[Aristophanes]

Apparently Nikon and Canon didn't get that memo..

But you never see them on sub-pro cameras.

They do not drive sales.

---------- Post added 08-20-14 at 01:49 PM ----------

I want my next Pentax to have a data plan, Snapseed, Instagram, and Hootsuite. I want to move forward, not back.

That's not forward.

I want my next Pentax to be able take a photo and, using a built-in projector, aim the image at the full moon for all the nighttime world to see.

[ElJamoquio]

Wifi is definitely of use. Think of sports photographers at stadiums, for instance. Insta-post.

[boriscleto]

But you never see them on sub-pro cameras.

They do not drive sales.

---------- Post added 08-20-14 at 01:49 PM ----------



That's not forward.

I want my next Pentax to be able take a photo and, using a built-in projector, aim the image at the full moon for all the nighttime world to see.

Nikon did it. But I don't think a 10 lumens projector could quite reach the moon.

http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-S1000pj-Projector-Wide-Angle-Vibration/dp/B002KANWQ2

[kadajawi]

You do understand that this would require not only network card & drivers on camera but also an operating system & applications to interact with your social network of choice on camera too. So we are talking about, most probably, fully blown Android OS. Maybe that's fine for P&S and Q but I really really want none of that on my DSLR.


I'll copy my photos using a card reader and not battery sucking dog slow WiFi thank you very much. Also, I will process my RAWs before I consider uploading them wherever.
Finally, I don't want general purpose OS on my specialized device to waste battery, reduce performance and increase possibility of freezing and bricking.


Phones, while evolving from specialized device to pocketable computer, IMHO lost a lot of features a phone had in early '00s, namely: battery life, call quality, speed of operation and stability. I'd rather have a stupid phone and a tablet than a smartphone (and it is cheaper too). Same goes for camera and X, for whatever X is.

Erm. My phone is pretty damn fast. Everything happens instant. It wasn't that way with my older feature phones. Not to mention my K-5. They aren't even in the same league. Despite the K-5 having a much, much simpler interface it is much more sluggish than my phone. Which is doing dozens of things in the background. The K-5 however can't multitask. I can't even change a setting while the camera is still saving photos! I shouldn't have to wait.

Basically I could see 2 processors working in the camera. The old processor, taking care of acquiring photos from the sensor and post processing it, and a smartphone CPU doing things like the UI, saving the photos, doing additional processing and perhaps encoding videos. Even an entry level smartphone CPU should speed things up.

[Uluru]

Erm. My phone is pretty damn fast. Everything happens instant. It wasn't that way with my older feature phones. Not to mention my K-5. They aren't even in the same league. Despite the K-5 having a much, much simpler interface it is much more sluggish than my phone. Which is doing dozens of things in the background. The K-5 however can't multitask. I can't even change a setting while the camera is still saving photos! I shouldn't have to wait.

Basically I could see 2 processors working in the camera. The old processor, taking care of acquiring photos from the sensor and post processing it, and a smartphone CPU doing things like the UI, saving the photos, doing additional processing and perhaps encoding videos. Even an entry level smartphone CPU should speed things up.

Cameras are literally primitive compared to smartphones. And that is why smartphone is in some respect a superior tool.
Today's smartphones have a desktop-class speed processors of several years ago, multitasking, few cores, GPU, ALU, etc. and cameras are still nowhere close to that.

[Kunzite]

And an OS to negate all those advantages

[kadajawi]

And an OS to negate all those advantages

a) Actually, no. I have a Xiaomi Mi3, which has last years flagship hardware. Snapdragon 801 quadcore CPU with 2.3 GHz, FullHD screen with 5", 2 GB RAM, and a 13 MP Sony camera that is backlit, plus the ability to save raw photos (and they are, there is absolutely no noise reduction applied). It is _very_ snappy. No noticeable wait between touching the screen and something happening. Despite having quite a few background tasks. Yes, I've had older Android phones with lesser hardware, and they struggled. But Android has become more efficient (as long as there is enough RAM... it really needs RAM) over time. Also keep in mind that an Android based DSLR would not have to do everything on the smartphone CPU. You could use a stripped down Android version. It could even look and feel like what we are used to, if they wanted to.


