's until I realized I was in an advice business, not a software construction business. As I ahve moved farther and farther away from program logic my natural acquisition of application structure and controls logic has atrophied - Lightroom is opaque to me.

I never went to Walgreens and my wife and daughters only went there for snapshots. We went to a commercial custom lab for developing and printing. My daughters also used school darkrooms and bought their own papers and specialty chemicals. I simply take no artistic craft pleasure in running digital development tools and it isn't my business, so I have no economic incentive to learn the trade (as I have with my business anal;ysis tools). I'm just constantly annoyed that the industry has off-loaded this formerly independent process on me as if it would save me money, as if, "Since the computer is already there the cost to you is just the software." - IOW, they never count my time and my pleasure as having any money value.

Over the years I've come to understand Rondec is sophisticated and informed, but circumspect.

[Rondec]

I'd put my crossover point at closer to 55 but I'm a curious kind of guy. I wrote my own programs in C++ in the late 80's and early 90's until I realized I was in an advice business, not a software construction business. As I ahve moved farther and farther away from program logic my natural acquisition of application structure and controls logic has atrophied - Lightroom is opaque to me.

I never went to Walgreens and my wife and daughters only went there for snapshots. We went to a commercial custom lab for developing and printing. My daughters also used school darkrooms and bought their own papers and specialty chemicals. I simply take no artistic craft pleasure in running digital development tools and it isn't my business, so I have no economic incentive to learn the trade (as I have with my business anal;ysis tools). I'm just constantly annoyed that the industry has off-loaded this formerly independent process on me as if it would save me money, as if, "Since the computer is already there the cost to you is just the software." - IOW, they never count my time and my pleasure as having any money value.

Over the years I've come to understand Rondec is sophisticated and informed, but circumspect.

Thanks. I think.

[jatrax]

Hmm, I wonder if the K3 is going to turn out to be mythical. DSLR sales are down, so folks are saying, and Nikon and perhaps others are quite likely to have excess inventory which they could try to sell out at a discount in the fall. Not really a great time to be launching a fully specced 100-gun man-o'-war at a full price then.

Ricoh goal: make money
Pentax enthusiast goal: amazing new camera gear that shames the competition at 2/3 the cost

Those two may not be mutually compatible. I'm guessing Ricoh will go with the 'make money' thing. And while many on this forum are eager for a new flagship, with emphasis on the 'new', either FF or APS-C the reality might be that the numbers just don't work. So yeah, maybe we do get a k-5III with 16mp sensor and minor improvements.

If the numbers quoted for slowing sales are correct then it is a cost/benefit calculation. Release an improved model of a totally safe design with sunk costs already expensed and a predictable sales record or release a new unproven design, incur new setup and manufacturing costs, and take a risk on the new camera not selling to expectations.

I know what I would vote for if I was in the Ricoh decision making tree, but it's probably a good thing I'm not.

[haycyn]

That full frame NEX sounds tempting after reading this thread.