[Emacs]

BTW. This is how the 77Ltd works on FF: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/lens-clubs/59538-fa-limited-club-207.html#post1690252
Looks like A 50 f1.2 wide open, but sharp and detailed.

[Winder]

BTW. This is how the 77Ltd works on FF: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/lens-clubs/59538-fa-limited-club-207.html#post1690252
Looks like A 50 f1.2 wide open, but sharp and detailed.

As long as you don't focus and recompose you will be fine. Center performance is still going to be excellent. If you focus and compose your subject using the rule of 3rd or golden ratio you will not get the same result.

The picture in your link is obviously cropped to close to a 4/3 ratio. The people who insist that edge softness is not important for shooting portraits at wide apertures must be shooting everything dead center and then cropping the image for composition. For those of us who compose with positive and negative space, or use the golden rule for composition at the time of original capture, having the outer 3rds of the frame render with excellent sharpness very important.

[jsherman999]

Coatings are much superior now, especially for flare resistance.

As are the cements.

Yep. Element separation is a real problem for some of those old zooms in particular, first-hand experience with that. And the flare performance for the most part just isn't there for some of those 70's and 80's lenses.

You can see the results of good coatings on even some of the cheaper modern lenses. The DA 16-45 f4's contrast and color is better than some very expensive older lenses. That said, hoods and a slight contrast bump in post help quite a bit with that.

[Aristophanes]

Mirror-less cameras with CDAF that you can carry everywhere with killer image quality are still good enough. On the other hand, clumsy FF cameras with fast AF and long zooms are still a niche. Those who don't need such a fast AF can accept the tradeoff in favor of a better photography experience, in the same way people don't trade a Leica for a Canon for lacking AF. It all depends on how you use a camera, AF is not all it's cracked up to be.

With a $600 sensor you're still looking at a $2,000 camera body which will have 1/2 the features of a used Nikon D700 which will be less expensive by $500.

Sales will go nowhere if that's the scenario. The Nikon lens line-up destroys anything Pentax could offer in the first 4-5 years. Same for Canon (especially the f/4 glass), and pretty much for Sony. Ricoh would have to lose money for at least 5 years on every FF body and lens sold to get to a reasonable sales level.

If the AF is not close to what other $2,000 cameras offer sales will struggle. A major sales knock against Pentax currently is that the Nikon and Canon AF's are superior. It is the Pentax Achille's Heel. And fast, 3-D PDAF takes up volume in the camera body, so small camera size is out.

FF is about 4% of all DSLR camera sales. Pentax is 5% of the DSLR market. Do the math.

How can a company trying to sell a $2,000 body with few lenses and worse AF starting from such a tiny installed base capture enough customers to break even, much less make a profit?

At the most Pentax could sell maybe a couple of thousand FF DSLR bodies per year. And for $2,000 the size will likely not differ too much from what the other companies do. There are design limitations.

And is there consensus on this forum even as to what customers want. Half want FF in a traditional DSLR. Adam wants one with an integrated grip. Me too, but that's a fairly big camera, as in as big as an Alpha A900 or Nikon D700 +size. But the other half want current "pro" features dropped to make the camera smaller at all costs. Or they live in la la land about how Pentax can magically shrink circuitry (when others cannot; and which Pentax does not even make) to get everything shoved into a 1970's era film body, no features lost. The other half want mirrorless FF. And half those want it to stay k-mount; that's the half that don't understand physics. The other half are fine with a mirrorless new mount, but they do not understand economics. 10% want pellicle, but only because it sounds cool, and everyone is convinced that Pentax will do better than Sony at whatever is released. 50% don't want video, but 10% have already left the brand because Canon makes better video DSLR's. Everyone wants the other guy to have an EVF. Secretly we all want the OVF from an old Olympus OM-2n. Most here think the old F/FA lenses will do just fine for them, but have never used the superior stuff now from Canon or especially Nikon, so they have no real clue what they are talking about. Half think Pentax can get away with a mostly prime lens line-up. The other half know that zooms utterly dominate sales, and make or break a system. A few think Pentax is like Leica. Ten times as many of us see Pentax as a value brand. Some like pretty coloured cameras. The rest want WR on everything. The current cameras cannot tether and the flash system is older than 30% of the automobiles on today's roads.

There is no longer a single camera form factor and design principle like the SLR that can work for the market in consensus and volume. Not on this forum. Not in this thread, even.