b) I certainly don't want a full Android on my phone. I've tried the Samsung Galaxy cameras, and that's a bad idea. I don't want to have to launch a camera app just to take a photo with my camera. I'm not arguing for that. It should be 100% a Pentax camera, and behave like one. For the most part you shouldn't even be able to tell the difference, and it should never ever get in the way of taking a photo. But it can have the added performance of a properly fast CPU. The ability navigate the photos fast and smoothly using a touchscreen (if we want to), with the screen cover being made from Gorilla Glass (cracked screens are far less of an issue on a camera, IMHO, but scratches are, and Gorilla Glass would pretty much stop that). The ability to extend the functionality through apps (, which are specially written for Pentax DSLRs?). There are things like no focus peaking during video recording, and I wouldn't be surprised that's because of the processing speed. Processing speed isn't an issue anymore in such a camera. And whatever I've mentioned in the previous post.


Certain controls could be done on the touchscreen in order to allow for a larger, higher resolution screen (the screen on my phone is ridiculously sharp, my camera should be like that too). If an OLED screen is used, most parts of the screen could be off, except for say the needed controls that are being put on the screen. The screen brightness could adjust to the ambient brightness, I don't understand why my camera doesn't do that already. I don't want to be blinded at night, and unable to see something during the day. The screen/touchscreen should turn off once my face gets too close to the camera/reaches the viewfinder (some other brands do that). Or perhaps dim down, while locking controls.


A lot of money has been poured into the development of insanely fast yet power saving processors, in an OS that is pretty good, good and very high resolution screens, sensors, etc. Why not make use of that? Something like a Mediatek MTK8392T for example (or it's counterpart aimed at phones instead of tablets) could be perfectly adequate yet really affordable.


Oh, and wouldn't it be nice if our cameras could be powered/charged via USB? USB chargers are _everywhere_, and there are external battery packs too that pack quite some punch. I could take photos, and when the battery starts to get flat I simply plug in the battery pack that I use for charging my phone on the go, and charge my camera (while I am using it). I don't see a reason why this couldn't or shouldn't be done, apart from a bit of charging electronics in the camera.


Btw., to show how powerful these CPUs (SoCs, really, like what Pentax uses) are these days:
Qualcomm Snapdragon 805. 2.7 GHz quadcore. A camera signal processor that can handle 2 cameras at the same time, with up to 55 MP, GPS/Glonass (the one in my phone is ridiculously fast in getting a fix, and even works indoors sometimes), WiFi (the fastest there is), BT, USB 3, 4K of course. The 808, coming early next year will add support for h265, the successor of h264, and much more efficient at encoding videos, while this year there's the 810 that is even faster. Who knows if it wouldn't make more sense to switch to one of these processors, from the slow antiquated Milbeaut? Everything it needs should be there already...


http://www.cnet.com/news/6-cool-things-that-your-next-snapdragon-805-phone-or-tablet-could-do/

This new carryover from dSLRs takes a series of five pictures and lets you choose with a tap on the screen which "zone" you call into focus. An extra bonus in the demo was seeing how the particular image maps into the five zones -- each photo produces its own depth map.

They also demonstrated a feature where you could color key photos... just that it takes into account depth. So you can tell it to take away the saturation of the background, while the people standing in the foreground are in color. Now I guess Pentax' focus motors aren't fast enough for that, but still.

---

Last edited by kadajawi; 08-25-2014 at 03:28 AM.

[Kunzite]

That's my point: a quad-core 2.3 GHz processor with 2GB RAM and a 3050mAh battery to do... nothing much, really.
I'm for a more targeted solution: if we want better performance, there's no point in changing everything. A faster Milbeaut will do (and it's based on ARM, though not some quad or octa-core Krait)
And with the K-3, we have it! Indeed, that camera is so much faster than the K-5 series...

[thibs]

Yeah, let's charge our cameras every evening. I'd fancy that.

[kadajawi]

That's my point: a quad-core 2.3 GHz processor with 2GB RAM and a 3050mAh battery to do... nothing much, really.
I'm for a more targeted solution: if we want better performance, there's no point in changing everything. A faster Milbeaut will do (and it's based on ARM, though not some quad or octa-core Krait)
And with the K-3, we have it! Indeed, that camera is so much faster than the K-5 series...

