[normhead]

I still have the two computers that were two slow running 16 Mp files, I wonder if a 42 MB file would melt them? If I ever get one, I'll give it a try.

[biz-engineer]

Now the 42MP sensor has better high iso performance and can accomodate faster FPS and better video. That's good to take and I don't think Sony would have a 36MP sensor without the other attributes anyway.

I don't want to throw a stone in the pond, but have you asked yourself about the reliability of BSI process over a large silicon material area? How about if some micro-cracks appear with thermal cycles after a couple of years and some dead pixels appear here and there? To be on the safe side, I'd rather prefer a sensor manufactured with "normal" fab process. Who knows what problems may Sony A7IIr have in the future?

[Nicolas06]

Since I have the K-3, I process images with the K-3 itself, because the 32bits processor of my old laptop is too slow with the 24Mp. If I'd upgrade to a FF 36Mp or 42Mp, smoke would come out of the 32 bits CPU.
So, not only I should save money for a FF cam; but in addition I also have to save money for a new computer and more HDD storage.

Man be consistent, if you buy a $3000 camera and add a few other thousand $$ for the lenses, you could invest in a CPU that is 64 bit capable so less than 10 years old. For $600-800 you could have a 4core with 2TB of HDD and 16GB RAM.

More to this, if you do it in camera you could continue and that would not affect your CPU... It is quite unlikely they release a 10MP sensor just to solve your problem you know. As for the JPEG, they should not be too big if you use the proper compression setting in camera. And well 2TB of storage is less than $100!

[Nicolas06]

I still have the two computers that were two slow running 16 Mp files, I wonder if a 42 MB file would melt them? If I ever get one, I'll give it a try.

The computer should be able to handle it if you set enough virtual memory... Might be slow but would work. Now one has to ask himself why he can't spend 600-800$ on a computer or $100 on a storage disk BUT STILL want to process RAWs on the computer.

Any computer would be enought to process the JPEGs.

[NZ_Ross]

Who knows what problems may Sony A7IIr have in the future?

Who knows what problems my bank balance is likely to have in the short term

How long do you expect out of a digital body, and with how fast tech is iterating, how long until you want/need the next best thing?

[Nicolas06]

I don't want to throw a stone in the pond, but have you asked yourself about the reliability of BSI process over a large silicon material area? How about if some micro-cracks appear with thermal cycles after a couple of years and some dead pixels appear here and there? To be on the safe side, I'd rather prefer a sensor manufactured with "normal" fab process. Who knows what problems may Sony A7IIr have in the future?

That's purely hypothetical right now as I never heard of any issues with old chips. Computers CPU and RAM memory modules have lof of transistors and last many years. Typically the computer go the trash long before the chips malfunction. For example think of theses 32bit CPU that are too slow to handle 42MP raws Other components fail long before.

I'd say if my sister had it would be a boy or if you prefer, with if you would put Paris in a bottle.

I really don't get why we need to invent things like there would be no screw drive, no DC support, the sensor will suck or if it the new one it will fail just after you brought it and that anyway a 10 year old entry level computer will not be able to handle it well so that 42MP is a no go (like it would make any difference if it was only 36MP). Let's not forget that it can't support SR or the one that explain it will never be released and that history will repeat itself.

Really you are crazy guys, lot of imagination and the most irealistic pessimistics and irrationnal bunch one could think of !

[lytrytyr]

Really you are crazy guys, lot of imagination and the most irealistic pessimistics and irrationnal bunch one could think of !

Surely you knew what you were getting in to when you joined PF!

[biz-engineer]

Really you are crazy guys, lot of imagination and the most irealistic pessimistics and irrationnal bunch one could think of !

Nicolas, :-) I have to smile. I wasn't stating sensor reliability out of the blue. I've read the BSI was not used for large sensors because of manufacturing difficulties and reliability issues. Have you heard about 3D TSV (Through Silicon Vias)? You can google it or find it in wikipedia. Apparently Sony managed to qualify their BSI process, unless it's a pain in the ass to get the wafers out of the 300mm wafer fab with suitable yield, in which case you are not going to see a Pentax FF with a 42Mp BSI for a while, or at a price tag of more than $4K. Nicolas, whenever you have a chance, visit one of the a silicon wafer fab you have in France (there one near you, Altis Semiconductors in Corbeil Essonnes, formerly was a subsidiary of IBM semiconductors).

