Forgot Password
Pentax Camera Forums Home
 

Reply
Show Printable Version Search this Thread
03-03-2018, 08:07 PM - 27 Likes   #1
Pentaxian




Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Tokyo
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 2,817
My Report from CP+ 2018

Since Yokohama is an easy train trip from my home, I’ve been to each CP+ since 2013, except for 2014, when the Saturday was snowed off. Each time I go it seems to get a bit bigger and busier.

The organizers explained their plans and objectives for CP+ 2018 last December.
?CP+2018???????????? - ???? Watch
There are 128 exhibitors, up from 121 in 2017. This has meant that most of the booths have become a bit smaller this year, including Ricoh/Pentax. They have a target of 70,000 attendees, up from 66,666 attendees in 2017.

Other interesting information from their presentation was that the foreign media in attendance dropped hugely from 2016 to 2017 by around half. On the other hand male and female attendees in the 20s and 30s increased a lot, especially young women. So this has driven their focus of their marketing this year on first-time photographers and women in particular.

I didn’t have all that much time at the show this year, but I tried to get around to as much as I could.



Ricoh Booth
There was no obvious change in the branding from recent years. It’s clear that Pentax, GR and Theta are positioned as sub brands of Ricoh.The booth itself was a bit smaller than last year, with more space given over to the stage in the middle. Left of the stage was an area devoted to Pentax. An equally large space on the right focused on Theta.

I think they clearly decided to push two things at CP+ this time: Full frame K-mount and Theta. APS-C K-mount, GR and 645 were there but not very prominent, except for in the presentation schedule. There was the DA* 11-18 under glass and some obvious hinting about a new GR, with a poster and stickers to make people register for the new GR Facebook page. I couldn’t get any more info about the 11-18, despite asking.

I could not find any reference to Q or its lenses this time. One of the Ricoh staff was using a Q to document the event, and a few visitors had them, but there was nothing I could see on the booth.

There were a number of presentations, but the one I watched was by Yoshiaki Kobayashi on the K-1 mark 2. He is the photographer who took all the photos used in the brochure and the samples, including the wintry ones from Hokkaido Japan (where he lives) and the summer ones in New Zealand. This was quite interesting and contained a lot of hints about how to get the most out of the new features. I wish I could have stayed for more presentations, but it is really time-consuming to do that.

K-1 mark 2
I was able to try the camera with the new lens, Of course the camera looks exactly like the K-1, so there are no surprises in the design. I tested the hand-held pixel shift function. The first attempt wasn’t successful, but I got a clear and detailed shot on the second. You can hear the shutter going four times, so it is not using an electronic shutter. Once it has taken, it locks up the camera for quite a while processing and saving.

In Kobayashi-san’s presentation, he mentioned that he was getting about a 50% success rate with handheld pixel shift. He knows what he is doing, so bear in mind he would not be attempting impossible shots. He said that the key to success is keeping the shutter speed high and avoiding rotational shake in particular (not 100% sure I understood this part). He also made the point that you can always extract a single raw image if the pixel shift goes wrong, so there is little to lose by trying. Another interesting comment was that results handheld can in certain circumstances be better than on a tripod, such when on a wood deck, bridge or another surface that is slightly moving.

They also had a space where you could test the low light ISO performance side by side with a standard K-1. Checking the results on the screen, you can see that the accelerator unit improves noise noticeably. I tried it at ISO 25,600 and it was a lot cleaner on the new K-1, but perhaps still too much for some people. Repeating the test at 6400 was quite convincing, showing less noise without any strange side effects. I’m not much of a pixel-peeper or int post processing, so you might have a more critical eye than me.

I could not really judge AF myself, but in the presentation Kobayashi-san mentioned the continuous AF improvement and showed some nice bird in flight images. I guess the Pentax Forums review will reveal how much it has really improved.

D-FA 50mm
The lens on the K1 mark 2 when I tried it was the D-FA 50mm. It is fairly big for a prime, like the Sigma, but not as enormous as the recent Zeiss primes. Honestly, I think some of the comments about the size have been a bit over the top. It is bigger than the old 50s, but more or less in line with modern primes from other manufacturers. I still don’t think I would be interested in buy that specific lens, but I came away with part of me wanting it anyway.

Right after trying the Pentax lens, I went straight to the Tokina booth, where they had their own Opera 50mm on display. I’m almost certain these lenses are co-developed. They have the same feeling of weight and balance, and exactly the same hood, which is very Pentax-like, with the filter cut-out. They feel different in the texture of the barrel and the rubber grip material. Because of that the Tokina feels cheaper.

Other booths
I went around the whole floor and it was business as usual for most of the brands. They had larger stands than Ricoh. In particular, the Sony stand was enormous this year. Also, I really got the feeling that Sony is gaining on the other brands, based on the cameras people were holding. I did feel the booth was rather bland, though.

