[audiobomber]

What you are stating is correct, but it's past tense. Pentax competed rather well when APS-C was the standard for DSLRs, in 2013 it will no longer be.

FF is the new standard for DSLRs, even if on an aspirational level (ie. budding photographers who buy an APS-C DSLRs now due to cost, but buy FF glass for later...), and Pentax currently has no such path.

You blather on like this, like you somehow know. You have an opinion on where the market is going, but you don[t know, any more than I do. You say APS-C DSLRs are dying, I disagree. Where's your proof? Sales figures last year showed that APS-C DSLR's were a burgeoning market.

Meanwhile, mirrorless have caught up to APS-C DSLRs in image quality and beat them in size and price.

M4/3 MILCs have not caught up to APS-C, and never will. Sony MILC's are APS-C, so IQ is the same, but they are not cheaper than DSLR's. Good luck shooting sports, wildlife or BIF with the back of a MILC, or a slow cartoonish EVF.

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Last edited by ihasa; 09-29-2012 at 06:52 AM.

[Kunzite]

@illdefined:
I'm quite sure Pentax is doing something

At least for this reason, I also believe Pentax should make a "full frame" as soon as it's possible; they need to keep the people who would spend money on higher-end stuff. Not rushing it out, though, we know what happened with the A900&A850.

Dan is right, where is the proof APS-C is dying?

ogl, what loss?

[illdefined]

You blather on like this, like you somehow know. You have an opinion on where the market is going, but you don[t know, any more than I do. You say APS-C DSLRs are dying, I disagree. Where's your proof? Sales figures last year showed that APS-C DSLR's were a burgeoning market. Until I see numbers, I just see you doing your usual "Pentax is doomed" troll routine.

I know what's come out THIS year. last year's sales numbers do not.

if you can't agree that the photographic product landscape has tectonically shifted in 2012 (OM-D, Fuji-X, GH3, 6D, D600...) then you're just not following the industry.

and for the record, if i felt Pentax was destined for failure i wouldn't care enough to be here. Pentax has to react to the new market now, and has new management and new will to do so. like many of us here, I'm anxiously awaiting to see their new direction, but it doesn't mean i have to to do so quietly.

The onus is on Pentax to assuage its customer's fears if it wants to keep them, and the general consensus outside of PF seems to be the K-5II wasn't enough to do that.

This is the sort of lie you constantly throw around. M4/3 MILCs have not caught up to APS-C, and never will. Sony MILC's are APS-C, so IQ is the same, but they are not cheaper than DSLR's. Good luck shooting sports, wildlife or BIF with the back of a MILC, or a slow cartoonish EVF.

DPreview and DxOMark disagree with you on the m4/3 vs. APS-C image quality debate, if you think those sites have little influence well...good luck swaying the market. Sony has plenty of NEX cheaper than Pentax DSLRs, and they're making strides in hybrid AF as we speak. and finally....who shoots sports with Pentax? all those things you mentioned can be and are being done just fine (and professionally) with FF...

[illdefined]

Pentax K5II and K5IIs - hands on - YouTube

ouch. not a positive review. bad reviewer, calling the K-5 'ugly' and 'dainty' at the same time? he obviously prefers enormous bulbous cameras...most likely for the wrong reason....

[mecrox]

@mecrox: I am what?
We weren't talking about successful, but about cheap cameras. The A850 was exactly this: a cheap camera; and the new cheap cameras are more expensive than it was (even if only by $100).
And that's in direct contradiction with your "over time folks get an awful lot more stuff for less money". IMHO progress is just an excuse to keep prices up.

I agree, though, that "full frame" will most likely have more influence after the first (probably) successful "cheap" cameras. Not enough to overturn APS-C, not now, not in 5 years.

@illdefined, what a coincidence - those are the companies whose DSLRs failed

Come on, the D600 isn't a particularly cheap camera if you mean cheaply made: skimpy build and low on features, etc. I've handled one. It's not the best, it's not a D800, but it's not el cheapo or crippled into being useless, imho, and is more than good enough I suspect. This camera will sell very well. Moreover it's the first iteration in a honing process that will only get better at hitting the right targets at this price point. It absolutely confirms the notion that over time constantly evolving tech gives you more stuff for less money. The features and capabilities of the D600 are beyond the most fully featured and expensive DSLR on the planet of only a few years ago. None of this means there is anything remotely wrong with Pentax cameras or APS-C but cheaper (as in price) FF is not some high falutin ripoff, imho. I simply can't understand why folks have to see this in such black and white terms. Besides, the cams that might take more sales from Pentax aren't FF anyway, they are cams like the Sony NEX 6 and the latest Olympus ones. My personal hope is that Pentax produce something to match them.

[rawr]

ouch. not a positive review.

Who cares about that clown. Never heard of him and it looks like he gets practically zero Youtube traffic.

Anyone can dump amateur garbage videos on Youtube, and his stuff is proof. All he's done is walk through Photokina, handle various products at random for 30 seconds, do a poor quality video, then move on. What a waste of electrons.

