[normhead]

I am reminded of something from the book wide body, talking about Boeing making different parts for different grades of aircraft, but basically the same part with a few modifications. You tell the computers you're making a different part, and it makes it. No line change down time or set up required. Whatever cameras Pentax is making, it's likely they can be made on multiple production lines. SO it's not really about what a line is set up for, it's about line capacity, and that will become an issue only if Pentax radically increases market share.

[RonHendriks1966]

There are several things I don't know:

(1) how many production lines does Pentax have that can build DSLR cameras?

(2) how intensively are these lines working?

(3) how long does it take to switch a line from one product to another

A year ago I thought the Pentax plan was to sell three lines of APS-C cameras, and they were in the middle of switching from
K-500 : K-50 : K-3
to
K-S1 : K-S2 : K-3ii
but even today places like B&H are still selling everything on that list except the K-500. Are they selling the K-50 and K-3 out of inventory? Even if some of the products are being sold out of inventory, having products like that on the market has to limit what they can introduce, because prices of products at one level have to limit prices of products at higher level. It seems to me that they need to "rationalize" their product line before they add even more products to it.

In the past they made two models at the same time. I think the K-S1 was as the K-01 in the past build in a batch. Not having a permanent production line. No idea for sure, but my guess is that K-50 is not in production, but sold from inventory. Not a problem, since inventory management is part of the sales channels.

To many models is not good for stores to put on shelfs with the low sales numbers for Pentax. I don't know if you can still make money on the low cost models since competition with Nikon and Canon in this segment is harsh. People buying that way most only buy a single camera with lens package and don't build on a system.

Hoya in the past reported about having production on 100 % capacity, but Ricoh never reported about that.

[biz-engineer]

Not really you just need to give counting capability to sensor. When the photosite is full it can simply discharge and increase a counter to the number of time it discharged.

Yeah that exists for more than 20 years, but since the integration time increases, the equivalent ISO gets lower, at ISO12 vs ISO100, you get less then 3 stops additional DR, and need a tripod all the time, great.

[Nicolas06]

Yeah that exists for more than 20 years, but since the integration time increases, the equivalent ISO gets lower, at ISO12 vs ISO100, you get less then 3 stops additional DR, and need a tripod all the time, great.

Don't be silly man

In the middle of the day
DA15 f/8, 1/250, iso 100... Same exposure could have been f/5.6 1/125 iso 12



A cloudy day:
DA35 f/5, 1/1600, iso 100. Same expose could have DA35 f/5 1/200s iso 12



At sunset:
DA15 1/80s, f/14, iso 200... Could have been f/5 1/40s iso 12.


At sunrise, cloudy:
DA35 1/80s f/8, iso 200... Could have been 1/40s f/4 iso 25



So yeah when I wake up early in october to visit the alhambra and to take a shoot arround sunrise on a cloudy day with the sun still behind the mountain (was out on horizon) it would have been better to limit myself to iso25 or iso50.

I'am so sorry you'll not get 17 or 18EV of dynamic range for that football picture but honestly iso 12 is much more usable than you pretend it. Around 50% of the time when your have the light of the day. Last time I recalled you spent your time advocating for FF speaking basically to get 1.1EV. Stay consistant man. If 1.1 EV is important, surely 3EV is even more important.

Sometime I wonder if you really care more of actually taking picture or if you just care of tech specs.

---

Last edited by Nicolas06; 11-14-2015 at 01:52 PM.

[biz-engineer]

So yeah when I wake up early in october to visit the alhambra and to take a shoot arround sunrise on a cloudy day with the sun still behind the mountain (was out on horizon) it would have been better to limit myself to iso25 or iso50. I'am so sorry you'll not get 17 or 18EV of dynamic range for that football picture but honestly iso 12 is much more usable than you pretend it. Around 50% of the time when your have the light of the day. Last time I recalled you spent your time advocating for FF speaking basically to get 1.1EV. Stay consistant man. If 1.1 EV is important, surely 3EV is even more important. Sometime I wonder if you really care more of actually taking picture or if you just care of tech specs.

:-) I'm laughing from your reaction, you seem to take it very seriously (I wouldn't say silly of someone I don't know, but perhaps that's only me). ISO12 is generally not very practical, given the variety of usual light conditions (see f16 rule). As for the photos you posted, you don't need more DR, you need to switch on the shadow compensation or do a better post processing to pull the shadows correctly without touching too much your highlights. Yes, I do photographs, I'm not sure if they are visible here from my profile, I fairly satisfied with what I do , and of course I'm looking to improve.

[Nicolas06]

:-) I'm laughing from your reaction, you seem to take it very seriously (I wouldn't say silly of someone I don't know, but perhaps that's only me). ISO12 is generally not very practical, given the variety of usual light conditions (see f16 rule). As for the photos you posted, you don't need more DR, you need to switch on the shadow compensation or do a better post processing to pull the shadows correctly without touching too much your highlights. Yes, I do photographs, I'm not sure if they are visible here from my profile, I fairly satisfied with what I do , and of course I'm looking to improve.

I'am sorry if you don't appreciate I call you silly but you actually didn't try to be serious or give an actual valid argument. You just used rhetorics, exagerating your claim, maybe hoping it would get more weight without ever trying to test if it was true from your photographic knowledge. Hey you even speak of the f/16 rule that basically show it would work in many situations.

