[StepOne]

DA WR not so great? Thanks for a laugh.

I guess 18-55, 50-200 and 18-135 are the pride of Pentax DA*, i would love to have 50-135 (even i have to make a big effort to afford one), but the SDM issue..can't risk it at the price point.

[Eagle_Friends]

Eagle,

If comparing size only, you would be correct, on appearances alone rather.. Look at the feature-set of both cameras. Both are feature-rich and both have some things the others do not (K-5 has WR, built in SR, etc, while the 5n has 1080p HD video with AF and full manual controls, 10 FPS, peaking for manual focusing, twilight mode which is a brilliant feature, etc, etc...). Both the K-5 and the 5n are very respectable cameras with the same proven imaging sensor. Both are capable of fantastic photos as seen by examples and real-world shooting, and both would be excellent in almost any shooting situation. One was 1500 at release, the other 700. The price alone could be the biggest differentiator.

How does one become a "PSP" and the other a PS3? It never hurts to step outside your comfort zone and actually take a closer look what other camera manufacturers are doing these days. And by "look", I mean read up and take an interest rather than just a cavalier scoff and silly metaphors.

Jason

Whoa buddy, guess you were serious after all. I think I gave a pretty good analogy with what you were suggesting. The K5 is like a home console, the heavy-weight or so you can say with performance, built quality, and higher price like you mentioned. The NEX-5n is like a portable PSP, very capable on its own (web broswer, music player, video player), more compact and cheaper too. But comparing a NEX5 to a K5 is ridiculous, they are obviously two different class of cameras. With your example, I should just buy an iPhone as a camera since it has and even exceed some feature set of the NEX-5n .

I do not think the NEX-5n would be excellent in all shooting situation, unlike the K5. And I don't think the NEX-5n's dynamic range can compare to the K5, nor will its ergonomics, low light shooting, etc. I don't think your original post was asking us to step outside our comfort zone, but more like taking a leap of faith with your flawed theory. And it's so funny how you attack other people with false acquisitions that we only like Pentax products and dismiss all other companies. It would be more fair to compare the K5 to the A77, which looks like a very strong dSLR from sony. Comparing it to a NEX-5n belittle the K5 and what it has done.

[Kammerer]

I guess 18-55, 50-200 and 18-135 are the pride of Pentax DA*, i would love to have 50-135 (even i have to make a big effort to afford one), but the SDM issue..can't risk it at the price point.

I have the 18-55mm WR, and it is a great lens for the price. We are lucky to be able to buy a standard zoom with decent build quality and WR for around $100, and use it without fear in any weather.
Flying over South Boston - Sergey's Photo Journal
Chincoteague Island, Eastern Shore, VA - Sergey's Photo Journal

I also have the 100mm WR and it is a great lens, for any price.
Real Bill: street in Keene NH - Sergey's Photo Journal
After the rain - Sergey's Photo Journal

As a friendly advice #495, stop obsessing about the gear, go shoot something, come back to the forum and share the pictures. We do not really care what you use, Pentax, NEX, or L.F.Deardorff and Sons.

[glanglois]

The WR factor is important to me. WR bodies and lenses handle not only rain but also sand, dust, and salt spray if you shoot on the ocean. I would not buy a non-WR camera as a main body.

DA WR not so great? Thanks for a laugh.

Pentax make it clear that the sealing, such as it is, in the DA WR series is different and lesser than that found in the DA* lenses. Perhaps fewer seals?

DA* is offered as "tightly sealed, weather-resistant and dust-resistant construction". It refers to DA WR as "Weather-resistant to handle damp, inclement conditions". Not "tightly sealed" and no mention of dust.

DA WR is, in fact, not so great as DA*. And in those terms, I think that Pentax offers sealed bodies but not WR bodies.

[elho_cid]

Important is that the sealing and WR works. Pentaxes sustain what few other cameras can.

[benjikan]

What kind of glass do you need to feed a 24 mpix sensor? Expensive...
16mpix in the K-5 is more than enough. If you need more, get a 645D or any other medium format camera. This is just silly...

Problem is, that is what they said about 16 megapixels on a cropped sensor last year...

[eddie1960]

Problem is, that is what they said about 16 megapixels on a cropped sensor last year...

and it's what will be said about a 30mp in a year or two

of course at some point your lens won't resolve the mp but it doesn't mean it will be unusable. if you're a pixel peeper then you will want new glass

[philbaum]

and it's what will be said about a 30mp in a year or two

of course at some point your lens won't resolve the mp but it doesn't mean it will be unusable. if you're a pixel peeper then you will want new glass

I hope that the consumers are getting a little smarter, and the megapixel race is wearing thin in its appeal. For example, in the last Canon G-series compact camera, Canon cut the number of megapixels from the former 12 to 10, apparently due to criticism from the G-series fans. I think this occurred from G9 to the G10, but not sure of the model numbers.

More reliable, easier to fix cameras would be my choice. It seems as soon as problems get sorted with a new model, i.e. K10, K20, K5, we're off to the races with a new model in 18 months, with new sensors and new programming so we can send our cameras to repair centers with 1 and 2 month long waits. Enough already. Do what Nikon did with the D300. Keep it around forever, and have plenty of boards and spare parts available for fast replacement and return to the customer. Advertise the service ease and return plan, and forget the stupid meaningless number of pixels. Think volkswagon beetle. With the crappy economies around the world, not many people are going to have money for the next troublesome new model, anyway.

Did i make my point? Get the helmet - incoming

[eddie1960]

I hope that the consumers are getting a little smarter, and the megapixel race is wearing thin in its appeal. For example, in the last Canon G-series compact camera, Canon cut the number of megapixels from the former 12 to 10, apparently due to criticism from the G-series fans. I think this occurred from G9 to the G10, but not sure of the model numbers.