[falconeye]

I expect you are correct with regard to the amount of movement the sensor needs at the time of shutter press.

But when I look at the SR mechanism, to me, it looks like the sensor can move in the range of +/- 4mm in all directions.

I think the sensor needs this extra movement to lock in and hold the sensor position while the photographer composes the shot.

Otherwise why allow this motion in the SR mechanism?

I only computed the necessary amount of sensor shift during the exposure.

It is up to the engineers to be smart or not. AFAIK, Pentax uses 2mm margins, which means the sensor is able to move 10x more than would be required. This is nice for LV or video, but was done at the age of CCD. I think Pentax engineers used this extra space to accelerate the sensor from the start position after you full-press the shutter. However, it is possible to accelerate the sensor in a non-linear fashion such that no extra space is required to lock the sensor. Just a little bit more engineering will and a bit stronger shift motor are required.

I only wanted to say one thing: K mount and SR for full frame don't contradict each other.

[Winder]

It is up to the engineers to be smart.....

So we're screwed is what you're saying.

If Pentax designs IBIS for a Full Frame body it will probably vibrate so bad the first brick and mortar stores to carry it will be sex shops. They will sell it as a kit with the new 560mm telescoping lens, paint the whole thing pink and call it the "Hello Kitty" special edition.

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

Adam's and this interview combined and taking into account that this guy is head of Pentax product planning and doesn't speak English, I guess we saw part of the problem here:

A lack of forward thinking and entrepreneur-oriented management. Even under Ricoh, despite all the ambitions.

Their basic way of reasoning ( didn't get much feed-back, so didn't decide to make it ) is a problem in a fast moving industry.

I think this is perfectly illustrated by this answer around how they view CSCs/MILCs:

We think that if you see the market globally, the mirrorless share is very limited, most of the markets have good percentage of the DSLR cameras. These tendencies will continue so we hope the DSLRs will not die.

MILCs have acquired half of the ILC market in Japan in less than 5 years (move the cursor over the bottom of the image to get an idea of the growth rate) and he just hopes that because DSLRs still represent a good percentage of the market, they will not die, so Pentax can continue making them.

[twitch]

This is the sort of lie you constantly throw around. M4/3 MILCs have not caught up to APS-C, and never will.

No but APS-C MILCs have, the NEX and Fuji X series match the K-5 for IQ, it's likely the Fuji exceeds it but let's be generous and call it a draw.

The argument about form factor of a camera body (DSLR vs mirrorless) is not that same as that around sensor size/formats. Seems there's two separate strong trends in the industry; larger and larger sensors for each segment, and smaller form factors for portability.

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

M4/3 MILCs have not caught up to APS-C, and never will.

The problem with APS-C is not only that it is a smaller format than FF, but that it never offered faster lenses than FF. Meanwhile, MFT and FT have offered both faster f/0.95 primes and faster f/2 zooms than APS-C. That is what makes MFT rival APS-C. Easily.

This is starting to change a bit, but just for the mirrorless APS-C segment where SLR Magic is introducing lenses for NEX. It remains to be seen how good they are. Make lenses for APS-C that are as fast as those you can use on MFT and then APS-C will manage to keep its half stop advantage over MFT.

[gazonk]

The problem with APS-C is not only that it is a smaller format than FF, but that it never offered faster lenses than FF. Meanwhile, MFT and FT have offered both faster f/0.95 primes and faster f/2 zooms than APS-C. That is what makes MFT rival APS-C. Easily.

This is starting to change a bit, but just for the mirrorless APS-C segment where SLR Magic is introducing lenses for NEX. It remains to be seen how good they are. Make lenses for APS-C that are as fast as those you can use on MFT and then APS-C will manage to keep its half stop advantage over MFT.

Which lenses di you have in mind? The 0.95 is a manual focusing oddity, and a Sigma 30/1.4 is just slightly slower. F/2 zooms - I guess you're thinking of FT, not MFT, here?

The 12mm f/2 from Olympus is the single lens I can think of that really matches your description. But that's such a wonderful lens that it's almost worth buying a MFT camera just for this lens

[twitch]

18/2, 23/1.4, 35/1.4, 56/1.4 aren't too bad for APSC.

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

Which lenses di you have in mind?

It's the Voigtlander Noktons 17.5/0.95 and 25/0.95 that pulled me to MFT.

18/2, 23/1.4, 35/1.4, 56/1.4 aren't too bad for APSC.

Yes, thanks to Fuji we can finally see the APS-C format properly exploited. I can nitpick about these lenses, like the fact that some of them are just a mention on a roadmap, but the fact is that Fuji is showing us how an APS-C system should be developed. Where else can we see an 18-55/2.8-4?

[Class A]

Meanwhile, MFT and FT have offered both faster f/0.95 primes and faster f/2 zooms than APS-C. That is what makes MFT rival APS-C. Easily.

An f/2 zoom on FT corresponds to a f/2.7 zoom on APS-C (i.e., the latter allows you to take the same images as the former).

I wouldn't call that faster, not really.