[Sky"e" runner]

Smaller, lighter, cheaper, better...?

Imagine, how many camera and lens carrying for travelling.
Imagine, how hard to shoot flying object with heavy camera for long time.
Pentax already supplies cheaper lens more than Canon or Nikon. And you can buy another lens.
I didn't mean not only cheap, not just too much light, not too small.
And Pentax made small SLRs camera in their history.
What the point to use pentax? There are so many big, heavy and expensive camera and lens. You can go there.

Please have a look carefully what kind of camera Pentax has been making.
I love Pentax products.

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Last edited by Sky"e" runner; 03-28-2013 at 09:09 PM.

[Class A]

It actually is a pretty intriguing and ingenious strategy.

Yes, it is.

If your goal is to kill the Pentax brand.

I'm trying to think of other justifications for a new FF, and I can't, unless it's just 'keeping up with the Joneses', which is no way to run a business.

For a certain level of IQ, FF is cheaper and it gives you more options with existing lenses.

Please check out Falconeye's excellent article on the subject.

[jon404]

@RobA -- that's a good point, about better low light capability. And an important consideration. As for a viewfinder, no reason you couldn't put the one from my 645N on an APS-C, if you really want visibility. I don't know that a better viewfinder is necessarily a FF thing. As for the restored FoV... don't the old lenses still give the same FoV on an APS-C, but cropped? It may be just familiarity -- I'm still getting used that my old 50mm f/1.4 'normal' lens is now a mild telephoto on the K-01. But the more I use APS-C, the more I'll be used to the new relationships.

@Sky"e" -- why is FF better for landscapes? Again, you can make excellent sharp 20 x 30" prints from the Pentax 16mp APS-C sensors. Need better than that? Wouldn't you just go to medium format?

@ElJamoquio -- Smaller, lighter, cheaper, better... but not quite as good in low light?

@Class A -- sorry, cross-posting -- will read the Falconeye article. But again, all those lenses all work just fine on our APS-C cameras, don't they?

[Boris_Akunin]

@RobA -- that's a good point, about better low light capability. And an important consideration. As for a viewfinder, no reason you couldn't put the one from my 645N on an APS-C, if you really want visibility. I don't know that a better viewfinder is necessarily a FF thing. As for the restored FoV... don't the old lenses still give the same FoV on an APS-C, but cropped? It may be just familiarity -- I'm still getting used that my old 50mm f/1.4 'normal' lens is now a mild telephoto on the K-01. But the more I use APS-C, the more I'll be used to the new relationships.

As far as FOV is concerned, you just need the equivalent focal length on APS-C but to achieve the same DOF equivalent lenses become quite difficult to make.

Let's take for example some of the fastest lenses Pentax has ever made:
15/3.5 - 20/2.8 - 24/2.0 - 28/2.0 - 31/1.8 - 35/1.4 - 43/1.9 - 50/1.2 - 77/1.8 - 85/1.4 - 135/1.8 - 200/2.8

and their APS-C equivalents (focal length and dof):
10/2.0 - 13/2.0 - 16/1.4 - 18/1.4 - 20/1.3 - 23/1.0 - 28/1.3 - 33/0.8 - 51/1.3 - 56/1.0 - 89/1.3 - 132/2.0

Granted, dof doesn't really matter for the wider lenses but where it does most of the APS-C equiv. lenses are actually harder if not impossible to built, even if they are only made to cover an APS-C image circle. With a shorter flange distance just sufficient for an APS-C mirror box the situation might be somewhat different, though.
With every equivalent lens that is harder/more expensive to built than the FF version, the price-advantage for APS-C decreases.

With all the old lens design from better days in their archives and their current FF lenses, it would be much easier for Pentax to built a full FF lens lineup than to develop a load of new designs to narrow the gap to FF.


further off topic:
I'd actually like to see a "true" APS-C DSLR with short flange distance and a set of high-IQ lenses (and a fully functional adapter to A/F/K/EF-mount), I wonder how small it could be made.

@Sky"e" -- why is FF better for landscapes? Again, you can make excellent sharp 20 x 30" prints from the Pentax 16mp APS-C sensors. Need better than that? Wouldn't you just go to medium format?

If you're willing to make up the difference between the expected price of a Pentax FF DSLR and that of the 645D...

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Last edited by Boris_Akunin; 04-08-2013 at 08:13 AM.