[Kharan]

Nicolas, :-) I have to smile. I wasn't stating sensor reliability out of the blue. I've read the BSI was not used for large sensors because of manufacturing difficulties and reliability issues. Have you heard about 3D TSV (Through Silicon Vias)? You can google it or find it in wikipedia. Apparently Sony managed to qualify their BSI process, unless it's a pain in the ass to get the wafers out of the 300mm wafer fab with suitable yield, in which case you are not going to see a Pentax FF with a 42Mp BSI for a while, or at a price tag of more than $4K. Nicolas, whenever you have a chance, visit one of the a silicon wafer fab you have in France (there one near you, Altis Semiconductors in Corbeil Essonnes, formerly was a subsidiary of IBM semiconductors).

Absolutely. It seems the yield for that process is fairly low. Also, there're rumors floating around regarding Sony's fab capacity being maxed out, which has postponed the introduction of the A6000's successor. From the looks of it, it'll take at least a year before another camera with the 42 MP BSI chip appears. So no spring announcement from Pentax, in that case. Then, there's the issue of cost. The A7RII costs over 3K USD, and we're talking about a massively cost-optimized mirrorless camera, which is 'inexpensive' and 'simple' to build. In the case of the Pentax FF, Ricoh's gonna need to develop all sorts of fairly expensive stuff that simply didn't exist in their production assembly before - new mirror assembly, new prism and finder, new imaging pipeline (also, remember that Fujistsu is bust, so who'll provide the processor for the camera?), new body, you get the idea.

TL;DR: it would be way too expensive to employ the BSI 35mm sensor, considering all the investment already happening for the Pentax FF. I stand by 36 MP as its resolution.

[Nicolas06]

Absolutely. It seems the yield for that process is fairly low. Also, there're rumors floating around regarding Sony's fab capacity being maxed out, which has postponed the introduction of the A6000's successor. From the looks of it, it'll take at least a year before another camera with the 42 MP BSI chip appears. So no spring announcement from Pentax, in that case. Then, there's the issue of cost. The A7RII costs over 3K USD, and we're talking about a massively cost-optimized mirrorless camera, which is 'inexpensive' and 'simple' to build. In the case of the Pentax FF, Ricoh's gonna need to develop all sorts of fairly expensive stuff that simply didn't exist in their production assembly before - new mirror assembly, new prism and finder, new imaging pipeline (also, remember that Fujistsu is bust, so who'll provide the processor for the camera?), new body, you get the idea.

TL;DR: it would be way too expensive to employ the BSI 35mm sensor, considering all the investment already happening for the Pentax FF. I stand by 36 MP as its resolution.

I may appear stupid but we have done FF DSLR for maybe 50 years. This is not like a mirror box for it or a shutter would be complex. We also did MF DSLR for quite some time, digital MF recently for Pentax. The part are available as Nikon and Canon use them and sure Pentax how to make a DSLR they after all the Pentaprism name is not for nothing.

A very fast check: D610 is arround price of A7R. Main difference between A7R and A7R-II is updated sensor and electronics. No reason you could have D610 with upgraded sensor and electronic for the same price. Incidently a D610 is a D7100/D7200 with a bigger sensor.

Pentax already did an MF K3 called 645Z, they can make an FF K3-II with the wifi support of KS2 and a basic 24MP sensor for the price of D610... Nikon does it and pentax know how to scale its technology as they proved it already. Now change the sensor, upcriple/update a bit the software, increase the margin quite a lot... You got your FF with all you want for same price as A7-RII.

People think Sony are optimizing cost.... Lile their would not make money on their flagship... I say to you they are not selling theses bodies at a loss. On their flagship, I'am sure they make lot of money. Even if the sensor is much more expensive and they almost ask for 2000€ more for A7R-II. I don't trust even 1 second the new sensor cost them that much. Even the MF 645Z sensor might not cost that much.

[bvg]

maybe Sony decided to keep the 42MP sensor for them

Wait a minute, are not SONY sensors specially designed for E-mount? Or Pentax FF is mirrorless?

[Kharan]

I may appear stupid but we have done FF DSLR for maybe 50 years. This is not like a mirror box for it or a shutter would be complex. We also did MF DSLR for quite some time, digital MF recently for Pentax. The part are available as Nikon and Canon use them and sure Pentax how to make a DSLR they after all the Pentaprism name is not for nothing.

