Originally posted by wizofoz kadajawi, I'm perfectly happy for the port to be smaller than 1\4" in fact I'd be perfectly happy for it not to be there at all, it has almost zero interest to me, .
I take your point that the internal diameter of the socket looks to you to be too small to be 6.3mm. it may well be so. (in fact in hindsight I think you are more likely to be correct) It just seems to me to be an awful lot of precious camera real estate to be given over to a plug/socket that is so small. With the purported additional height of the K-3 isn't there room under a redesigned flap to house the hdmi, pc/av, and dc power socket with another feature that the vast majority of Pentaxians wont use?
I'm quite happy to have my friendly questions and vague speculation shot down, Im not happy to be laughed at by someone I've not seen before.
The pentax engineers are genius in spatial ergonomics. They wouldn't put a hump there for no great reason.
only the actual specs or a camera in hand will tell the truth.
I don't recall having laughed at you, if I did or it came across as such my appologies.
I would agree that there must be a reason why it was placed there, maybe there IS other stuff taking away space so they had to push out the socket like that. Maybe it is there for ergonomic reasons too. The K-5 already has a hump there, just a much smaller one. If you hold the camera so that your left thumb fits into the indention, it looks a lot like this area was designed to fit a thumb...and the stop of the area is meant to have space for your fingertip, so that you could easily reach the Fx button. But my thumb is simply not long enough to fully fill that area. The one on the K-3 however looks to be just right, the only thing that surprises me is that the Fx button hasn't moved, and is thus harder to reach. Then again, the ideal spot is taken by the AF mode button. I could also imagine that they had to push it out like that because this area is already full occupied in the K-5, and to add a headphone jack they needed to extend the camera. Also, the port needs to be weather sealed, which means it will take up a bigger area so that the seal has enough space. And finally: I'm not that bothered by them using up all this space at that point, cause it wouldn't make any difference in a camera bag if there is something or not.
Btw., I'd rather have the headphone port alone exposed than combining it with all the other stuff. HDMI, USB, DC etc. is meant to be used when stationary, at home etc. The headphone jack is meant to be used when on the go, when shooting. Having a big flap flapping around, exposing all those ports doesn't sound like a very good idea to me. On the other hand Pentax could offer a weather sealed headphone/earphone for the K-3, so you can shoot in the rain with an earphone plugged in.