[boriscleto]

Most of the Pentax is doomed hits come from this forum



add -dpreview and it's down to 323

But it's PentaxIsDooomed™.

[lukulele]

Sounds like you have cropped eyeballs™
Can't be a pro then™
Condolences™
I'd suggest, in honor of John and Mono, that these superb retorts be used when necessary as flame retardant for the usual suspects.

[ElJamoquio]

I have to think that we are near hitting the max in the megapixel race. I know 50 megapixel full frame sensors are bound to come soon, but the question is why? Back in the day, people were pretty happy with 12 megapixel full frame sensors from Nikon. I know a couple of pros who still shoot with those. They can't print quite as big, perhaps, but for studio/portrait photography it shouldn't be a big deal not to have 36 megapixels. I don't need 24 megapixels for the most part -- 16 is enough for me.

Memory is cheap. On a per-picture basis, memory is cheaper than it's ever been. Sure, megapixels have gone up 3-4 times in the past 6-12 years. In the same time card costs have gone down what, 10-100 (or 1000?) times. Hard drives have gone down 10 times or something.

I'd take 50 MP in an instant, and be able to crop that much further in 'perfect light' shots.

[bobdobbs]

Software? There's a long way yet to go.

I have it on good authority humans consciously utilize 5% of our visual capacity*, having through evolution determined post processing the other 95% is not useful for efficient survival.

* I've lost 98% of my visual acuity - 100% in peripheral portions of my Field of View - and I am still fully functional (with slight behavior modifications).

Our Eyeballs are DOOOMED!

[Rondec]

Memory is cheap. On a per-picture basis, memory is cheaper than it's ever been. Sure, megapixels have gone up 3-4 times in the past 6-12 years. In the same time card costs have gone down what, 10-100 (or 1000?) times. Hard drives have gone down 10 times or something.

I'd take 50 MP in an instant, and be able to crop that much further in 'perfect light' shots.

You say that, but surely at some point you reach diminishing returns. There is some improvement in resolution between K3 and K5, but it isn't night and day. Surely at some point you just increase the amount of noise recorded without increasing real image data that you get. I don't know what that point is. 50 megapixel for APS-C? 100 megapixel for full frame? Who knows, but I feel like as you increase pixel density, it gets harder and harder to truly take advantage of those tiny pixels.

[Winder]

You say that, but surely at some point you reach diminishing returns. There is some improvement in resolution between K3 and K5, but it isn't night and day. Surely at some point you just increase the amount of noise recorded without increasing real image data that you get. I don't know what that point is. 50 megapixel for APS-C? 100 megapixel for full frame? Who knows, but I feel like as you increase pixel density, it gets harder and harder to truly take advantage of those tiny pixels.

The S/N at ISO 800 is 32.2dB for the K-5IIs and 32.0dB for the K-3. The signal to noise curve is practically identical for print work. So the exact same amount of noise will be in each image. The K-3 will look better simply because each "grain" of noise is going to be smaller have give a finer grain like appearance to the noise in the K-3 print. Perceived noise is lower in the K-3 print. Where the K-3 does struggle is with color reproduction at higher ISO. Both the K-3 and K-5 start to have trouble at ISO 800, especially with skin tones. The D610 has almost 1 stop advantage when it comes to color by ISO 1600 and the difference only gets bigger as ISO goes up.

[Rondec]

The S/N at ISO 800 is 32.2dB for the K-5IIs and 32.0dB for the K-3. The signal to noise curve is practically identical for print work. So the exact same amount of noise will be in each image. The K-3 will look better simply because each "grain" of noise is going to be smaller have give a finer grain like appearance to the noise in the K-3 print. Perceived noise is lower in the K-3 print. Where the K-3 does struggle is with color reproduction at higher ISO. Both the K-3 and K-5 start to have trouble at ISO 800, especially with skin tones. The D610 has almost 1 stop advantage when it comes to color by ISO 1600 and the difference only gets bigger as ISO goes up.

Sure. I agree. Dynamic range is an issue as well. Your photon wells or, whatever you call them, fill up quicker on the K3 than K5. I can definitely milk a little more shadow detail out of the K5 at iso 80 than the K3 at iso 100. Make the pixels smaller and I imagine it will get harder to hold on to dynamic range, but I am not a technical guy, so I have no idea what magic might truly be possible. The K5 is already pretty magical.

[VoiceOfReason]

But it's PentaxIsDooomed™.

I'll keep saying that so I can get Pentax things for cheap. Sigma 100-300 f/4 for 400 dollars? Pentax 60-250 f/4 for 350? K3 for 400? 250-600 f/5.6 for 800? Yes please!!!! Ohh, Pentax is Doooooooomed.

[normhead]

Well, I like the look of XT1, much better than some other designs, like K-S1. Old school probably.
Instead of Leica club I had a feeling of joining Pentax Limited Lens Club, but with much larger apertures...
Regarding technology - I would say, that MILC generally offer very interesting features, like direct 100%crop view of focused detail. If you have it you love it. Or manual focus support, either digital loupe or split screen. It's quite comfortable to shoot with FA77 e.g. There are some features missing, like strong HDR bracketing - can live with that.



