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03-17-2009, 11:09 AM   #61
yus
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I think Pentax will have to announce 24mm by 36mm camera soon

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I strongly believe, that with all the pressure from the competitors coming with the 24mm by 36mm sensor cameras Pentax will have to make one too and soon. They at least have to give a strong notion of going this way RIGHT NOW.

Optics was their stronger point. I have not seen them coming up with anything really remarkable here for the last 20 years. No much different form their bigger brothers though. One real strong point left is that pentax bodies support their older lenses.

The icons of Pentax in 35mm were K1000 and LX. Does Pentax have anything same strong? No way. Mid format sensors will not be in the affordable range for still about at least 5 years.

With its full frame body line, Canon looks professional, strong and reliable. Having introduced their first full frame bodies, Nikon and Sony look somewhat second hand, but still OK. Currently pentax clearly follows the bigger 3 with nothing making it to stand out, except its support for its older lenses. It seems logical to assume that Pentax will continues following the larger brands and continue to support its older lenses.

To summarize it:
I think Pentax is now forced to introduce or announce 24mm by 36mm camera as soon as possible. The only advantage of supporting older optics may become too week of an argument to keep customers, after full frame bodies became more affordable from the 3 bigger brands. On the other hand Pentax have to sell some critical amount of their APS stuff in order not to sustain financial losses. I have a good reason to think that R&D to put in a bigger sensor is not a big deal in terms of electronics or mechanics.

ALL electronics costs go down about 50% each year. The cost of 24mm by 36mm sensors are rapidly coming down. APS feels inconvenient to people used to 24mm by 36mm and does not replace it. APS was a temporary solution for the SLR market to survive. I think APS will gradually come to non-existence within the next 5-7 years.


Last edited by yus; 03-17-2009 at 12:02 PM. Reason: clarity
03-17-2009, 11:41 AM   #62
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QuoteOriginally posted by yus Quote
I strongly believe, that with all the pressure from the competitors coming with the 24mm by 36mm sensor cameras Pentax will have to make one too and soon. They at least have to give a strong notion of going this way RIGHT NOW.
The only pressure is.... there is none..

QuoteOriginally posted by yus Quote
Optics was their stronger point. I have not seen them coming up with anything really remarkable here for 20 years. No much different form their bigger brothers though. One real strong point left is that pentax bodies support their older lenses.

The icons of Pentax in 35mm were K1000 and LX. Does Pentax have anything same strong? No way. Mid format sensors will not be in the affordable range for still about at least 5 years.

With its full frame body line, Canon looks professional, strong and reliable. Nikon and Sony look somewhat second hand, but still OK with their first full frames. Currently pentax clearly follows the bigger 3 with nothing making it to stand out, except its support for its older lenses. It seems logical to assume that Pentax will continues following the larger brands and continue to its support for its older lenses.

To summarize it:
I think Pentax is now forced to introduce or announce 24mm by 36mm camera as soon as possible. The only advantage of supporting older optics may become to week of an argument to keep customers. On the other hand they have to sell some critical amount of their APS stuff in order not to sustain financial losses. I do not think R&D to put in a bigger sensor is a big deal in terms of electronics or mechanics.

ALL electronics cost goes down about 50% each year. The cost of 24mm by 36mm sensors are rapidly coming down. APS feels inconvenient to people used to 24mm by 36mm and does not replace it. APS was a temporary solution for SLR market to survive. I think APS will gradually come to non-existence within the next 5-7 years.
The "opposition" (me included) just says producing a 645D is good enough for the time being....
03-17-2009, 11:49 AM   #63
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From a manufacturing standpoint this issue is not with how many sensors you can fit on a single wafer, it is how many will be error free. For the sake of simplicity lets assume that you can fit 3 APS-C sensors in the same space as 1 FF sensor. Now lets assume a 1/6 error rate when producing APS-C sensors (actual error rate are lower but this makes it easy).

That means 1 in 6 APS-C sensors will come off the wafer with an error. However, that would mean 1 in 2 or half of the FF sensors would have that error. This is the biggest reason why Intel, AMD, and IBM are gunning for the smallest manufacturing process available.

Also the costs of 300mm wafers is not a huge issue, but rather the cost of the equipment to die them. Only a handful of 300mm wafer facilities exist in the world.