The one I liked most was the Olympus stand this year. There seems to be a trend towards having more educational presentations in recent years, and Olympus had two stages with really practical talks going on. They also seemed to be more obviously targeting female photographers. I think it is a tricky balance trying to appeal to both genders, while not being stereotypical and patronizing about it. Olympus seems to be getting it right by featuring work and talks by female photographers more than the others.

One sad point was that Casio didn’t have a booth this time. I’m not really interested in their cameras, and not many people were looking last year, but I think it is said to see a brand decide not to join, other than the usual too-cool-to-show-up Leica, who never attend.

Overall, it was a not the most impressive show this time, but still fun to go to, and there were some indications that Ricoh is getting back to normal service in terms of product releases.

03-03-2018, 08:16 PM   #2
Veteran Member
SSGGeezer's Avatar

Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Indiana, U.S.
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 4,845
Great write up of your impressions! Glad that you got a chance to attend and handle and try out the new gear. I am not in the market for the DFA 50 or FF but it seems like Pentax is doing it right on their new gear.
I am especially interested in your impression that the Opera 50 and the DFA being similar. I suspect we won't really know for sure if there is design crossover until there are cutaway models and photos for us to look at side by side since both companies seem to be very close mouthed.
03-03-2018, 08:53 PM   #3
Veteran Member




Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Photos: Albums
Posts: 750
I find it hard to believe that the multi-shot mode uses the mechanical shutter. Perhaps the electronic shutter was not enabled.

EDIT: I gues it has to use the mechanical shutter because of the OVF when handheld
03-03-2018, 09:15 PM - 1 Like   #4
Loyal Site Supporter
Loyal Site Supporter
monochrome's Avatar

Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Working From Home
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 26,276
QuoteOriginally posted by 2351HD Quote
I find it hard to believe that the multi-shot mode uses the mechanical shutter. Perhaps the electronic shutter was not enabled.

EDIT: I gues it has to use the mechanical shutter because of the OVF when handheld
It definitely uses the mechanical shutter. It just aligns 4 separate images processed in the Accelerator Unit. The new stuff is, it uses the full data stream from the IBIS system to align the images. Hand motion is actually necessary for this technology to work.

03-03-2018, 10:11 PM   #5
Veteran Member
LightBug's Avatar

Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: OC, CA, USA
Posts: 506
Thanks JPT for the nice write up, and monochrome for the explanation. 50% success rate is what I would have hoped for. Ricoh seems to be leading in pixel shift technology and may gain some customers from sigma/foveon camp. Pretty clever of Ricoh engineers to utilize ibis information to combine images.
03-03-2018, 10:21 PM   #6
Veteran Member




Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Photos: Albums
Posts: 750
QuoteOriginally posted by monochrome Quote
It definitely uses the mechanical shutter. It just aligns 4 separate images processed in the Accelerator Unit. The new stuff is, it uses the full data stream from the IBIS system to align the images. Hand motion is actually necessary for this technology to work.
So I assume that when tripod mounted the pixel shift works electronically as usual and only goes mechanical for handheld mode?
03-03-2018, 10:43 PM   #7
Loyal Site Supporter
Loyal Site Supporter
monochrome's Avatar

Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Working From Home
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 26,276
QuoteOriginally posted by 2351HD Quote
So I assume that when tripod mounted the pixel shift works electronically as usual and only goes mechanical for handheld mode?
IINM PixelShift is a different function altogether.

03-04-2018, 01:26 AM   #8
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
acoufap's Avatar

Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Munich, Germany
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 4,159
QuoteOriginally posted by JPT Quote
Since Yokohama is an easy train trip from my home, I’ve been to each CP+ since 2013, except for 2014, when the Saturday was snowed off. Each time I go it seems to get a bit bigger and busier.

The organizers explained their plans and objectives for CP+ 2018 last December.
?CP+2018???????????? - ???? Watch
There are 128 exhibitors, up from 121 in 2017. This has meant that most of the booths have become a bit smaller this year, including Ricoh/Pentax. They have a target of 70,000 attendees, up from 66,666 attendees in 2017.

Other interesting information from their presentation was that the foreign media in attendance dropped hugely from 2016 to 2017 by around half. On the other hand male and female attendees in the 20s and 30s increased a lot, especially young women. So this has driven their focus of their marketing this year on first-time photographers and women in particular.

I didn’t have all that much time at the show this year, but I tried to get around to as much as I could.



Ricoh Booth
There was no obvious change in the branding from recent years. It’s clear that Pentax, GR and Theta are positioned as sub brands of Ricoh.The booth itself was a bit smaller than last year, with more space given over to the stage in the middle. Left of the stage was an area devoted to Pentax. An equally large space on the right focused on Theta.

