You know now that Samsung is making sensors for k20D and GX20 I suppose aps-h is more possible. Alot of people say the current DA lenses will image fine on aps-h. Pentax still gets their senors from Sony for K200D and K2000 so I'd guess it would come from Samsung.

I was turned off by K20D at $1,299 but when I bought it at $689 last November I felt it was a heck of a good deal. Pentax will need to WOW diehards to buy quickly at full price. Your guess on it being time for aps-h could be just the thing to drive sales upon issue.

I'm still waiting for Pentax Canada to at least fix the pricing here to be reasonable.(Lenses are also rediculous) I find nothing special about this camera compared to other brands to make me pay a high price for it.

That was a great deal you got and reasonable for pentax. They want $300 more here and can really just kiss my -censored- !

Love the brand, hate Pentax feeble attempt at wanting my $$$$.

Pentax diehards would probably be wow-ed already by a SAFOX IX module and 5+ FPS.

But yeah, APS-H would possibly lure in diehards to buy a new DSLR at launch date. I think Leica's M8 also uses a 1.3x crop sensor. Any idea who makes that for them?

I don't know in your neck of the woods, but the high prices for Pentax gear where I am is partly due to a government wanting to tax the hell out of consumer electronics (but yeah, the other part of it is plain screwed pricing by the local distributor). Maybe the tax levied on electronic imports is also high in your country?

leica m8 sensor manufacturer - Google Search


Kodak KAF-10500 image sensor for Leica M8

The D80 does of course offer weather sealing and sensor based shake reduction, both two technologies that adds size to the camera. The K10D and K20D are actually small, when considering what they offer!

AF points are done through optics and mirrors to divide the light so it can hit the AF sensors at different places.
You can't add AF points by firmware.

I don't think the D80 has sensor based shake reduction.

Nikon D80 Review: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review

How would they make all of the money on VR lenses if they did!

I am thinking of opening an online "lost & found" shop where people could come and retrieve all the ironical comments that are lost through internet posting at a really small price....

Roland, would you be my first client??

Aden Camera has the K20D body for $850 Cdn: Aden Camera
Henry's has it for $900 Cdn: PENTAX K20D DSLR BODY

Samsungian paid $689 US, which is $877 Cdn at today's rate.

Thanks for the info! That piece of info surprised me a bit. I thought Kodak only makes medium-format sensors and compact sensors nowadays. Guess I got them wrong.

Well, "nowadays" is relative, as the M8 has been around for a while. Kodak sensors were also used in the Olympus E-1, E-300, E-500, E-400, and possibly also used for the scrapped E-2 project (they ended up skipping it and going to the E-3, which has a panasonic sensor).

Sorry about that, I was in a rush and read the post without realizing what Roland was really saying. I will say that emoticons help avoid situations such as these.

Your thinking like I'm thinking The k300d will have 14+MPs and use AAs as before, the K30 will have 20+MPs , I will not upgrade from my k200d unless the k300d has live view. The k400d will have 20+MP and use AAs and the k40 will be 24+MP and the k500d......see a trend developing here?

Barry

I am all for the use of the 14,6MP sensor in the K300 but not really fond of the idea of a 20+MP K30D...

Since 14,6MP is still on top of today's APS-C resolution, I think it would be a better idea to stay there a while and work on quality (DR+noise) as well as getting the AF up a notch.

Pentax has limited ressources and maybe the best strategy is to focus on one major upgrade at a time (sensor for the K20, AF for the K30, sensor again for K40...)

I'd be happy to see the K30 sport at least one central f2.8 AF point (but would be really pleased if they put 4 of them at the corners of the nine cross AF sensors + 1 center) for increased precision with f2.8 lenses and faster.

Of course, some more AF points + faster FPS (5-6fps?) for tracking and a 1/8000s X-1/250s shutter would be nice bonuses but increased accuracy with fast lenses would be my priority.

Using the same sensor on k300 and k30 would be great: different weight and ergonomics, viewfinders (and maybe ISO ranges) should be enough, and it would be a huge save in components price. Maybe using always the same sensor was the only idea right in the whole *ist series.