[reh321]

What's the point of building a brand new engine but still use the same old 1960s transmission or vice versa?

Screw drive lens are reliable no argument, use the same formula that grand fathers already used and proved, add fast motors and they will sell like hot cakes!!

Horses are a reliable form of transportation - but they are just as obsolete as the screw drive!


Pentax needs to move their lenses into the 21st century with quick and quiet in-lens motors.


They don't need to retire DA lenses to do that - they could make DFA version because they need more DFA lenses so those currently outside the Pentax tent will understand that Pentax is serious about FF

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Last edited by reh321; 01-29-2018 at 09:46 PM. Reason: comment about DFA

[biz-engineer]

200 mA per card might be true for some cards, but the spec for the fastest UHS-II mode (HD312) permits card power consumption levels of up to 2.88 W (or 870 mA @ 3.3 V)

UHS II HD312 is the fastest, I can understand that it hits some limits of battery power. Here I was referring to the current write speed of the K1 when writing to the two SD cards, 200mA is a max spec for SD, that's why I don't think power is a limitation. With the K1 power budget as it is now, K1 buffer clearance could be 4 times faster if subsequent images were written in the two SD cards simultaneously. I mean, when shooting a bust of images #1,2,3,4,5... image 1 would go to SD1, image 2 would go to SD2, image 3 would go to SD1, image 4 SD2, image 5 SD1. I can only imagine that the two SD card slots share the same bus, en eventually the same controller chip.

[ffking]

That may require going to the larger 3-cell battery especially if they upgrade the data rate to UHS-II or better.

A few months back I started a thread about the design conflicts between things people call for that they might not have taken into account - and I think I can add greater processing speed (sensor readout and AF) requiring larger batteries vs compact body size, (all other things being equal) if I read you correctly?

[D1N0]

Operational speed is mainly a question of newer electronics. A sensor with multiple read-out lanes, a (co)processor with more dedicated hardware baked in. Milbeaut m-7m used by Pentax (it is no longer called that Image Signal Processor (Milbeaut®) | Socionext Inc. ) still operates at 55nm (and so does it's 4k 30p capable successor) using the by now pretty antiquated cortex-a5. Phone socs are now down to 10nm. This gives the advantage of more power at lower energy consumption and smaller chips or more processing capabilities on the same area. Speeds are lagging because of limitations of the present hardware.

[Kunzite]

We should note that it also integrates the SD card controller, USB 2.0 and - not specified directly on the linked webpage - it supports up to 1.5GB RAM.

[beholder3]

what is the cost of smartphone electronics? phones operate at much, much lower margins because they are super high volume. And they have no costs other than a screen plus electronics. Cameras have much more cost drivers and are at a much lower volume, so there wont be comparable electronics in there unless you can use stuff elsewhere.
That is why Samsungs NX1 was so far ahead of Sony, Nikon, Canon, Fuji. Samsung had the required super fast components years before the others even got close.

[aurele]

what is the cost of smartphone electronics? phones operate at much, much lower margins because they are super high volume. And they have no costs other than a screen plus electronics. Cameras have much more cost drivers and are at a much lower volume, so there wont be comparable electronics in there unless you can use stuff elsewhere.
That is why Samsungs NX1 was so far ahead of Sony, Nikon, Canon, Fuji. Samsung had the required super fast components years before the others even got close.

I suspect that using such phone components would require more power from the battery (more peak power, or more intensity), and that would mean a complete redesign of the battery (like Sony did for A7R3 and A9).

In the end, it mean pretty much changing the whole body design.

Side note : i think Camera makers would'nt buy enought chips to make it interesting economicaly.

[mecrox]

Horses are a reliable form of transportation - but they are just as obsolete as the screw drive!


Pentax needs to move their lenses into the 21st century with quick and quiet in-lens motors.


They don't need to retire DA lenses to do that - they could make DFA version because they need more DFA lenses so those currently outside the Pentax tent will understand that Pentax is serious about FF

It’s likely easier and less costly to start over with new designs. The optical formula of a lens is going to be influenced by the kind of motor used to drive it and vice versa. To begin with, a select choice of primes in line with their very high standards for the new FF camera. Older DA designs won’t be enough for this. Each lens has to be so good you wouldn’t ever want to use the older, screwdrive one instead. Then a selection of lenses - walk-around zoom, all-in-one zoom and a couple of primes - for their new venture in APS-C mirrorless cameras with their new Chinese joint venture partners. The original DA lenses can continue while demand is there and the APS-C DSLR operation tails off, before being retired. They’ve had a good run by any standards but nothing lasts for ever.

Seriously, a lens done today would need to be good for a decade. By that time some of the older DA designs would be hitting their third decade. Time for a clean sheet of paper.

I will now go and put on my tinfoil hat.

[thibs]

Operational speed is mainly a question of newer electronics. A sensor with multiple read-out lanes, a (co)processor with more dedicated hardware baked in. Milbeaut m-7m used by Pentax (it is no longer called that Image Signal Processor (Milbeaut®) | Socionext Inc. ) still operates at 55nm (and so does it's 4k 30p capable successor) using the by now pretty antiquated cortex-a5. Phone socs are now down to 10nm. This gives the advantage of more power at lower energy consumption and smaller chips or more processing capabilities on the same area. Speeds are lagging because of limitations of the present hardware.