I think they clearly decided to push two things at CP+ this time: Full frame K-mount and Theta. APS-C K-mount, GR and 645 were there but not very prominent, except for in the presentation schedule. There was the DA* 11-18 under glass and some obvious hinting about a new GR, with a poster and stickers to make people register for the new GR Facebook page. I couldn’t get any more info about the 11-18, despite asking.

I could not find any reference to Q or its lenses this time. One of the Ricoh staff was using a Q to document the event, and a few visitors had them, but there was nothing I could see on the booth.

There were a number of presentations, but the one I watched was by Yoshiaki Kobayashi on the K-1 mark 2. He is the photographer who took all the photos used in the brochure and the samples, including the wintry ones from Hokkaido Japan (where he lives) and the summer ones in New Zealand. This was quite interesting and contained a lot of hints about how to get the most out of the new features. I wish I could have stayed for more presentations, but it is really time-consuming to do that.

K-1 mark 2
I was able to try the camera with the new lens, Of course the camera looks exactly like the K-1, so there are no surprises in the design. I tested the hand-held pixel shift function. The first attempt wasn’t successful, but I got a clear and detailed shot on the second. You can hear the shutter going four times, so it is not using an electronic shutter. Once it has taken, it locks up the camera for quite a while processing and saving.

In Kobayashi-san’s presentation, he mentioned that he was getting about a 50% success rate with handheld pixel shift. He knows what he is doing, so bear in mind he would not be attempting impossible shots. He said that the key to success is keeping the shutter speed high and avoiding rotational shake in particular (not 100% sure I understood this part). He also made the point that you can always extract a single raw image if the pixel shift goes wrong, so there is little to lose by trying. Another interesting comment was that results handheld can in certain circumstances be better than on a tripod, such when on a wood deck, bridge or another surface that is slightly moving.

They also had a space where you could test the low light ISO performance side by side with a standard K-1. Checking the results on the screen, you can see that the accelerator unit improves noise noticeably. I tried it at ISO 25,600 and it was a lot cleaner on the new K-1, but perhaps still too much for some people. Repeating the test at 6400 was quite convincing, showing less noise without any strange side effects. I’m not much of a pixel-peeper or int post processing, so you might have a more critical eye than me.

I could not really judge AF myself, but in the presentation Kobayashi-san mentioned the continuous AF improvement and showed some nice bird in flight images. I guess the Pentax Forums review will reveal how much it has really improved.

D-FA 50mm
The lens on the K1 mark 2 when I tried it was the D-FA 50mm. It is fairly big for a prime, like the Sigma, but not as enormous as the recent Zeiss primes. Honestly, I think some of the comments about the size have been a bit over the top. It is bigger than the old 50s, but more or less in line with modern primes from other manufacturers. I still don’t think I would be interested in buy that specific lens, but I came away with part of me wanting it anyway.

Right after trying the Pentax lens, I went straight to the Tokina booth, where they had their own Opera 50mm on display. I’m almost certain these lenses are co-developed. They have the same feeling of weight and balance, and exactly the same hood, which is very Pentax-like, with the filter cut-out. They feel different in the texture of the barrel and the rubber grip material. Because of that the Tokina feels cheaper.

Other booths
I went around the whole floor and it was business as usual for most of the brands. They had larger stands than Ricoh. In particular, the Sony stand was enormous this year. Also, I really got the feeling that Sony is gaining on the other brands, based on the cameras people were holding. I did feel the booth was rather bland, though.

The one I liked most was the Olympus stand this year. There seems to be a trend towards having more educational presentations in recent years, and Olympus had two stages with really practical talks going on. They also seemed to be more obviously targeting female photographers. I think it is a tricky balance trying to appeal to both genders, while not being stereotypical and patronizing about it. Olympus seems to be getting it right by featuring work and talks by female photographers more than the others.

One sad point was that Casio didn’t have a booth this time. I’m not really interested in their cameras, and not many people were looking last year, but I think it is said to see a brand decide not to join, other than the usual too-cool-to-show-up Leica, who never attend.

Overall, it was a not the most impressive show this time, but still fun to go to, and there were some indications that Ricoh is getting back to normal service in terms of product releases.
Seems new pixelshift shows better results under special conditions like standing on a bridge, ship, high building - something with camera movement that a tripod cannot avoid / compensate. So depending on where you take your photos the new mechanism may be very helpful. Thank you very much for the nice report, @JPT!