That Milbeaut is a stinker. Yes, the K-3 is faster. Because it has nothing to do. There is so much more that can be done with photos and videos to improve quality or add functionality, and we can't get that because of Milbeaut. Good video quality (little artefacts) and small files? CPU too slow. Actually the K-3 encoder delivers mid sized files of not so good quality. Better video thanks to pixel binning? Not going to happen, the CPU is too slow. Focus peaking? Nope. Many other thing too probably. Maybe focus stacking and high quality panoramas in camera (keep in mind that we have or can get an accelerometer in the camera, which might be used to know the position of the camera and how it moved from the last shot, so that the camera can stitch based on that. Not possible after the fact). Why not do Lightroom like denoising in camera? Lightroom is much, much better than what is used in camera, perhaps because a computer has much more processing power?

I'm wondering, can you go into the menu while the camera is still saving files, e.g. after a burst? Forgot to try that when I had the chance to.

If you hardly use the CPU, it will hardly consume power and the battery will last forever. It does for me, I have turned off the screen and rarely use it. Spare batteries still exist, and what's wrong with charging every day? At least that way we won't forget to charge it, because we so rarely have to :P

Ps: I wish Pentax had kept the K-5 processor. At least the K-3 would be able to take decent quality videos. I really don't like the new Milbeaut.


Btw., it seems like some of the processors are based on smartphone SoCs. Canon's DIGIC is based on the TI OMAP, which was a quite popular line of smartphone processors, and Samsung's DRIMe is based on their Exynos smartphone processor that used to power the iPhone for example.

[Kunzite]

The new Milbeaut/PRIME III is faster than the one used in the K-5.

[bibz]

I also don't want the cost/heat associated with the battery needed to run hungry 8core SoC's that will still sit idle and wasteful 90% of the time. Theres a lot more going on in the data path of a big chip setup then the tiny ones. I don't think a company like Pentax that doesn't make its own silicon is in a position to really cram all the crap needed to make a Galaxy Phone. They already have the fastest? use apsc dslr going anyways.

[johnmflores]

Smartphone cameras are getting better and better every year. Camera companies that don't make their cameras smarter and connected will go the way of the fax machine and video cassette recorder.

[Clavius]

Cameras are to expensive as it is now. (Compared to phones.) No need to beef them up with fancy electronics so they become more expensive (and many times more susceptible to becoming outdated) and lose even more ground to smartphones.

Cameras are literally primitive compared to smartphones.

That's because a camera doesn't have to do all the same stuff that a smartphone has to do. It has to capture image data in the form of pictures or movies, and do that very well and stable. If needed, it has to be able to conveniently pass along that image date to a device with more processing power to do it's own thing with it. Be it a desktop, pc, mac, phone, tablet or whatever tool of choice. Now in that communication there are a lot of gains to be made.

And that is why smartphone is in some respect a superior tool.
Today's smartphones have a desktop-class speed processors of several years ago, multitasking, few cores, GPU, ALU, etc. and cameras are still nowhere close to that.

Our laptops however, have processing power of the present. I'm not going to use my 4 core smartphone to develop my 1025 DNG's of my holiday when I can use my laptop with 8 cores and double GFX cards and nice large IPS screen. Takes already long enough with that! I'm looking to upgrade again, but developement has slowed down. Curse the ones responsible that!

My smartphone camera also has the IQ and resolution that cameras had 5 years ago... We're here still using dedicated cameras though, because we want the quality of the present. Why would we then suddenly shift back a gear or two and want to process them in the cameras themselves or on smartphones with processors of several years ago? Not very consistent.

[ramseybuckeye]

I was in an Outdoor Gear store this weekend and the thought crossed my mind that Pentax ought to get into these places. They sell sport optics and tree cameras, and all sorts of foul weather gear. Why not weatherized cameras? They just need to make a camouflaged K-50 and some camouflaged lenses, and get onto the shelves at Bass Pro, Cabelela's, Gander Mountain, or REI. They may not sell any, but why not try something different, at last they would be in some store.