My take is I do not think Pentax can even buy enough sensors from Sony (the only source) to get the sensor price down on volume. I'm not even sure from what I have heard that Sony is even willing to sell to anyone but themselves and Nikon. I think Hoya did nothing towards FF at all, and Ricoh, starting from scratch on FF, will take 2-3 years to get a product rolling, especially lenses, by which time the market may have split so much (pellicle, NEX-7, whatever Panasonic is up to, Fuji's newfound love, Leica's recent promises) that demand is not consolidated, but has actually reduced for FF DSLR. Ricoh will have to bet that Sony and Canon and Nikon start a price war in FF sensors in the near future. I see no evidence of that occurring. They like their 40% margins. Some things in this story are probably beyond Pentax's control.

When it comes to FF....99% of customers of Pentax simply do not care. That's the reality. As 99% of people no longer print, APS-C delivers "good enough" IQ for 99% of Pentax's customers and therefore revenues. Pentax's real issue is mirrorless possibilities in APS-C (and how/when Ricoh will kill the GXR).

Adam's letter was well-meaning, but the response he received dodged response on every detail. It was a slightly more than canned thank-you for asking. They don't have the lead time. They don't have the distribution. They don't have the lenses. They don't have the existing market base. They don't have the money to burn for half a decade. And they don't have the sensors.

[Chex]

They don't have the money to burn for half a decade.

I think Ricoh DOES have the money to burn.. without question.

[Winder]

With a $600 sensor you're still looking at a $2,000 camera body which will have 1/2 the features of a used Nikon D700 which will be less expensive by $500.

Sales will go nowhere if that's the scenario. The Nikon lens line-up destroys anything Pentax could offer in the first 4-5 years. Same for Canon (especially the f/4 glass), and pretty much for Sony. Ricoh would have to lose money for at least 5 years on every FF body and lens sold to get to a reasonable sales level.

If the AF is not close to what other $2,000 cameras offer sales will struggle. A major sales knock against Pentax currently is that the Nikon and Canon AF's are superior. It is the Pentax Achille's Heel. And fast, 3-D PDAF takes up volume in the camera body, so small camera size is out.

FF is about 4% of all DSLR camera sales. Pentax is 5% of the DSLR market. Do the math.

How can a company trying to sell a $2,000 body with few lenses and worse AF starting from such a tiny installed base capture enough customers to break even, much less make a profit?

At the most Pentax could sell maybe a couple of thousand FF DSLR bodies per year. And for $2,000 the size will likely not differ too much from what the other companies do. There are design limitations.

And is there consensus on this forum even as to what customers want. Half want FF in a traditional DSLR. Adam wants one with an integrated grip. Me too, but that's a fairly big camera, as in as big as an Alpha A900 or Nikon D700 +size. But the other half want current "pro" features dropped to make the camera smaller at all costs. Or they live in la la land about how Pentax can magically shrink circuitry (when others cannot; and which Pentax does not even make) to get everything shoved into a 1970's era film body, no features lost. The other half want mirrorless FF. And half those want it to stay k-mount; that's the half that don't understand physics. The other half are fine with a mirrorless new mount, but they do not understand economics. 10% want pellicle, but only because it sounds cool, and everyone is convinced that Pentax will do better than Sony at whatever is released. 50% don't want video, but 10% have already left the brand because Canon makes better video DSLR's. Everyone wants the other guy to have an EVF. Secretly we all want the OVF from an old Olympus OM-2n. Most here think the old F/FA lenses will do just fine for them, but have never used the superior stuff now from Canon or especially Nikon, so they have no real clue what they are talking about. Half think Pentax can get away with a mostly prime lens line-up. The other half know that zooms utterly dominate sales, and make or break a system. A few think Pentax is like Leica. Ten times as many of us see Pentax as a value brand. Some like pretty coloured cameras. The rest want WR on everything. The current cameras cannot tether and the flash system is older than 30% of the automobiles on today's roads.

There is no longer a single camera form factor and design principle like the SLR that can work for the market in consensus and volume. Not on this forum. Not in this thread, even.

My take is I do not think Pentax can even buy enough sensors from Sony (the only source) to get the sensor price down on volume. I'm not even sure from what I have heard that Sony is even willing to sell to anyone but themselves and Nikon. I think Hoya did nothing towards FF at all, and Ricoh, starting from scratch on FF, will take 2-3 years to get a product rolling, especially lenses, by which time the market may have split so much (pellicle, NEX-7, whatever Panasonic is up to, Fuji's newfound love, Leica's recent promises) that demand is not consolidated, but has actually reduced for FF DSLR. Ricoh will have to bet that Sony and Canon and Nikon start a price war in FF sensors in the near future. I see no evidence of that occurring. They like their 40% margins. Some things in this story are probably beyond Pentax's control.

When it comes to FF....99% of customers of Pentax simply do not care. That's the reality. As 99% of people no longer print, APS-C delivers "good enough" IQ for 99% of Pentax's customers and therefore revenues. Pentax's real issue is mirrorless possibilities in APS-C (and how/when Ricoh will kill the GXR).

