[biz-engineer]

But they forget that a good share of that soul was make small/light/well built gear. The FAltd are the the very example of best Pentax design and goals.

Mirroless evil appeared quickly, with make the Pentax limited concept irrelevant! That's called a paradigm shift in an industry. As a customer, if you want small system for photographying cities, landscape and portraits, get a Sony A7rii and Zeiss primes/slow zoom. If you have a large DSLR body, it does not help much to have tiny lenses, and if you use long lenses a large camera body helps for handling. The FA*600 is also a Pentax heritage.

---------- Post added 28-02-16 at 20:23 ----------

On the FF, they had to put a kit lens, so they did that, but all the rest is huge. Bigger that the competitors lenses with similar characteristics.

Yes, it seems that they did not care much about weigth , quite the opposite, I think it's deliberate in order to give the feeling of quality. With Pentax, heavy is often associated with rugged and reliable (which is actually not true... it depends how it's designed, it's not proven that Canikon dslr break more often than Pentax... most of the time, dslr bodies get obsolete before they break).

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Last edited by biz-engineer; 02-28-2016 at 12:23 PM.

[Kunzite]

Although that is the "soul" for many people, it doesn't apply to many others. I've used many Pentax SLRs since 1967, and I don't think I've even seen a Limited lens!

I tend to go for zooms (from wide to long) and long primes (not always Pentax).

The 2 kilogram 150-450mm enabled me to sell my 3 kilogram Sigma 500mm f/4.5, and, (in combination with my 1 kilogram 60-250mm f/4), has made my 1 kilogram 300mm f/4 surplus to requirements. So the 150-450mm lens has lightened my kit!

Since I don't have a Sogma 500mm to "lighten" my kit, I'll plan for an alternative solution:

[Nicolas06]

Mirroless evil appeared quickly, with make the Pentax limited concept irrelevant! That's called a paradigm shift in an industry. As a customer, if you want small system for photographying cities, landscape and portraits, get a Sony A7rii and Zeiss primes/slow zoom. If you have a large DSLR body, it does not help much to have tiny lenses, and if you use long lenses a large camera body helps for handling. The FA*600 is also a Pentax heritage.

I have checked that but it doesn't hold water. It is more expensive, no better overall and while you gain 1 or 2 small UWA primes, in exchange you have to go bigger teles. Just look honestly what equivalent there is of FA77 f/1.8. Issue is it much more important to have a fast tele than a fast UWA.

Sony A7 serie is the worst of all because you also get a larger sensor, meaning you need to apply 1.5X crop ratio to you focal length to keep the same reach. No way to get a small 135mm f/2.8 to replace that FA77 f/1.8 on APSC. The latest A7 bodies (A7-II, A7R-II) have the weight of K-S2 so there nothing smaller about it.

[D1N0]

I have checked that but it doesn't hold water. It is more expensive, no better overall and while you gain 1 or 2 small UWA primes, in exchange you have to go bigger teles. Just look honestly what equivalent there is of FA77 f/1.8. Issue is it much more important to have a fast tele than a fast UWA.

Sony A7 serie is the worst of all because you also get a larger sensor, meaning you need to apply 1.5X crop ratio to you focal length to keep the same reach. No way to get a small 135mm f/2.8 to replace that FA77 f/1.8 on APSC. The latest A7 bodies (A7-II, A7R-II) have the weight of K-S2 so there nothing smaller about it.

Different camera's for different needs. There are always trade offs

[biz-engineer]

I have checked that but it doesn't hold water. It is more expensive, no better overall and while you gain 1 or 2 small UWA primes, in exchange you have to go bigger teles. Just look honestly what equivalent there is of FA77 f/1.8. Issue is it much more important to have a fast tele than a fast UWA. Sony A7 serie is the worst of all because you also get a larger sensor, meaning you need to apply 1.5X crop ratio to you focal length to keep the same reach. No way to get a small 135mm f/2.8 to replace that FA77 f/1.8 on APSC. The latest A7 bodies (A7-II, A7R-II) have the weight of K-S2 so there nothing smaller about it.

Yes ... unfortunately, we can't have it all. I came to the conclusion that you can't have the best of all camera systems in all in one, but you can have:
- all purpose camera and all purpose lenses, the combo is good at everything when you exclude all specialized systems
- specialized system, excellent at one use case, but mediocre to most other things

A D5 and 300 f2.8 is a monster of performance for sports, but the combo weight a ton. No need of a detailed analysis, from top down, you know where you are already (if there were predefined categories of cameras)! The advantage of thinking in terms of system categories is that you don't get lost. If you consider A7 for wildlife / sport photog, you already took the wrong direction. If you do landscape, site seeing and architecture and never shot fast moving distant subjects, why have a heavy system? If you do photog of fast moving distant subjects, why have inconvenient tiny body with huge lens on it. I mean , this is common sense, although people still just do this: get a 10 FPS 1.5Kg DSLR for landscape, and get a tiny Sony A6000 with on 3.5kg 500mm lens on it for sports.