Using different sized sensors on a wafer would be more trouble than it is worth. Dies are very hard to make and mixing and matching sensors would require many different dies, which would increase error rate even further.

As for FF and SR, it is possible, and there are tons of solutions. Using the SR argument as a reason for Pentax not to go FF is crazy. They could go with a slightly smaller sensor, introduce in camera correction for the image circle issues, follow sony's lead, not use part of the sensor on certain lenses or when SR is off. Personally I vote the sensor auto crops when SR is on, usually when I want to maximize resolution I shoot with a tripod, lights, or I am shooting landscape with a super wide. All these situations do not require SR.

As far as the benefits of FF are concerned, I migrated to the 5dmkII recently and I will tell you that in a heart beat I would come back to pentax if they offered something compelling. However the huge viewfinder, low noise, and 24mp resolution are amazing. The large viewfinder makes a world of difference.

If I were pentax I would make this...

Pentax K3d
-35mm x 35mm sensor (makes them different, not a huge difference in manufacturing if you can smooth out the process, and would be amazing not to have to rotate to shoot portrait) also the sensor would be smaller than the image circle thus allowing SR plenty of room.
-25mp out right take the MP crown off the market, but with the square sensor you would have a pixel pitch lower than the 5dmkII which produces excellent noise levels and detail, and therefore it could be both a marketing and quality win.
-3.5 FPS when shooting square raws. (you really can't expect more than this.
-7 FPS when shooting in 1.5x crop square or landscape or portrait crop
-1/500th flash sync
-dual SD cards
-consider an evf it would reduce body size, EVFs have came a long ways and you could gurantee 100% coverage and a viewfinder larger than anyone's. Pentax would spend less in developing a faster mirror mechanism as well, and they could lead the evf market instantly.
-ditching the ovf would mean a total rework of the focus system, but pentax has that coming anyhow. there are a few solutions pentax could implement or copy.
-1080P movie mode with full time AF.... yeah i know it is a gimmick, but it works to sell cameras
-weather sealed all over, people are catching on, just look at the number of people going d700 over 5d because of the better seals.

Lens wise pull out all the old FA* lenses and add sdm support. Charge a premium too, people will pay, just look at how much used ones are going for. Pentax could ditch the DA* line up, most pros would move FF anyhow and the used DA* market would be flooded when FF was announced.

They could start with...
FA limited's -3 already in production
-add the 85 1.4 or a 100 F2 to the mix

FA 24-70
FA 70-200

FA 12-24 get sigma to make it (there's is amazing!)

FA 300

DFA 200 macro

This set would satisfy most for the time being and could be an incredible starting point. It might also be worth it for pentax to make a 28-135 F4 kit lens.
03-17-2009, 11:57 AM   #64
yus
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To weak to me

QuoteOriginally posted by jeffkrol Quote
The only pressure is.... there is none..
The "opposition" (me included) just says producing a 645D is good enough for the time being....
My point is that Pentax only competitive advantage in the 35mm/APS sector right now is their support of their older lens line. After the 3 bigger brands came up with the full frame bodies, this argument does not look strong to me any more.

645D is a totally different sector. I agree that producing a 645D would be good enough to keep the brand alive. But, it may not be possible to make this format attractive to customers in the nearest future due to the high cost of the 645D sensor. If the price is around $15,000, why one would not buy Hasselblad or Mamiya instead? Both went digital since it all began.


Last edited by yus; 03-17-2009 at 12:32 PM.
03-17-2009, 12:18 PM   #65
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QuoteOriginally posted by yus Quote
ALL electronics costs go down about 50% each year. The cost of 24mm by 36mm sensors are rapidly coming down. APS feels inconvenient to people used to 24mm by 36mm and does not replace it. APS was a temporary solution for the SLR market to survive. I think APS will gradually come to non-existence within the next 5-7 years.
I wouldn't be so sure about that (sensor cost going down by 50% each year - this is far from happening).
03-17-2009, 01:20 PM   #66
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I wholly concur with Joerg's point when he states that:

QuoteQuote:
From a manufacturing standpoint this issue is not with how many sensors you can fit on a single wafer, it is how many will be error free.
I suspect that 24mm x 36mm digital FF sensors would have probably become the established norm by now, could these wafers have been consistently manufactured 100% error free years ago. This would have consigned APS-C sensors to the proverbial scrap heap, where IMHO they undoubtedly belong. In fact I am sufficiently old enough to recall that when DSLR's were first mooted, the original idea was to replace 24mm x 36mm emulsion with a direct digital equivalent, NOT a half-way-house APS-C compromise. Unfortunately for numerous reasons this obviously proved way more costly and complicated than expected !
I don't think many would disagree that Pentax clearly *missed the boat when the digital bandwagon began gaining critical momentum, but unless they can bring a FF DSLR to the market in the foreseeable future, I seriously believe they are in severe danger of repeating the same *mistake twice in succession.
In addition to other posts, I read in this week's edition of Amateur Photographer that the Pentax MF concept is apparently back on the agenda once again, but will only be made available to well-heeled Japanese aficionados, which doesn't particularly bode well for interested parties elsewhere around the globe !

Best regards
Richard
03-17-2009, 01:26 PM   #67
yus
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sensor cost

QuoteOriginally posted by Kunzite Quote
I wouldn't be so sure about that (sensor cost going down by 50% each year - this is far from happening).
That's because they are not in mass production. As soon as any third party electronics manufacturer joins the game and starts selling them to anybody who has money to buy, they will start going for 50% less each year as all the other electronic garbage does. When and whether this would happen depends on the actual demand for the full frame.

03-17-2009, 01:45 PM   #68
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FF sensor cost

QuoteOriginally posted by Confused Quote
I wholly concur with Joerg's point when he states that:
I suspect that 24mm x 36mm digital FF sensors would have probably become the established norm by now, could these wafers have been consistently manufactured 100% error free years ago.
As the practice shows, being error free is not always necessary. Fuji point and shoot F30 / F31 cameras are live classics by now.
Here is the link with an example were F30 (zoom) point & shoot favorably compares with Nikon D50 + Nikkor 50mm F1.8 (prime) @ ISO 800 !!! http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilmf30/page14.asp, the fact by itself close to impossible.
Fuji put quite large sensors into these cameras which were by all means expensive to manufacture were they error free. But the cameras were magically cheap! Some people noticed though that movies shot with most of these cameras had up to four defective pixels. On the pictures though, the defective pixels were not noticeable. It is not difficult to go further and explain the cheep price of the larger Fuji sensors. They were not error free up to probably 4 defective pixels. Noise-filtering hardware in the camera was removing these defective pixels from the final picture. The right decision was not to bother with filtering dead pixels from the video to keep the cost low and energy efficiency high. I personally bought three F30-s, two in the US and one from Japan. All of them have about four dead pixels. Do I complain? No. I am happy using this outstanding point and shoot. Do others complain? No. Most people probably do not notice anything. In fact the price of a used F30 is now same or more then what they were sold for new.
on amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EJVWGS?ie=UTF8&tag=dpreviewbuybox-20&li...SIN=B000EJVWGS
on ebay http://shop.ebay.com/items/?_nkw=FujiFilm+F30+camera&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat..._dmd=1&_ipg=50

Last edited by yus; 03-17-2009 at 03:01 PM. Reason: clarity
03-17-2009, 02:20 PM   #69
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An interesting note about fuji. One of the keys to the fuji sensor is that it is for lack of a better word modular. Every photosite on the sensor is on its own. This results in the ability to a sensor to contain a few dead pixels. To my knowledge current cmos designs do not have that luxory. However, all cameras will have dead pixels, most of these are just stuck or inactive. Cameras like the K20D mask these pixels by mapping them out though.

A more interesting idea would be to figure out an approach like AMD and Intel take when they transition die sizes. Over the past 10 or so years these companies figured out that when part of a chip is dead they can still salvage the chip as a whole. For example L2 and L3 cache generally takes up about 1/2 to 2/3s of the wafer and accounts for about that many total transistors. Thus if you have errors in part of the cache you can simply list that Pentium as a Celeron turn off the extra dead cache and boom you have a product to sell. AMD even took it so far as to introduce a triple core version of their phenom lines. This means if one core is not functioning it becomes a 3 core rather than a 4 core chip. Very simple 1 common die, tens of product lines. Oddly enough manufacturing the fastest chip on the market and one 6 speed bins down usually costs the same, but the higher end chip is increasingly uncommon in the early stages of a die shrink.

Anyhow all that aside none of this effects pentax at all. They do not design or manufacture their own sensors. In fact I believe canon and sony are the only 2 dslr manufactures that have created their own larger than point and shoot sized sensor.