Last edited by acoufap; 03-04-2018 at 02:45 AM.
03-04-2018, 02:32 AM   #9
Moderator
Site Supporter
Loyal Site Supporter
Sandy Hancock's Avatar

Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Adelaide Hills, South Australia
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 11,254
QuoteOriginally posted by acoufap Quote
Seems new pixelshift shows better results under special conditions like standing on a bridge, ship, high building - something with camera movement that a tripod cannot avoid / compensate. So dempending on where you take your photos the new mechanism may be very helpful.
I'll be on an icebreaker sailing between Cape Horn and Antarctica in a few months. I reckon that K-1 upgrade is looking pretty good.
03-04-2018, 02:47 AM   #10
Site Supporter
Site Supporter




Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Australia
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 3,842
cheers, thanks man
03-04-2018, 02:49 AM   #11
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
ffking's Avatar

Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: Old South Wales
Posts: 6,029
I don't know what other people's booths were like, but the Ricoh booth, to me, has a good presence and confidence. Thanks for the write up!
03-04-2018, 02:51 AM   #12
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
acoufap's Avatar

Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Munich, Germany
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 4,159
QuoteOriginally posted by Sandy Hancock Quote
I'll be on an icebreaker sailing between Cape Horn and Antarctica in a few months. I reckon that K-1 upgrade is looking pretty good.
Sounds very interesting but can be very uncomfortable?!

Until now I didn‘t read anything about the raw files that are produced in „PS II mode“. Hope that the files are compatible with the „old“ algorithms so that RawTherapee still works. If not, users will have to wait some time until it‘s supported by other software than PDCU.
03-04-2018, 03:55 AM   #13
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
RobA_Oz's Avatar

Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Tasmania, Australia
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 8,182
QuoteOriginally posted by 2351HD Quote
I find it hard to believe that the multi-shot mode uses the mechanical shutter. Perhaps the electronic shutter was not enabled.

EDIT: I gues it has to use the mechanical shutter because of the OVF when handheld
For some subjects, hand-held, I often use Live View at waist level with the K-1. It leads me to wonder if you can use PSII with Live View and ES, as well as with OVF which (of necessity?) uses the mechanical shutter. A further question, though, is whether the OVF being blanked during PSII operation is such a problem that ES can't be used for the four exposures, in between the mechanical shutter opening and closing.
03-04-2018, 04:41 AM   #14
Senior Member




Join Date: Jul 2011
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 136
QuoteOriginally posted by acoufap Quote
Seems new pixelshift shows better results under special conditions like standing on a bridge, ship, high building - something with camera movement that a tripod cannot avoid / compensate. So depending on where you take your photos the new mechanism may be very helpful. Thank you very much for the nice report, @JPT!
Thats actually a very nice description by you.
I was wondering where I would might want to use that mode and could not come up with an idea.
But that totally makes sense. The question is how good does it work under these conditions. And could it help like on a tripod during strong winds and when using a long tele lens (I can remember one scenario where it was almost inpossible for me to use PS under these circumstances).

To be honest regular handheld PS shift are not imossible with the K-1.
I did already handheld shots with the regular pixel shift mode which turned out ok (depends on exposure time and technique, pretty similiar to taking long exposures handheld). Even in the original K-1 presentations Haseo (one of the prof. photographers) mentioned he did it on one of his models and it worked.
03-04-2018, 06:33 AM   #15
Loyal Site Supporter
Loyal Site Supporter




Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Maryland
Posts: 595
I do hope that they retain the old sensor-based pixel shift for tripod mounted shots on the K-1ii. The handheld pixelshift sounds like it will be a useful addition but hopefully the tripod-based system will be retained. I haven't seen a definitive answer to whether the K-1ii will retain both although I ordered my K-1ii on the first day of the pre-order.
Reply

Bookmarks
  • Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook
  • Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter
  • Submit Thread to Digg Digg
Tags - Make this thread easier to find by adding keywords to it!
bit, booth, cp, gr, k-1, lens, pentax, pentax news, pentax rumors, people, ricoh, time
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
CP+ 2018 Interview Question Suggestions Adam Pentax News and Rumors 146 03-09-2018 02:12 PM
Ricoh Imaging at CP+ 2018 biz-engineer Pentax News and Rumors 98 03-05-2018 07:20 AM
Pentax K1 Mark II at CP+ March 2018 maw Pentax News and Rumors 9 01-30-2018 12:19 PM
My Report from CP+ 2017 JPT Pentax News and Rumors 26 03-08-2017 07:01 PM
My report from CP+ 2016 JPT Pentax News and Rumors 161 03-07-2016 12:58 PM



All times are GMT -7. The time now is 12:58 AM. | See also: NikonForums.com, CanonForums.com part of our network of photo forums!
  • Red (Default)
  • Green
  • Gray
  • Dark
  • Dark Yellow
  • Dark Blue
  • Old Red
  • Old Green
  • Old Gray
  • Dial-Up Style
Hello! It's great to see you back on the forum! Have you considered joining the community?
register
Creating a FREE ACCOUNT takes under a minute, removes ads, and lets you post! [Dismiss]
Top