somebody in this thread has hit me right between the eyes. yup, i admit it, i am one of those. i have been watching for weeks, sharing the same excitment and anticipation as everybody, maybe being more amused rather than "into it" compared to others, but still..
so here is the point of view of a "stalker".
first of all, it was clear to me a few days before the release, based on the comments of some people in the know..
that the bomb will be the sensor and the overall image quality. it was obvious, i am not proud or anything, what i mean to say is that, at that point, the excitment for what's to come grew beyond my previous expectations. maybe it's because i come from shooting manual focus slr's, from a praktica mtl3 (remeber those, anyone?) to an old minolta, seagull tlr, pentacon six and so on. the nikon d50 was my first dslr, and my first af camera. i never thought i'd like af, i did. i switched to the k100d for reasons i explained elswhere, i would have liked the k10d, but i was not confident on the 10mp sensor, and i didn't quite have the cash at the time. for what it's worth, i don't feel the d50's af is any better than the k100d, sorry, folks. oh, btw, i shot rallyes, track races (both cars and motorcycles) on several occasions with both, lately even side by side. same shit. only the pentax has 9 cross type sensors, which to me is very usefull. i didn't get 1 shot in 10 in focus, as so many people tend to suggest, i did get barely 1 in 10 composed correctly, for instance, though, and most of the time it was my stupidity, not the k100d's, which decided the faith of the shot. i never shot in burstmode at a rally, for a very simple reason: things happen too quick, and i never saw chance as being my best friend. i don't play the lottery.
now i am patiently waiting for the reviews on this new sensor, and drooling in expectation. yes, i shoot mostly landscapes, i hate the dinamic range of "digital", so maybe that's why. meanwhile, i am trying desperately to find the means to get a k10d, because i just love the body. i would love the k20d, but it's just too soon for my pocket
so has pentax "shot itslef in the foot"? well, we cannot know yet, can we, but assuming the sensor is as good as benjikan and codiac are leading us to believe, assuming the af is just as good as the k10d (yes, i said as _good_, sic), let's see what we have: an aps-c dslr which challenges ff dlsrs for image quality.. yaaawn, boring. oh, wait, those x000usd ones? those monsters nobody (let's be realistic) can afford. and they are about to actually make money selling them, unlike canon which, i think it's safe to say, has been selling them just "because we can"? ofcourse the guys i saw at the track race firing their machineguns attached to huge /2.8 L lenses will never buy a k20d. however.. they would not buy it if it was everything those monsters are, and some more, at a better price, not in the first two or three years, because they are not even _checking_ the market for anything else, i am sure. guys like me will either shoot an eos350d (or whatever it is these days), or 30d, or a nikon d50/80, or a pentax k100/k10 (and now k20), and have fun while at it. some other guys make money shooting k10d's, and don't appologise for doing so. sure fps and faster af can allways be usefull, but honestly, we have been waiting for more than a decade for digital to catch up with the good old film, at an affordable price, we have been waiting so long that most of us strongly, rationaly believe it is just not possible, not in our lifetime (look around, it's been going all these years towards faster af, fps, more mp's, and image quality has been reaching it's limit, on an asympthotic curve), nobody gave a shit about it, and now pentax, the one noone has ever heard about (you know what i mean) comes out saying "eeehrm, excuse me.. we have something here which might be of interest, if you care to have a look..". and now, all of a sudden, we start thinking "hm.. so that's why there's no ff capable lens anymore, so... oh, shit, what would this mean for the 645d, if it ever comes true? what would a sensor like that of such a size perform like?"
think about it: af is no big deal, and pentax have had fast and accurate AF for ages, everybody has, nothing to invent there, maybe some rainy friday afternoon, when some pentax egineers are really bored, one will say "hey, guys, how about that af thinggie we talked about? come on, we have 2 more hours to burn, let's finish the damn thing, and in the remaining 1h1/2 we can have some beers at the pub"
, however, if pentax has managed to come through with this new sensor, as something really amazing and that everybody has been waiting for, than yes, i will call that "a bomb".
okay, time to wake up now, he's DONE!!
ps: i am more and more intrigued about this af ranting. how _bad_ is it? i mean, k100d is good, not brilliant, but i know for a fact it is considerably slow compared to a k10d with the same lens. i need to get a 400d/40d and shoot some rally (allthough if it's the 400d, i will need my k100d to go back to after 10 minutes, so as not to go insane
), and get to the bottom of this mis(t)ery