[luftfluss]

In post #209 of this thread:

Better than D500.
more better than K-1，K3II.

Also, in the Ricoh video from May 14, the Ricoh folks state "...improved tracking performance..."

I'm assuming that Ooku's post is stating the aspirations of the engineering teams efforts, not necessarily what the result will be. But if the K-New gets fairly close to the D500's tracking AF performance, that will be a quantum leap for Pentax.

[nzondlo]

In post #209 of this thread:



Also, in the Ricoh video from May 14, the Ricoh folks state "...improved tracking performance..."

I'm assuming that Ooku's post is stating the aspirations of the engineering teams efforts, not necessarily what the result will be. But if the K-New gets fairly close to the D500's tracking AF performance, that will be a quantum leap for Pentax.

Is OP a Ricoh Pentax representative, or have an inside source like Asahiman?

[gaweidert]

Your "long hikes" must be longer than what we take.

I am also "old and retired", but my wife are still taking two mile hikes for the expressed purpose of seeing things - something that driving in a truck cannot be a substitute for. We are now talking about how to reduce the length of these, but we will miss them.

That is the problem. Hurt my back in March 2019. Still recovering. Before that I was working out once or twice a day on the home gym. Spending 20 to 40 minutes a day on a stepper and taking 2 mile walks. Just trying to get back to walking some distance now. I can now mow the lawn if a take a few minutes break two thirds of the way through.


I would like to say that I hurt my back by lifting a car off a child, but all I did was stand up from the loveseat and turn to walk. Never had a great back since I hurt it as a kid, but never anything like this last injury.


Public Service Announcement "Never make your sciatic nerve mad at you."

[alfa75ts]

"Never make your sciatic nerve mad at you."

I somehow did that in my sleep. Half an hour just to get out of bed! Stretches will help keep your sciatic happy.

[FozzFoster]

"Never make your sciatic nerve mad at you."

Although I've never experienced it personally, my father had debilitating sciatica, was on heavy medication for pain that made him loopy in the head.
He started going to acupuncture and is completely off the meds now..
Might be worth trying!

EDIT:
Also to stay on topic.... I think the new APS-C flagship will definitely not benefit from acupuncture...

[BROO]

Is OP a Ricoh Pentax representative, or have an inside source like Asahiman?

Maybe you could Google 'OoKU meaning'

[RobA_Oz]

Better than D500.
more better than K-1，K3II.

We can all imagine how the DPR writers will frame this, can’t we? Not that it will matter much around here.

[robbiec]

I wonder if everyone is looking through a set of lens that they want to see. Let's make a few assumptions:

- Pentax have historically shared their 'Flagship architecture' across formats - I see no reason for this to change, economies of scale, ease of support, why redesign a wheel if you have a working model.
- I believe the sensors used in the K-3 series, K-1 series and the 645Z series came from the same family of Sony designs, scaled up and down.

So the same base architecture was used for K-3 gave 8.2 fps, on the K-1 this became 3.7-9, on the 645Z lower again.

Step forward to 2019, go to Sony, what do you have on the shelf? We have x family of sensors. What formats do they support? OK, right, let's see what Milbeaut have that is equivalent. We have z family, it does this and this and is backward compatible mostly with the stuff you bought from us before but we've upgraded some of the interfaces, it runs faster and cooler, yadda, yadda.

So the engineers sit down and list out the needs, wants, nice to haves, match off with sensor and controller and that's the baseline. Except it is not just for the K-New, it will also cover the different formats. So what has changed or markedly improved over the last 9 years? Process tech is one, quick bit of Googling suggests that Milbeaut stuff is available in anything from 90nm down to 7nm (dunno if this is with Samsung or TSMC or both and probably 2 generations too new for Pentax , 9 years ago 28nm would have been bleeding edge outside of mobile or cpu), memory would have gone from DDR2/3 to DDR4, external I/O (usb) is still fragmented but there have been useful improvements there too, lastly storage is where arguably the greatest improvements have been made on the throughput per dollar. Add all those up and you're looking at an architecture that will be 4K 60fps native at the minimum, probably in or around 15fps at 24MP, 7+ on 36MP with write speeds to cards at 150MB/s.

So is the K-New an action camera? Can be or it might be tuned to the mechanical shutter. Will there be an all round improvement through the whole processing stack, highly probable. Will AF be improved to D500 level? , nah, but it will be an improvement. Is the K-New important? Very.

[thibs]

I'd like to add: I don't expect Milbeaut. IMO they ditched it.
The GR went with, if I remember correctly, Android of some flavour.
Did they keep Milbeaut? I'd very surprised.
I don't think they would change OS and keep the Soc (System On Chip), if you do this, you change the Soc too, not worth it otherwise.

[robbiec]

I'd like to add: I don't expect Milbeaut. IMO they ditched it.
The GR went with, if I remember correctly, Android of some flavour.
Did they keep Milbeaut? I'd very surprised.
I don't think they would change OS and keep the Soc (System On Chip), if you do this, you change the Soc too, not worth it otherwise.

If they shifted from Milbeaut then that is a fundamental rewrite of their entire code base for SLR. Would account for the extended time frame for the K-New (Covid notwithstanding) as it would be a big job. Possible for sure.

[RobA_Oz]

I’m well away from current knowledge in electronics, so I couldn’t comment on the specifics, but it’s my understanding that the reasons for Pentax sticking with earlier versions of processor and connectivity hardware were largely economic, to accommodate a particular pricing structure. Now that the consensus seems to be that the pricing of this new body will be much higher than previous ones, there must be room for some major advances in the technologies it uses. To suggest otherwise would imply a much lower sales target or simple price gouging. While there’s a possibility that the new body won’t sell as well as the K-3 series, I doubt that Ricoh is the sort of company that would indulge in the latter.

[manishved]

I still fail to understand why Ricoh/Hoya/Pentax never improved the AF speeds over all these years..... Hoping for a much snappier AF performance.

[pres589]

I still fail to understand why Ricoh/Hoya/Pentax never improved the AF speeds over all these years..... Hoping for a much snappier AF performance.

AF performance improved over the years. It's not an easy thing to measure for most people or reviewers. I think there was a noticed improvement going from the K-7 and K-5 to the K-5 II and IIs (which is another reason why I went for that body over others when I was last shopping for a digital body).

[reh321]

I still fail to understand why Ricoh/Hoya/Pentax never improved the AF speeds over all these years..... Hoping for a much snappier AF performance.

Over which years?
The KP is much much better than my K-50 is.

[Batman_]

Well I shot some wedding portraits and it was noticeable the K5 was far inferior to the K3. In a controlled situation the K5 was fine (except for tungsten light conditions) but under pressure I much preferred the K3. One reason i dumped the K5.

Now the KP is better again although not as big a jump as from K5>>K3. The problem being the small buffer of the KP can be just as big a bottleneck as the AF itself.

Still I expect the K New to be a welcome step up. Improved speed and tracking would be nice but for me wider coverage of AF area would be just as important an upgrade as AF pure speed.

Also, accurate AF of wide aperture lenses on outside AF points would be really handy.