Adam's letter was well-meaning, but the response he received dodged response on every detail. It was a slightly more than canned thank-you for asking. They don't have the lead time. They don't have the distribution. They don't have the lenses. They don't have the existing market base. They don't have the money to burn for half a decade. And they don't have the sensors.

You're really making this way more complicated than it needs to be.

Will Pentax lose money on a FF camera for the first 5+ years? Probably. Sony could not sell enough to make it profitable, but that does not mean they did not do it. You have to start some where.

There are companies other than Sony with the ability to make FF sensors. Samsung is the obvious choice, but I'm sure Sony is willing to sell to anyone. There is no hard rule that a professional Pentax would have to be FF. APS-H is a good compromise and will still work well with legacy glass. APS-H is the largest sensor that can be make with a single mask and no stitching. It has cost advantages over FF, unless newer production is allowing for single mask FF sensors. And I think Canon proved that APS-H is more than capable of being in a "pro" camera.

Pentax AF is just as good as the Canon 5DII and Sony A900. It is not D3 or 1DIV fast, but it is more that fast enough.

Pentax would have to sell it for $2,600 - $3,000. There are a lot of technologies that carry over from K-5 and 645D. Overall R&D cost would not be a big factor. Menus and controls would be similar to the K-5.

There is a full line of FF Sigma and Tamron glass that can be used, and it is often better quality than the Pentax option.

Personally sensor size is not a huge issue. I would rather see Pentax introduce a line if really high quality glass with an improved (much improved) SDM. Developing a FF camera line will be a 5+ year commitment, but it starts with producing desirable glass. Glass is what will attract people to they system. Bodies come and go.

[unfocused]

A prism finder with 100% DR and 0ms latency is the benchmark.

Sorry, what does that mean? A nice bright viewfinder?

If there was any mileage in pellical I imagine Canon would have revived it. They tried to overcome the loss of light with ultra-fast glass, but big, heavy lenses defeat the object of this discussion. How you keep the pellical squeaky clean and distortion-free to ensure a high quality image I don't know. It seems doomed to fail.

---

Last edited by unfocused; 10-23-2011 at 11:32 PM.

[Aristophanes]

Will Pentax lose money on a FF camera for the first 5+ years? Probably. Sony could not sell enough to make it profitable, but that does not mean they did not do it. You have to start some where.

Or wait until FF sensor fabs come down in cost and the ability to compete on sensor size makes more financial sense.

Losing money for 5 years in today's climate, all for 4% of a 5% installed base, using inferior AF and other features compared to the competition will guarantee that the market for a Pentax FF never grows beyond core Pentaxians. By definition it cannot take market share from Canon, Nikon, or Sony.

So why lose money for 5 years on that inevitability? Huge risk. It may very well be a permanent loss.

FF is actually getting more expensive relative to APS-C. That makes selling enough units even more difficult, especially relative to Pentax's minuscule installed base.

The only way for FF to make a breakthrough for Pentax is for the price range to fall well below $2,000 per unit with features equivalent to the previous generation of FF bodies. At this point profitability is achievable. This starts with sensors.

And Pentax DSLR sales are still increasing per unit volume. There's growth without FF. For every FF defector there's still 2-3 more people buying into DSLR's through Pentax.

Sometimes the best strategy is to say no to some of your customers in order to stop bleeding.

[Supernaut]

I wonder how many new Pentax users that are lost because there is no FF upgrade path? A FF cam do not have to be profitable, it makes the camera lineup attractive which increases sales. Directly or indirectly.

[Asahiflex]

Losing money for 5 years in today's climate, all for 4% of a 5% installed base, using inferior AF and other features compared to the competition will guarantee that the market for a Pentax FF never grows beyond core Pentaxians. By definition it cannot take market share from Canon, Nikon, or Sony.

Why the hate? There's so much negativity in the above quote... If everyone had your opinion, Aristophanes, we would all drive the same car, have the same TV, use the same camera with the same lenses (and even have the same opinion). Heck, if it were you we would probably still live in turf huts.

"By definition". Every post of yours oozes that you want to maintain the status quo. Pentax is not allowed to get bigger because they are not good enough. They cannot grow, they cannot take market share, they cannot produce a FF, they have inferior AF and other features...

I think we should send you to Canon and Nikon land where everything is so much better. And you belong there, because you seem to be a follower, not a trendsetter.

[Rondec]

With a $600 sensor you're still looking at a $2,000 camera body which will have 1/2 the features of a used Nikon D700 which will be less expensive by $500.

