Originally posted by Na Horuk Well, 24MP sensor, and also 14 bit instead of 12 bit. And higher max ISO, and a little better burst rate. And video features. So there are quite a few little improvements. Maybe they are not significant for everyone, but many users might enjoy them.
Pentax K-70 vs. Pentax K-S2 vs. Pentax K-50 - Pentax Camera Comparison - PentaxForums.com
To me, lack of AA, 24MP and 14 bit sounds attractive already.
And, as mentioned above, the big thing is that Pentax gets to experiment and try these new things and continue to evolve. But hey, if you are waiting for a bigger update jump, thats absolutely fine
I totally agree with your comments above.
In addition, I find other features to be compelling.
From 1979 to 2015, although I was an amateur, my equipment looked professional from a distance of more than a couple of feet. Much of my photography involves taking pictures which are not exactly "street photography", but in which human beings play an important role. I would really like to stand around and be "invisible" to my subjects - I don't want their behaviors to be affected by my presence. However, during 1979-2015, I was constantly dealing with people who would come up to me and ask loudly "Who are you with?" or who want me to know that it will cost me to use their image or the image of their possessions. Even if these people are being silly, they disrupt the process. My brother got a digital camera before I did, and I am now convinced from his use of Canon equipment that an articulated LCD would allow me to be less obvious when I take pictures {flippy LCD would be even better} as I stare down at my camera instead of pointing it directly at my subjects. When I moved to Pentax, I had planned to get white/black and silver/black cameras; I got blue/black and yellow/black because our cash-flow was weak, and I got good used-like-new bargains, but I also would love the more subtle K-70 silver/black as being neither loud nor professional-looking black.
As an amateur, I have only so much time to devote to my hobbies {interesting fact: my family expects most of my time to be focused on them}. I am in the midst of digitizing nearly forty years of photographs that I took before I got my first digital camera. Another interesting fact: Even the best scanners create images with visible issues, such as scratches, dust particles, and remains of fungus. Thus, I examine each image at 100% or 200% and then manually fix each issue; this is easy to describe, but it takes much of my valuable "hobby time", and leaves me with little interest in Post Processing. Another interesting fact {based on careful experimentation}: If I read a JPEG file created with minimum compression into an editor such as gimp, make minor corrections, and then write it out as another JPEG file with minimum compression, at 100% I can find no differences between the two file other than the ones I created in the editor. Thus, for me, a camera which does a good job of generating JPEG files is invaluable, because that allows automation to do what automation does well, and saves for my time only those tasks which automation cannot handle {this is even better than my many years of using Kodachrome 25, when automation did everything after I removed the film from my camera}. I have found the JPEGs created by my K-30 and Q-7 to be just right most of the time, and I have every reason to expect the K-70 to do even better.
For example, here is a picture I took last Christmas during a performance by a group called "Straight No Chaser" {we had first row second balcony seats}.
SNC began as a student group at Indiana University, and became successful professionals because of amateur video posted on-line, so they are very friendly towards amateur photography ... but their stage effects not so much. I had to set my Q-7 at ISO 3200 to get reasonable images, and that resulted in more noise than I am willing to wrestle with right now. I'm guessing that the K-30 would have done better {I knew that they would make an opening announcement welcoming photography, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to get a larger camera past the Performance Center's security}, but my hope is that the K-70 will do much much better under circumstances like this, leaving me nothing but a little touch-up if anything at all.
These are differences between those of us who know we are amateurs and those who want to attain professional standards, a difference totally lost in the discussions of the "mere $100" {U.S. dollar sign always precedes the amount} that separates the 2015 K-3ii from the 2016 K-70. And as you have said, those who want these features in a professional standard package probably have just a few months to wait.