[beholder3]

As a customer, if you want small system for photographying cities, landscape and portraits, get a Sony A7rii and Zeiss primes/slow zoom

That is it: Compact Camera Meter

The Sony+lens is a lowly 3,500+2,000=5,500 EUR street price and bulkier.
The K-1+lens is $1750+$700 = $2,450 street price and has a viewfinder. That is more than twice the value.

[biz-engineer]

The difference that I noticed with Ricoh is pure bean counting management, so basically, they seems to be more pragmatic then ever before with Hoya. What's showing this is they did not hesitate to rebadge the 24-70 and 15-30 even if those lenses were designed to have VC (in lens floating element + servo) for Canon and Nikon bodies, instead of size and weight optimized for IBIS camera body. For example, the Tamy 17-50 VC is larger than the SP version , and the same applies to the 24-70 VC and 70-200 VC and 70-300 VC. All optically stabilized lenses are larger and heavier than original non stabilized lenses.

---------- Post added 28-02-16 at 21:12 ----------

The Sony+lens is a lowly 3,500+2,000=5,500 EUR street price and bulkier. The K-1+lens is $1750+$700 = $2,450 street price and has a viewfinder. That is more than twice the value.

Nice comparison. Do you use a 85 f1.4 for landscapes?

P.S you can mount a FA77 on a A7rii and it's going to be way smaller than a K-1 + FA77 ltd

[Nicolas06]

A D5 and 300 f2.8 is a monster of performance for sports, but the combo weight a ton.

And when you have that, you either rely on your colleagues to get the shoot at different focal length than 300mm, or you need a few other heavy lenses (likely some zooms too) to get the job done. All the gear you use is more about 10-20kg, 15-30K$. Hey depending on the actual sport 300mm may be a very wrong focal length that is of no use.

That very specific setting: A team shooting the soccer wolrd cup with maybe 10-15 shooters, wired to the back office and an equaly sized team that selected the best photos on the go isn't exactly what even the average pro is going to do...

The most funy part, as kenspo explained, theses guys are often sponsored by the brand on one side and are paid by a big agency... (More likely the agency itself got the contract for sponsoring). In the end they don't even choose their gear.

[Kunzite]

Nice try. But:
- Tamron's versions made for Sony have similarly deactivated VC
- being pragmatic is not the same as being "pure bean counting management"
- Pentax used Tamron-designed lenses in the past, before and under Hoya
- Hoya really was "bean counting"-driven, as they cut costs on everything including new lens introductions

[Nicolas06]

P.S you can mount a FA77 on a A7rii and it's going to be way smaller than a K-1 + FA77 ltd

You need an adapter that is basically adding to the weight and bulkiness of the ARII so yes it win, but marginally and you loose AF. That's a huge drawback for me and not really an option. Sony could make lenses like FA77, sure but there no reason to expect them to be smaller than FA77 + adapter anyway. Anyway this doesn't exist.

But that's comparing 2 FF, if you put an APSC DSLR, counting the 1.5 factor applied to the focal length, the mirorless is always bulkier except for UWA primes.

I still think there much interrest to go for light/small lenses as an option.

[filoxophy]

Are those new Sony G behemoths for A-mount as well? Sure looks like it in that camerasize view. Looks like a DSLR/T lens with a permanently affixed adapter.

[Digitalis]

Sony could make lenses like FA77

They won't.

That's called a paradigm shift in an industry

I have come to the conclusion that people who use this tired phrase wouldn't know what a paradigm is, even if it was sitting next to them eating their lunch.

[Kunzite]

I think a paradigm shift occurs when cutting edge technology enables ground breaking next generation solutions to replace the old ways of thinking, thus becoming the next industry standard. Award winning innovation leveraging incredible ease of use will transform the market, offering a never seen before value proposition in the most customer-centric way. It's a win-win scenario.
Source: The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases | Adam Sherk

[Digitalis]

I think a paradigm shift occurs when cutting edge technology enables ground breaking next generation solutions to replace the old ways of thinking

That is called innovation, a paradigm shift cannot be recognized until it has past. The development of fully self-aware sentient AI will in all probability, bring on a paradigm shift because we have absolutely no idea of what a created intelligence will do, or how it will react to us. And it will bring us closer to the Singularity.

[infoomatic]

That is it: Compact Camera Meter

The Sony+lens is a lowly 3,500+2,000=5,500 EUR street price and bulkier.
The K-1+lens is $1750+$700 = $2,450 street price and has a viewfinder. That is more than twice the value.

nice comparison. even with the batis 85mm f/1.8 the sony setup is larger