Look at Socionext 'roadmap' I wonder if time hasn't come that they need to look elsewhere.

[D1N0]

Yeah. I am wondering whether there is enough overhead in phone socs. Phones operate at lower voltages because of no moving parts. Powering a chip should not be a problem. You probably could clock it quite a bit lower as well. Only using it's full capacity on high speed operation. Modern phone socs also have more advanced image processing baked in.

[mecrox]

I suspect that using such phone components would require more power from the battery (more peak power, or more intensity), and that would mean a complete redesign of the battery (like Sony did for A7R3 and A9).

In the end, it mean pretty much changing the whole body design.

Side note : i think Camera makers would'nt buy enought chips to make it interesting economicaly.

I can think of one camera out there which uses twin quad-core processors. I expect there are others, too. Isn’t it more likely that these processors are bought in rather than developed in-house? The cost of R&D in-house would be enormous. I’m thinking of an adapted version of a mobile processor but redone for non-phone uses - a second source of revenue for the maker. I wonder whether Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony or whoever does versions of these.

[thibs]

I can think of one camera out there which uses twin quad-core processors. I expect there are others, too. Isn’t it more likely that these processors are bought in rather than developed in-house? The cost of R&D in-house would be enormous. I’m thinking of an adapted version of a mobile processor but redone for non-phone uses - a second source of revenue for the maker. I wonder whether Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony or whoever does versions of these.

Quick question, as for Socionext at least, is that SOC at least partially 'hardwired' for a couple image functions ?
If so, changing the Image processing pipeline won't be easy.
If not, what advantage is there in chosing such SOC if everything is done by the two lil' ARM cores anyway.

Maybe Nikon and Ricoh-Pentax should take care of this and join forces. Or they will always be way behind others.

[photoptimist]

A few months back I started a thread about the design conflicts between things people call for that they might not have taken into account - and I think I can add greater processing speed (sensor readout and AF) requiring larger batteries vs compact body size, (all other things being equal) if I read you correctly?

Exactly!

If all the subsystems in the camera try to pull too much current from the battery even for a fraction of a second, the voltage provided by the battery will drop below the voltage required to operate digital circuits. The camera will lock-up and there might be corruption of the SD card if it happens while the camera is trying to write data to the card.

Moreover, the camera's electrical engineers need to think about camera reliability under less than perfect conditions. What if the battery is a little cold, and it's a year old, and it's already drained to half-power? Cameras that glitch too much will get a bad reputation. Thus the engineers will tend to take a more conservative design approach -- limiting the worst-case maximum power draw to the worst case (cold, old, depleted) battery power capacity.

[Rico]

Exactly!

If all the subsystems in the camera try to pull too much current from the battery even for a fraction of a second, the voltage provided by the battery will drop below the voltage required to operate digital circuits. The camera will lock-up and there might be corruption of the SD card if it happens while the camera is trying to write data to the card.

Moreover, the camera's electrical engineers need to think about camera reliability under less than perfect conditions. What if the battery is a little cold, and it's a year old, and it's already drained to half-power? Cameras that glitch too much will get a bad reputation. Thus the engineers will tend to take a more conservative design approach -- limiting the worst-case maximum power draw to the worst case (cold, old, depleted) battery power capacity.

I have considered the battery part of some of the limitations I have found using the K-1. Specifically to your comments when a battery is less than full and how the camera behaves as it gets depleted. Even with a full battery though I find the K-1 seems to be always waiting for storage memory to catch up. Like the way a computer behaves waiting for a drive to spin up.

I think I get well above the rated 760 images from a full battery charge. Closer to 900 with no flash use manual lens etc. One of the interesting things with the Nikon D850 over the D800 is the image count on a fully charged battery went from 1200 to 1800. 1200 was already high on a battery that is essentially the same battery in the K-1 with the difference the Nikon battery has 5 pins to the Pentax 3 pins.

The D850 using 45mp BSI sensor in combination with QXD and UHS II SD bumped the shutter count to 1800. 1800 images is 50 rolls of 36 exposures on a single battery. Using their battery grip with the 10v battery it is some outrageous number over 5000 exposures. I think the importance of the faster memory comes in as it takes less time to write each file to the cards which eats up less power consumption. The UHS II standard also brings in the extra pins on the cards which allow two directional data transfers etc which increases performance between the camera firmware reading from and writing to storage for general operation.

[Belnan]

Its nice to be able to keep using the same battery however I think they probably should of updated the battery when they built the K3. It's definitely overdue, hopefully they address it in next camera. Even without a new sensor, there is certainly room for improvement in other areas like the battery. I honestly think 36 MP is the sweet spot right now. With any luck it will be a new, faster, more efficient 36 MP sensor. I can see Sony's next A7 camera using the 36 MP with some new tweaks so who knows?

Seriously whom ever knows, just send me a PM.