A very fast check: D610 is arround price of A7R. Main difference between A7R and A7R-II is updated sensor and electronics. No reason you could have D610 with upgraded sensor and electronic for the same price. Incidently a D610 is a D7100/D7200 with a bigger sensor.

Pentax already did an MF K3 called 645Z, they can make an FF K3-II with the wifi support of KS2 and a basic 24MP sensor for the price of D610... Nikon does it and pentax know how to scale its technology as they proved it already. Now change the sensor, upcriple/update a bit the software, increase the margin quite a lot... You got your FF with all you want for same price as A7-RII.

People think Sony are optimizing cost.... Lile their would not make money on their flagship... I say to you they are not selling theses bodies at a loss. On their flagship, I'am sure they make lot of money. Even if the sensor is much more expensive and they almost ask for 2000€ more for A7R-II. I don't trust even 1 second the new sensor cost them that much. Even the MF 645Z sensor might not cost that much.

I don't think I called you stupid or anything. I just don't see it as likely. Sony certainly isn't losing money with the A7RII, it's a really cheap camera to produce beyond the imaging pipeline - the body, controls, stabilization, etc. all were developed and paid for by the A7II, so they had a marginal cost to begin with in the new camera. However, that sensor must be very expensive to produce, if the yields are low as some insiders have said, and it's that, along with the new software capabilities, that justify the price tag.

Sure, Pentax used to make tons of mirrors and prisms for 35mm cameras, which they stopped making... a decade ago? Also, it's not like they can just go and copy whatever they were doing with the MZ-S, for instance, and drop the whole assembly into a K-3 lookalike. The AF module requires a new mirror, plus new, stronger motors for the assembly. The viewfinder interface will likely be similar to the K-3's, but if Pentax really wanted to introduce a top of the line product, they'll need an LCD overlay, like on Canon and Nikon. The SR system will likely be a whole new product, too. All of this costs a fair amount of money to develop from scratch, especially for a company like Ricoh, that doesn't produce a single 35mm camera of any type. Nikon and Canon have it much easier, as they've likely recouped the costs of all the development that went into such things.

[Uluru]

As to the reason for the delay, it is hard to say, isn't it? Either there was hardware issue that wasn't solvable in the time they had, a software problem, some feature that they wanted to be there that wasn't there, the lenses weren't done, or maybe they want the video on this camera to be decent and it isn't yet. Whatever the case, there has been a delay..

6 months delay is delay by design, not by a missing part. Japanese have introduced to the world many concepts, and meeting deadlines is one of them.
There is no way any planing or design has been done before thorough discernment about dates, checked at every step of the production.

Sloppy westerners may think by default this is some kind of normal postponement, but for anyone who has ever visited Japanese factory, no, it is not. This is impossible to happen. 1-2 months are hardly allowed in any out-of-ordinary circumstance, but 6 months?! Only a tsunami or a volcano eruption in the backyard can postpone something 6 months in Japan. Or something done by design to buy necessary time.

Therefore most of forum members who are not Japanese think of all sorts of crazy excuses typical to their cultures, but I am 100% certain this is a deliberate decision. In short, Ricoh was almost 2 years too late to the FF market explosion, but needed to address 645Z first to steal FF craze some thunder, and then, of course, came too late with their own FF to keep own customers changing systems. And to address English speaking users, they came up with a strategy suitable and plausible to their mindsets.

And you are buying it, big time.

[Shanti]

Kenspo has been quite faithful in passing along information that he's allow to and we thank him for that. However, I'm not convinced Ricoh is being totally up front with him on some things.

agree look at K3II--new sensor he was told?? its a bit funny with all the people on this forum,only 1 'endorser' is leaking some info to us & 1 'insider' ? or whatever he is( ashaiman)

[rawr]

Incidently a D610 is a D7100/D7200 with a bigger sensor.

No. More accurately, a D610 is a D7000 with a bigger sensor. Same 39 point AF system, same 2k RGB meter, same EV sensitivity, even the same fps. (D7100/D7200 have fancier 51 point AF than D610, better EV performance too).

If the same product parallel was carried across into Pentax, the Pentax FF would have the same 11 point AF and 77 segment metering as the K-5. Probably not desirable, even for advocates of the introduction of a budget Pentax FF like myself.