I would love to see the percent yield of the sensors by leaf, or phase one. The amount of throw away is probably astronomical.

Im sure companies have played around with the obvious solutions like multiple sensors. Someone here once jokingly suggested a spinning sensor, but in principal it could work. Shutter speed would be very limited probably 1/2000th of a second max sync, and I really don't know how quickly a cmos can refresh. Would be interesting to think about some more. Scientist have also toyed with lenses that break up the focal plane and focus different parts of the image onto different sensors, fun stuff.
03-17-2009, 02:38 PM   #70
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http://www.usa.canon.com/uploadedimages/FCK/Image/White%20Papers/Canon_CMOS_WP.pdf

Absolutely amazing info on sensor sizes, economics and manufacturing.

A quick tid bit:

"If the sensors are
APS-C size, there are about 200 of them
on the wafer, depending on layout and
the design of the periphery of each
sensor. For APS-H, there are about 46
or so. Full-frame sensors? Just 20.
Consider, too, that an 8" silicon
wafer usually yields 1000 to 2000 LSI
(Large-Scale Integrated) circuits. If, say, 20 areas have defects, such as dust or
scratches, up to 1980 usable chips remain. With 20 large sensors on a wafer, each
sensor is an easy “target.” Damage anywhere ruins the whole sensor. 20 randomly
distributed dust and scratch marks could ruin the whole batch. This means that the
handling of full-frame sensors during manufacture needs to be obsessively precise,
and therefore they are more expensive."

anyways just came accross that and figured you guys might like it.
03-17-2009, 03:25 PM   #71
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QuoteOriginally posted by yus Quote
That's because they are not in mass production. As soon as any third party electronics manufacturer joins the game and starts selling them to anybody who has money to buy, they will start going for 50% less each year as all the other electronic garbage does. When and whether this would happen depends on the actual demand for the full frame.
Mass production can't help that much. FF sensors are and will remain expensive, as the best way to decrease the costs - size reduction via miniaturization - doesn't work. But I'd like to be proven wrong.
Where did you get that 50%? I doubt this is happening, in any (IC manufacturing-related) field.
03-17-2009, 04:52 PM   #72
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Kunzite makes a good point, microprocessor costs, memory costs, and other electronic components have dropped in price over the years due to improved fabrication processes and cheaper hybrid materials. Micro processors for example shrink in physical size with every die shrink. However, they also get more complex and grow in transistor count, these two counter acting forces tend to even things out, but even so die size has decreased over all by about 33% over the past decade. The original Pentium was roughly 296mm^2 and the current top line core 2 quads stack the scales at around 193mm^2. Where we see price reductions is on the low end. Using the .065nm process you could manufacture an original pentium on a 2mm die that is remarkable.

Camera sensors however, benefit very little from smaller process like most electronics do, simply because they can not change that much in size. Reducing the size of a sensor would be like saying oh cool I can make an antenna that is the size of a toothpick. functionally it is an antenna but you will not pick much up with it. Processors on the other hand are not effected by size, at least not directly.
03-17-2009, 05:35 PM   #73
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QuoteOriginally posted by joerg Quote
Canon_CMOS_WP.pdf
Please, everybody stop citing this propaganda (it compares apples and oranges on purpose).

Thank You.

For further information (and why I am so upset), please refer to:
- https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/517235-post39.html
- https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/516776-post23.html

I.e., the exact numbers are 164 and 66, not 200 and 20. What a simple use of brain power would have revealed as well...

And by the way ... the number of good FF chips per wafer is 44. And a 12" wafer is $2500 to make (before cutting, testing and packaging) ...
03-17-2009, 05:50 PM   #74
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QuoteOriginally posted by ilya80 Quote
Well its natural for a man to look after his own needs first isnt it?

Still I can only hope that Pentax ( Hoya ) can give us an FF opportunity at some point and still stay profitable and prosper.
I can hope that all politicians are intelligent and all humans are nice but that does not make it true, likely or (like most fantasies) any match for reality.

Last edited by *isteve; 03-17-2009 at 05:56 PM.
03-17-2009, 06:11 PM   #75
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QuoteOriginally posted by joerg Quote
Processors on the other hand are not effected by size, at least not directly.
actually the signal has to travel the distance and it is not instant - so the smaller size does benefit processors directly.
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