There are many people selling their 5DmkIII or D800x and moving to fuji. I really don´t care about sensor, fudging ISO results etc. Not only results are good but also the way how you reach them is simply more joy. K3 is a nice camera, but I was used to control almost every image on the LCD, if it is sharp and well exposed. I do it quite rarely with XT1 because AF is very reliable.

I understand that so many Pentax fans would like to use their FA ltd. on Pentax full frame camera.
The questions are:
1) Should that be DSLR ?
2) Should that be 24x36mm or something more?
3) Does Pentax has enough resources to keep top position in APSC, FF and MF ?

With all due respect... the question isn't how many Fuji users are going to switch to Pentax, they'd have to out sell Pentax for 5 years to have an equivalent user base, and those who learned on a Fuji, are learning a different way of doing things, are more likely to be comfortable on a Fuji. Your mistake is not realizing that most who learn on a Pantax are used to the Pentax way of doing things, and many of them find the whole Fuji thing un-interesting. There are people selling their 5DmkIII or D800x systems and moving to Fuji. There are people selling their Fuji's and moving to Pentax, and to 5DmkIII or D800x's. The camera market and the people in it are very dynamic. You're post seems pretty keen on presenting facts you think bolster your case, while ignoring facts that do not, and on the whole, your facts are irrelevant in that they are extreme oversimplifications of a complex situation. All cameras are very good these days. For many people Fuji is good enough and they like what it has to offer. But it's really obvious that the majority of camera users are not of that mind set. I wouldn't be assuming that that's true, just because they don't know about Fuji. It's more likely, Fuji's approach isn't for everyone, and almost certainly not for the majority.

[NicoleC]

Eyes only have acuity in one small spot - the rest is pretty blurred. You wouldn't want a camera lens like that.

That's why I mentioned the software. Our brains patch it all together into an amazing high resolution dimensional picture. Sadly, we're a little shaky on the memory part.


All assuming your hardware still works. My arms are still long enough not to need reading glasses.

[aleonx3]

Here's a complaint you forgot to level against Fuji, and it's been going on since the S1 Pro days. They inflate their ISO values, then claim they have cleaner high ISO images.

I remember that very well; I still have the bridge camera S20pro with super CCD.... don't think that I would be interested in their products again.

[monochrome]

That's why I mentioned the software. Our brains patch it all together into an amazing high resolution dimensional picture. Sadly, we're a little shaky on the memory part.

My wife is convinced my software is fatally flawed. She swears it patches things together into images that never existed in real life. She comments tellingly on the shared root between image and imagine.

That's why I started photography again - no pix no proof, right? - but . . . . . Photoshop!!

[Jan67]

With all due respect... the question isn't how many Fuji users are going to switch to Pentax, they'd have to out sell Pentax for 5 years to have an equivalent user base, and those who learned on a Fuji, are learning a different way of doing things, are more likely to be comfortable on a Fuji. Your mistake is not realizing that most who learn on a Pantax are used to the Pentax way of doing things, and many of them find the whole Fuji thing un-interesting. There are people selling their 5DmkIII or D800x systems and moving to Fuji. There are people selling their Fuji's and moving to Pentax, and to 5DmkIII or D800x's. The camera market and the people in it are very dynamic. You're post seems pretty keen on presenting facts you think bolster your case, while ignoring facts that do not, and on the whole, your facts are irrelevant in that they are extreme oversimplifications of a complex situation. All cameras are very good these days. For many people Fuji is good enough and they like what it has to offer. But it's really obvious that the majority of camera users are not of that mind set. I wouldn't be assuming that that's true, just because they don't know about Fuji. It's more likely, Fuji's approach isn't for everyone, and almost certainly not for the majority.

I do not want to present some general truth. I liked my K3 and made many pictures, with which I was 100% satisfied. XT1 was for me simply love at first sight.

I wanted to point out that MILC (not only fuji XT1 but also sony A7 and olympus EM1) reached certain breakpoint. The fact, that some people sell their top FF equipment and move to APSC was a big surprise for me. It is completely different case to scenario, when FF owner buys light APSC MILC as a walk around camera. I see that as a big change, which will further continue.

I still wish Pentax success. I just think that MF MILC is something what would attract attention and could be better business for Pentax than FF.

[bossa]

I'm rather interested to see sensor tests of the Samsung NX1 as I'm hoping that the 28MP backside lit sensor tech offers a quantum leap in the noise dept. Just imagine a FF sensor made out of that... ..63MP! The lenses look pretty nice too.

[RonHendriks1966]

I'm rather interested to see sensor tests of the Samsung NX1 as I'm hoping that the 28MP backside lit sensor tech offers a quantum leap in the noise dept. Just imagine a FF sensor made out of that... ..63MP! The lenses look pretty nice too.

I do wonder how much better this can get. Remember the backlit has less influence when pixels grow larger. No idea why anyone wants 63 megapixels, unless your images are up for large streetadvertising. I mean all of them.