Originally posted by Rondec Personally, I believe the reports of smoothing are way over blown.
I have no problem with you holding that view.
However, the damage has been done.
We can argue about the extent of the damage, but undeniably the "accelerator" issue has caused bad press for the K-1 II and it would have been 100% avoidable.
Originally posted by Rondec The answer is that the K-1 II makes such an iso much more usable and that's enough.
I disagree.
It is fine if someone finds their family pictures quicker to process now.
It is not fine to impose some RAW smoothing on everyone whether they benefit from it or not.
Originally posted by Rondec And I don't think that Ricoh feels that this is a big deal because folks, like yourself, who are upset over the K-1 II's smoothing of RAW images...
I'm not "upset".
I disagree with the notion of messing with RAW data, but I'm at least equally concerned with the damage the bad press may have done to the K-1 II sales and to Pentax in general.
Originally posted by Rondec ...just will buy a K-1, if they were ever interested in Pentax in the first place.
Some may make that choice but
- the K-1 won't be around forever; didn't we first "hear" about the K-1 II by virtue of the K-1 becoming "unavailable"?
- what if someone likes the K-1 but reads the K-1 II development as seeing no future going forward? They could be worried about not having an upgrade path that provides clean RAW data and/or wonder about the future of Pentax if it does so badly in a DPReview.
I don't think you can just brush away such concerns.
Originally posted by Rondec In the end, Ricoh will make money on the K-1 II
Yes, they will, but I'm convinced they could have made more money if they had given the people to opt out of the RAW smoothing, since that would have avoided the respective bad press.
Originally posted by Rondec As far as DP Review sinking Pentax's ship, I doubt that highly.
They may not be able to sink it entirely, but I think it would be naive to believe that they don't have some influence on some readers. Pentax can use every single customer and could do with some enthusiastic reporting, instead of being "outed" as a RAW file manipulator.
Originally posted by Rondec but my guess is that they'll do the best they can to satisfy everyone, meaning I suppose, that no one will truly be happy.
Please tell me how would it be possible -- for this one "accelerator" issue -- for not everyone truly being happy, if the processing were optional?
The freedom to opt in or out must make everyone truly happy.
I agree with you that people will find ways to be unhappy about something in general, but the "accelerator" business could have been easily removed from the equation! No single soul would have ever had to be unhappy about it. I guess DPReview would have criticised the default setting, if it had been "on" -- they are just childish like that -- but in this case it is clearly DPReview embarrassing themselves as opposed to a camera exhibiting a trait that can reasonably be criticised.
Anyhow, this is off-topic in this thread, isn't it?