More reliable, easier to fix cameras would be my choice. It seems as soon as problems get sorted with a new model, i.e. K10, K20, K5, we're off to the races with a new model in 18 months, with new sensors and new programming so we can send our cameras to repair centers with 1 and 2 month long waits. Enough already. Do what Nikon did with the D300. Keep it around forever, and have plenty of boards and spare parts available for fast replacement and return to the customer. Advertise the service ease and return plan, and forget the stupid meaningless number of pixels. Think volkswagon beetle. With the crappy economies around the world, not many people are going to have money for the next troublesome new model, anyway.

Did i make my point? Get the helmet - incoming

I agree but cameras have become a consumer electronics product and are marketed that way, if they don't keep changing and enticing upgrades the system fails. in film days the cycle was much longer and improvements generally drove the new model. For me i'd rather see more breadth in the line with a longer cycle with products flowing down in the line logic to some degree ( Ie kr drops in price, new hr model is up the line, k 5 drops and new k3 or whatever is then top, maybe with an added FF model (k1) that way there are incremental prices and sell steps. Brick and Mortar salesman love this, and is surely one of the reasons they love to sell canon and nikon.
it's also the only way Ricoh is going to truly take share from the big 2.
Added advantage if items hang around longer the problems are ironed out before the end of the life cycle

[falconeye]

Problem is, that is what they said about 16 megapixels on a cropped sensor last year...

benjikan is right. High and low megapixel counts are relative to what we are used to.

Let me try to give you a more absolute feeling of where we stand ...

Attached is a test chart shot. The image shows the overall chart, the two inserts (inverted colors) show:

1. Left: an extreme crop of the center where pixels from a hypothetical 24 MP sensor are clearly visible. Just to show how large such pixels are.
2. Right: the same crop, but from a real shot with the DA*300 lens onto film. I used a special film emulsion with very fine grain and the crop was taken via a microscope because no film scanner resolves this much.

This gives you a feeling what we are still missing with current digital sensors ... (read, we're going to see 100MP FF cameras and it would still not resolve all detail from my B&W film sample -- e.g., you see that the circular lines have a flat rather than a rounded end). It's also a reason why I said that a Pentax Q adapted to a DA*300 will be an interesting experiment

Zeiss claims that their better SLR lenses resolve 300 lp/mm (enough for 300MP) and I have no reason to doubt that.

BTW, the second attachment shows the K20D adapted to a microscope using the Pentax K-mount microscope adapter. Yes, such thing exists

[Blue]

benjikan is right. High and low megapixel counts are relative to what we are used to.

Let me try to give you a more absolute feeling of where we stand ...

Attached is a test chart shot. The image shows the overall chart, the two inserts (inverted colors) show:

1. Left: an extreme (simulated) crop of the center where pixels from a hypothetical 24 MP sensor are clearly visible. Just to show how large such pixels are (the real crop would be sharper -- just didn't have one; but the pixels would still be this large).
2. Right: the same crop, but from a real shot with the DA*300 lens onto film. I used a special film emulsion with very fine grain and the crop was taken via a microscope because no film scanner resolves this much.

This gives you a feeling what we are still missing with current digital sensors ...

BTW, the second attachment shows the K20D adapted to a microscope using the Pentax microscope adapter. Yes, such thing exists

I use a t-mount to use my K20d on on an Olympus phase-contrast/darkfield scope and Leica stereo scope. I have the pentax thing around somewhere.

[jsherman999]

benjikan is right. High and low megapixel counts are relative to what we are used to.

Let me try to give you a more absolute feeling of where we stand ...

Attached is a test chart shot. The image shows the overall chart, the two inserts (inverted colors) show:

1. Left: an extreme crop of the center where pixels from a hypothetical 24 MP sensor are clearly visible. Just to show how large such pixels are.
2. Right: the same crop, but from a real shot with the DA*300 lens onto film. I used a special film emulsion with very fine grain and the crop was taken via a microscope because no film scanner resolves this much.

This gives you a feeling what we are still missing with current digital sensors ... (read, we're going to see 100MP FF cameras and it would still not resolve all detail from my B&W film sample -- e.g., you see that the circular lines have a flat rather than a rounded end). It's also a reason why I said that a Pentax Q adapted to a DA*300 will be an interesting experiment

Zeiss claims that their better SLR lenses resolve 300 lp/mm (enough for 300MP) and I have no reason to doubt that.

BTW, the second attachment shows the K20D adapted to a microscope using the Pentax K-mount microscope adapter. Yes, such thing exists

.


Pretty cool, Falk. But how did you do the 24MP pixel simulation?

.

[falconeye]

Pretty cool, Falk. But how did you do the 24MP pixel simulation?

I had a version with superresolution which I resampled to 6000x4000 before doing the crop and its pixelated magnification.

[ghelary]

Am I the only one wanting this 24Mpx sensor.

I'm printing relatively big (40x60cm) and like to frame loose in order to crop in PP. In my case 24Mpx would be very useful compared to the 14Mpx of my K20D provided this Sony sensor don't have any major flow (and to me sub-par 12800 iso performance is not a flaw, stronlgy patterned noise is)

Looking forward to this camera, hoping it comes around early 2012.

[ogl]

Zeiss claims that their better SLR lenses resolve 300 lp/mm (enough for 300MP) and I have no reason to doubt that.

Yes. But, it seems to me - 300-400 pair of lines and only at black-and-white technical film.
Add special development and the best scanning.

I would say about 150-200 lp/mm - it's more close to reality.

Correct me, if I'm not right.