[kadajawi]

I don't why some people here speak in such absolutes, as though they know they are correct.

There are plenty of companies that sell electronics-related products for lower prices with lesser features. It's pretty absurd to pretend that it doesn't happen.

In the camera world, I would look at a company like Blackmagic Design, and their cinema cameras. The original idea was to put a sensor in a box, give it a minimum ability to process information, and sell it at the lowest cost on the market. Their first few cameras have been EXTREMELY successful. Their more recent Ursa have not captured the market's attention in the same way.

Obviously both Leica and Hasselblad have been selling stripped down systems for years. There's no need to pretend the price needs to be high for the Leica M cameras. It's not because they don't have autofocus.

If you are all convinced that it's possible for a company that's never made a cinema camera to suddenly release one that records uncompressed RAW at a lower cost than any other camera on the market, but it's not possible for a camera company that's been around for more than half a century to release a full frame camera with stripped down features, and not charge an arm and a leg for it, then I don't think there's anything I can say that will convince you otherwise.

And the reason I'd like it to be shaped like a K1000 or ZX-5N is because I happen to enjoy the ergonomic experience of using those cameras more than the ergonomic experience of using my dslrs. Is that really so hard to comprehend?

It depends on what features you want to remove. Say you have a computer, and you want to strip away the function of a calculator. Sure, you can just ship it without a calculator application, but you won't be saving any money.


If you leave away the display, fine, that would save money. AF, agreed, could save too. No SR. But as soon as you have something for metering you basically have all the P, Tv, Av and whatever modes. Not having them... no difference. The chips that are used, that have to be used, are able to do such trivial things.


So yeah, I'd say it depends on what you want to remove. But if you remove too much you won't have many customers left, which then again drives up the price.


Btw., Samsung recently released the NX500, a very, very advanced camera, for a low price.

[rawr]

A bare-bones Pentax equivalent of the Nikon Df might be OK, I guess. They might sell two or three hundred of them worldwide to collectors.

[clackers]

Not sure if you are talking about the same thing...

Oh, this is a hypothetical caveman camera?

No thanks, but carry on! :-)

[Blue]

I don't remember voting for you to speak on our behalf, Blue.

I think both your claims unlikely.

Autofocus and P-TTL are modern demands of modern cameras.

People value their performance so much there may be complaints if the K-2 simply reuses the K-3 components - which may well be the case. :-)

I was referring to the K2 film camera (note the missing hyphen). Hence a manual focus optimized body for legacy manual focus glass as well as some newer glass such as Zeiss and Voightlander. P-ttl flash only is no good in many cases but ttl will work.

Oh, this is a hypothetical caveman camera?

No thanks, but carry on! :-)

Not thinking about cavemen, but A 50/1.2, K28/2, A* 200 etc. or a new Zeiss 100/2 Makro.

[Mike.P®]

I felt the same way about the image quality of the K-3 vs. K-5IIS. The K-5IIS just seemed to handle noise better.

That's why I sold my K-3 and bought a new K-5IIs (after owning the K-5II).
The DR is better as well, it just pulls more detail out of the shadows if you need to ... I did enjoy a lot of things about the K-3 though and can even see me buying another later in the year (unless the K-3II is released with much better AF/Tracking).

[clackers]

Not thinking about cavemen, but A 50/1.2, K28/2, A* 200 etc. or a new Zeiss 100/2 Makro.

This new camera will probably have a bigger, brighter viewfinder, IBIS and focus peaking for those lenses, Blue.

Not sure what else you'd want.

I had a split-prism focussing screen put into my K-30 to replace the stock one - you can always do that.

[thibs]

Well, Thibs, the problem with requesting such a product can be seen in fuent104's post: "without the associated cost". On the contrary, a feature stripped - thus niche - camera will be more expensive.
How much for a D610? How much for a Df? And they only stripped the video...

Yes and no, it depends. To take the example of the Nikon Df, removing Video is plain stupid. But put in an option from the screen is not more difficult and free, indeed.
It is more (what I'm thinking about) a question of design and simplicity of use, but not at any cost, I totally agree. The Df is a complete fail 'cos they tried to old aesthetic but by keeping a lot of modern thing which they had to put somewhere and... this thing became an ugly clutered object (not that it does not perform...).

XT1 is in the good way but quality is sub par. Tried to turn the speed dial of an XT1? A joke.

[Cynog Ap Brychan]

The Df is a complete fail

Not a complete fail - I'm rather fond of mine and, unlike you, I think it's beautiful.

[Rondec]

Why do folks care if there is stuff on their camera that they won't use? If you don't like auto focus, turn it to manual focus and then break the switch so you can't turn it back. If you don't like video, then don't use it.

Most of this stuff is software and it's sunk cost. It isn't like they take a new camera and then create the firmware from the ground up. They use the K3 as the beginning point and then decide what things to change. But it is clear to me that leaving off features that modern camera users expect shrinks their market without bringing enough new users to make up for it.

[Ash]

A tilt/swivel rear LCD however may not be used by some users, but not a feature you can switch off like others.

[Paul Ewins]

I seriously doubt that any camera company will introduce a camera that is aimed at owners of old lenses or other brand lenses. Lenses are where the profit is, just like razors and razor blades. However, could Ricoh introduce a camera with an older "classic" style UI, that's a different question. How much more would it cost to rearrange the exterior placement of buttons and dials while retaining the same chassis to get two different versions of the same camera. A K2 style lens mount ring, but controlling aperture not ISO, an MZ5 style shutter speed dial with fixed speeds and "Auto" and maybe ISO and auto mode in a dial where the rewind crank used to sit. But will enough people pay more for the same basic camera (and I am assuming that both cameras have the same features, just a different UI)

[Rondec]

A tilt/swivel rear LCD however may not be used by some users, but not a feature you can switch off like others.

Well, a little super glue would probably fix it so it couldn't be used.

But, how many of the 645Z users have truly been bothered by its screen? And I would think they're an even more conservative lot than the average Pentaxian.

[thibs]

Not a complete fail - I'm rather fond of mine and, unlike you, I think it's beautiful.

Got it. YMMV

But the look is only a thing (I don't like it much but that's it) but ergonomy. There, the Df is, IMO, a complete fail but then, to me, Most Nikon cam are fails so that's probably the part where my subjectivity yells 'I'm here'.

If one wants to make a retro cam, do it well. Or don't.
It is NOT about features I don' want (I just can not using them, indeed), it is about ergonomy.

[kadajawi]

I thought about this... what do you stripped feature set guys think about the K-S1? Stripped feature set, flat-ish grip. Pentax also gains experience low production run cameras... if anything, I think a camera as you ask for will be a K-S camera.

Ergonomics... I think that can be done, yes. But to get truly retro you would have to drop the mirror. Otherwise it will be thicker. I could imagine a mirrorless camera with K mount, and the lens mount sticks out due to the flange distance, otherwise the camera is flatter. Where the lens mount is they can fit an e-dial (with steps) to control the aperture. And perhaps an e-ink display around that to be able to have different aperture values.

In order to drop the arrow keys they can go for a touchscreen so you can do settings or access features like video (for that one moment you may want it).

Such a camera wouldn't be cheap though... and it would be mostly around how you use it, about ergonomics rather than dropping features. It would simply be more aimed at a manual way of using it. Say the aperture ring has an A setting, the exposure dial has an A setting, the ISO dial (perhaps by pushing down the exposure dial you can change it) also has an A setting. If all is A, you have P mode. etc.

[jlstrawman]

They tell us that some people are more into measurbation than taking pictures.

+1. Happens a lot around here.