[ElJamoquio]

Imagine, how many camera and lens carrying for travelling.
Imagine, how hard to shoot flying object with heavy camera for long time.
Pentax already supplies cheaper lens more than Canon or Nikon. And you can buy another lens.
I didn't mean not only cheap, not just too much light, not too small.
And Pentax made small SLRs camera in their history.
What the point to use pentax? There are so many big, heavy and expensive camera and lens. You can go there.

Please have a look carefully what kind of camera Pentax has been making.
I love Pentax products.

The D600 is basically as small as a D7100
The 6D is as small as a 7D

Other than the prism... why would a FF K-mount be intrinsically, objectionably larger than an APS-C camera?

For what it's worth, the D600 with a 35mm F/1.8 is pretty damn small, light, and cheap for what it does... which is something no APS-C camera can do with off the shelf parts. You could commision a heavy, custom, unimaginably expensive 20mm F/1.2 of course.

I've chosen a poor-for-APS-C example, but there needs to be a definition of the picture-to-be-taken before defining APS-C as smaller, or lighter, or cheaper. APS-C has been heavily advertised as such but it is not true all that often, especially considering the omni-present option of cropping.

[ElJamoquio]

@ElJamoquio -- Smaller, lighter, cheaper, better... but not quite as good in low light?

I'm not trying to be an ass here (I do that naturally), but you saying it's smaller (as a system with a lens), etc, is misleading without defining the capabilities you want the camera to have. See my previous post if you haven't already.

An example - pretty standard lens - The D600 with a 50mm F/1.4 or 50mm F/1.8. What's would D7100 weigh with a 35mm F/1.0? OK, perhaps that's not 'fair'... or at least, it's too expensive, large, and heavy for manufacturers to market that lens.

What would the D7100 weigh with a 35mm F/1.3? OK, F/1.4? What's the cost difference between that and a D600 50mm F/1.8?

If you're super worried about cost, too, and are happy with APS-C lens IQ, you can carry around a FF and half as many lenses and just crop to your heart's content. Carry around the 50mm F/1.8 above, whereas on the APS-C camera you might decide to carry both a 35mm F/1.4 and a 50mm F/1.8. How much does the D7100 kit weigh? Cost? How much does the APS-C camera weigh and cost?

Personally, I find zoom lenses to be 'fast enough' on FF, but on APS-C to get the DOF and SNR I want I need to use primes. I have 8 different focal lengths of prime lenses, averaging maybe $600 each, in the range of approx. 24-75mm (on FF). How much savings would I get by going to one quality zoom (and maybe one or two primes) on FF? How much less weight would I carry around with me? How much (presumably) more weight would I have to hold up to my eye?

Overall... telling someone else that it's smaller, lighter, or cheaper to go APS-C really does that person a disservice. Everyone has to figure it out for themselves based on what they want to do with their camera and lenses.

[ElJamoquio]

further off topic:
I'd actually like to see a "true" APS-C DSLR with short flange distance and a set of high-IQ lenses (and a fully functional adapter to A/F/K/EF-mount), I wonder how small it could be made.

The expense and size of the Micro-4/3rds lenses, which of course have an additional tremendous benefit over SLR lenses, indicates to me that producing high quality fast lenses for any APS-C SLR will not have tremendous cost advantages.

[Boris_Akunin]

The expense and size of the Micro-4/3rds lenses, which of course have an additional tremendous benefit over SLR lenses, indicates to me that producing high quality fast lenses for any APS-C SLR will not have tremendous cost advantages.

I was wondering about the size of the camera

[ElJamoquio]

I was wondering about the size of the camera

My mistake.

The flange could be moved back about 4 millimeters, of course, and the diameter... could be almost whatever you'd like, right?

[jon404]

ElJamoquio -- well, I'll confess that my first career was in advertising, where 'faster, better, cheaper' is the kind of mantra you could hang a whole campaign on. To be fair, I don't really know what I'm talking about here -- except that if a company has a lot of products of Type A, is it good business to shift gears and launch Type B, that might cannibalize sales from your existing line?

As a consumer, the single most compelling thing I've seen about Pentax -- or any other digital camera, for that matter -- was a YouTube video where a soldier in Afghanistan showed how his Pentax DSLR could get dropped, covered with mud, blasted with a water hose -- to me, that was more impressive than all the arguments about sensors, lenses, and so on. It's easy to envision an ad, like at an NFL game in the rain or snow, where the Pentax pro is getting those end zone shots, and the Canikon guys are hiding their gear under tarps.