In the end you admit you were not really serious when I show you that it works handled in practice.

I'am ok with it. You had a good laugh and if somebody is reading here he got the essential that low iso setting are quite usable handled too !

[reh321]

Yeah that exists for more than 20 years, but since the integration time increases, the equivalent ISO gets lower, at ISO12 vs ISO100, you get less then 3 stops additional DR, and need a tripod all the time, great.

I'm not sure why we'd need a tripod. Back in the day of film, I routinely used Kodachrome 25 hand-held, and my Super Program system provided absolutely no Image Stabilization. Yes, most seem to require more sharpness than what satisfied us back then, but ISO 12 is just one-stop slower than 25, and IBIS is said to allow us to go several stops lower, so ISO 12 seems totally reasonable to me. In fact, I would have used ISO 25 for the pictures I took today if my system would provide it.

---

Last edited by reh321; 11-22-2015 at 04:29 PM.

[falconeye]

I dislike putting a single score on anything, be it lens or sensor. Better, in my opinion, to publish the break down -- color depth, dynamic range, and sport iso scores

Yes, in the case of DxO.

However, the fundamental scores which should be published are quantum efficiency, read noise before ADC, read noise after ADC, full well capacity, #pixels, tristimulus color matrix. The ideal values here are: 100%, 0, 0, ∞, ∞, human eye color sensitivity matrix.

Fortunately, sensorgen.info (*) computes many of these parameters from DxO scores.
___
(*) Note: sensorgen.info currently includes some erraneous sets of data.

---------- Post added 15th Nov 2015 at 02:06 ----------

You see to value high iso performance. It is important for some people, not much to other like studio shooters or landscape shooters.

Absolutely not.

But averaging a score from two scales, one being finite, one being infinite (open), is methodologically flawed.

This is a fact and has nothing to do with what I value more or less. Actually, you have no idea what I value most in a sensor.

[rawr]

Actually, you have no idea what I value most in a sensor.

If it is not too much trouble to describe, what is the #1 sensor attribute you value most?

[falconeye]

If it is not too much trouble to describe, what is the #1 sensor attribute you value most?

That it can take a photo?

Otherwise, lack of banding, lack of or equal glow, and lack of (magenta) color shift if shadows are lifted.

[rawr]

lack of (magenta) color shift if shadows are lifted

This has my vote too. I hate that magenta colour shift so much. Not just in the shadows, but when ISO is allowed to go very high.

[Class A]

I hate that magenta colour shift so much.

Do you use ACR (Lightroom or Photoshop)?

There is a Green/Magenta slider in the camera calibration tab that can be used to address this issue.

[sTi]

That it can take a photo?

Otherwise, lack of banding, lack of or equal glow, and lack of (magenta) color shift if shadows are lifted.

What's the technical reason for this magenta shift? Is it really a sensor-specific problem or could it also be a software Raw processing or camera color profile issue?

[falconeye]

There is a Green/Magenta slider in the camera calibration tab that can be used to address this issue.

One method to address it is to tune camera calibration indeed. If that was the cause.
In many cases, it doesn't seem to work though.
An application of split toning with carefully chosen parameters seems to be the best cure then.
I tend to believe that the black clipping levels are part of the problem. But I am not sure.

What's the technical reason for this magenta shift? Is it really a sensor-specific problem or could it also be a software Raw processing or camera color profile issue?

It must be a combination of reasons. The magenta shift in Nikon D4s JPGs at very high iso is much reduced vs. D4. Therefore, I assume it can be taken care of by proper processing.
However, many believe the root cause to be amplifier glow. At least, amp glow always appears in magenta color indeed.

E.g., the D800 sensor has minor amp glow in the bottom third of it.

Personally, I believe it is a bug in color processing in all cameras / raw converters where the hidden assumption is being made that all signal is from photons. Where in fact, some signal is from averaged noise. Dark frame subtraction typically helps here, without addressing the real issue.

[Class A]

I tend to believe that the black clipping levels are part of the problem. But I am not sure.

But, using an "all signal is from photons" assumption, if they were then the cast shouldn't be magenta, should it? Unless, black clipping levels are not uniform across colours, that is.

If they were uniform, shouldn't the cast then be influenced by the quantum efficiency of the different colours in a CFA (e.g., yellow)? Green (the missing complement to magenta to make the noise neutral) is not the colour channel that should suffer from clipping first (again, using an "all signal is from photons" assumption).

Personally, I believe it is a bug in color processing in all cameras / raw converters where the hidden assumption is being made that all signal is from photons. Where in fact, some signal is from averaged noise.

Would that be related to the fact that there are twice as many sensels responsible for green than there are for red and blue respectively? Signal noise (even that not from photons) in the green channel should have lower variance than that for red and blue, and combined with clipping that could yield a magenta cast.

BTW, have you seen this article on “Color Reproduction from Noisy CFA Data of Single Sensor Digital Cameras”?
I haven't read it in detail as I'm too tired and have too many things going on, but it popped up in a quick search I just did and I remember to have seen it before. The authors do not appear to make a reference to magenta casts, but it seems their approach that takes noise into account is able to recreate lot of detail.