Originally posted by Oktyabr What you and I think matters little. What EVERYONE ELSE thinks will make or break Pentax. If they are in line with my way of thinking, the K1ii offers better value. Anyone that is seriously concerned about 4k video, 10+ fps, accurate AF, ALREADY owns something else... probably a Sony.
It's just my humble opinion that this camera is catering to a share of the market that Pentax will never possess. They might as well have just released a mirrorless and gotten it over with. Pentax's fame (and fortune) lies in keeping as many of their devout followers as possible and maybe, just maybe, enticing some from over the fence as well.
If this model is priced above the K1ii, *without* a flippy screen, or without GPS/Astro, what can it possibly offer, in that price range, that would make any Sony/Fuji/Olympus/Canikon sell their gear and switch? That's not a rhetorical question, by the way.
As you say, that's just
your humble opinion. Mine differs...
Claiming the K-1II offers better value than the K-3III is like claiming an orange is better value than an apple. They're both fruit, but different. Depending on what you need them for, either could be "better value".
Now three years old - and largely based on a camera from 2016 - the K-1II is still awesome, offering incredible value for money for those who wish to shoot primarily full-frame and requiring exceptional image quality, but not blistering performance or class-leading AF.C - hence why it's often praised as a landscape photography camera, though of course it can be used for much more. Yet, like all full frame DSLRs, it offers rather
poor value for money to those who specifically need a dedicated APS-C body
because the format suits their use cases. It makes a very decent fist of APS-C image capture as a useful feature, but it's far from optimised for such work. It's bigger, heavier, slower, and lower in resolution for the same physical sensor area. These aren't criticisms of the K-1II, but merely acknowledgement of the trade-offs in full frame DSLRs.
The K-3III is going to be expensive at release price, no doubt, and I think Ricoh has arguably made a couple of contentious design choices / prioritisations / omissions; but overall I believe it's going to be one
heck of a camera... and I believe there'll be enough folks specifically wanting a a top-quality, high-performance, dedicated Pentax APS-C rig who'll seriously appreciate what it offers and see the value in it.
Oh, and I don't think Ricoh is too concerned about winning users from other systems or dominating a specific market segment. They've not played that game in the past, and they survived just fine.
These, of course, are just
my humble opinions...
You and I could bat this back and forth
ad infinitum and never agree - so how about we wait until the camera is released and reviewed, and revisit then?
Last edited by BigMackCam; 01-03-2021 at 04:46 AM.