Anyway, we'll soon see what's cooking. Me? I'll settle for a warmed-over high-style K-02, with an optical viewfinder on top!

[ElJamoquio]

ElJamoquio -- well, I'll confess that my first career was in advertising, where 'faster, better, cheaper' is the kind of mantra you could hang a whole campaign on. To be fair, I don't really know what I'm talking about here -- except that if a company has a lot of products of Type A, is it good business to shift gears and launch Type B, that might cannibalize sales from your existing line?

Would it cannibalize sales or add customers to the brand? That's an open question, but I know the last camera I purchased (and two lenses for it) were Nikon FF. I love Pentax and love my K-5, but sometimes better IQ is better IQ.

As a consumer, the single most compelling thing I've seen about Pentax -- or any other digital camera, for that matter -- was a YouTube video where a soldier in Afghanistan showed how his Pentax DSLR could get dropped, covered with mud, blasted with a water hose -- to me, that was more impressive than all the arguments about sensors, lenses, and so on. It's easy to envision an ad, like at an NFL game in the rain or snow, where the Pentax pro is getting those end zone shots, and the Canikon guys are hiding their gear under tarps.

FYI the guy who did that is here. And I like your ad.

Anyway, we'll soon see what's cooking. Me? I'll settle for a warmed-over high-style K-02, with an optical viewfinder on top!

I was thinking we'd see a FF from Pentax in June. Now I'm thinking October...? We'll see.

Until then I'll be shooting FF when I want, and Pentax the rest of the time.

[RobA_Oz]

@RobA -- that's a good point, about better low light capability. And an important consideration. As for a viewfinder, no reason you couldn't put the one from my 645N on an APS-C, if you really want visibility. I don't know that a better viewfinder is necessarily a FF thing. As for the restored FoV... don't the old lenses still give the same FoV on an APS-C, but cropped? It may be just familiarity -- I'm still getting used that my old 50mm f/1.4 'normal' lens is now a mild telephoto on the K-01. But the more I use APS-C, the more I'll be used to the new relationships.

Some basic optics needed here, I think. The lens "sees" the same FoV, regardless of what happens behind it. However, starting with the reflex mirror, the total amount of light passing through the lens is cropped, so the image seen in the viewfinder eyepiece will be necessarily either smaller or darker (or both) than the equivalent seen through a larger format system. The eyepiece magnification governs which of those possibilities occurs. It therefore won't matter what viewfinder you put after the mirror, the same will apply, as it is the size of the mirror that governs the total amount of light available to the eye. Your 645N viewfinder is big and bright because the amount of light gathered by the larger mirror is proportionately greater than that of a 35mm SLR or an APS-C SLR.

So, the overall FoV depends on the sensor size, as well as the FL of the attached lens. This causes confusion when people start talking about "35mm equivalent FL", as we see in these Forums from time to time.

[Boris_Akunin]

My mistake.

The flange could be moved back about 4 millimeters, of course, and the diameter... could be almost whatever you'd like, right?

Could you elaborate on how you're getting to 4mm? Olympus managed to shrink the flange distance to 28.95 mm using a format (slightly) larger than APS-C with the Pen F, so what's fundamentally different about an APS-C DSLR?

[Digitalis]

he flange could be moved back about 4 millimeters, of course, and the diameter... could be almost whatever you'd like, right?

I'll repeat this again, As I already have on the Pentax K-3 speculation thread: the dimensions of the K mount has no effect on how large an image a lens can project onto the sensor, the only effect increasing the diameter of the mount would have is that it would allow pentax to make lenses faster than f/1.2 - the exit pupil of a 50mm f/0.95 lens gets pretty big with a 45.46mm flange. Also changing the flange by either shortening it or lengthening it will pose serious issues especially for legacy lens users. I do not think Pentax will change the K mount at all....I personally don't see any reason for it. And if they did: they stand to lose a considerable portion of their user base and for a small niche player like Pentax, suffering losses like that is something they cannot afford.

[bossa]

The shorter the flange distance to the sensor the harder it is to project a flat hi quality image [toward the edge of the frame]. If the sensor was curved it wouldn't be an issue but it's not.. it's flat.