Sales will go nowhere if that's the scenario. The Nikon lens line-up destroys anything Pentax could offer in the first 4-5 years. Same for Canon (especially the f/4 glass), and pretty much for Sony. Ricoh would have to lose money for at least 5 years on every FF body and lens sold to get to a reasonable sales level.

If the AF is not close to what other $2,000 cameras offer sales will struggle. A major sales knock against Pentax currently is that the Nikon and Canon AF's are superior. It is the Pentax Achille's Heel. And fast, 3-D PDAF takes up volume in the camera body, so small camera size is out.

FF is about 4% of all DSLR camera sales. Pentax is 5% of the DSLR market. Do the math.

How can a company trying to sell a $2,000 body with few lenses and worse AF starting from such a tiny installed base capture enough customers to break even, much less make a profit?

At the most Pentax could sell maybe a couple of thousand FF DSLR bodies per year. And for $2,000 the size will likely not differ too much from what the other companies do. There are design limitations.

And is there consensus on this forum even as to what customers want. Half want FF in a traditional DSLR. Adam wants one with an integrated grip. Me too, but that's a fairly big camera, as in as big as an Alpha A900 or Nikon D700 +size. But the other half want current "pro" features dropped to make the camera smaller at all costs. Or they live in la la land about how Pentax can magically shrink circuitry (when others cannot; and which Pentax does not even make) to get everything shoved into a 1970's era film body, no features lost. The other half want mirrorless FF. And half those want it to stay k-mount; that's the half that don't understand physics. The other half are fine with a mirrorless new mount, but they do not understand economics. 10% want pellicle, but only because it sounds cool, and everyone is convinced that Pentax will do better than Sony at whatever is released. 50% don't want video, but 10% have already left the brand because Canon makes better video DSLR's. Everyone wants the other guy to have an EVF. Secretly we all want the OVF from an old Olympus OM-2n. Most here think the old F/FA lenses will do just fine for them, but have never used the superior stuff now from Canon or especially Nikon, so they have no real clue what they are talking about. Half think Pentax can get away with a mostly prime lens line-up. The other half know that zooms utterly dominate sales, and make or break a system. A few think Pentax is like Leica. Ten times as many of us see Pentax as a value brand. Some like pretty coloured cameras. The rest want WR on everything. The current cameras cannot tether and the flash system is older than 30% of the automobiles on today's roads.

There is no longer a single camera form factor and design principle like the SLR that can work for the market in consensus and volume. Not on this forum. Not in this thread, even.

My take is I do not think Pentax can even buy enough sensors from Sony (the only source) to get the sensor price down on volume. I'm not even sure from what I have heard that Sony is even willing to sell to anyone but themselves and Nikon. I think Hoya did nothing towards FF at all, and Ricoh, starting from scratch on FF, will take 2-3 years to get a product rolling, especially lenses, by which time the market may have split so much (pellicle, NEX-7, whatever Panasonic is up to, Fuji's newfound love, Leica's recent promises) that demand is not consolidated, but has actually reduced for FF DSLR. Ricoh will have to bet that Sony and Canon and Nikon start a price war in FF sensors in the near future. I see no evidence of that occurring. They like their 40% margins. Some things in this story are probably beyond Pentax's control.

When it comes to FF....99% of customers of Pentax simply do not care. That's the reality. As 99% of people no longer print, APS-C delivers "good enough" IQ for 99% of Pentax's customers and therefore revenues. Pentax's real issue is mirrorless possibilities in APS-C (and how/when Ricoh will kill the GXR).

Adam's letter was well-meaning, but the response he received dodged response on every detail. It was a slightly more than canned thank-you for asking. They don't have the lead time. They don't have the distribution. They don't have the lenses. They don't have the existing market base. They don't have the money to burn for half a decade. And they don't have the sensors.

I'm certainly not a strong full frame advocate, but many of the things that you mentioned in your post are things that Pentax has to work on -- hard -- if they want to continue selling cameras. This is whether or not they release a full frame camera. They need to replace SDM, increase the number of focus points on their top end camera, update flash performance, etc.

Do that in an APS-C body and I actually think most people will be happy, but I'm OK if they would do it in a full frame body and have the features trickle down to APS-C over time.

Of course it will take money in order to improve these things, but the other option is just to go away as a camera company, or maybe to turn into a "poor man's Leica."

[Emacs]

I wonder how many new Pentax users that are lost because there is no FF upgrade path? A FF cam do not have to be profitable, it makes the camera lineup attractive which increases sales. Directly or indirectly.

And how many old ones were lost due to absence of FF too

[eddie1960]

it's too bad they aren't geared up to go already to be quite frank. Sony is out of the game for a while (and most importantly for the Christmas season) Nikon is out of the game as well the D800 was delayed due to the Thailand situation (some parts must originate there)
Canon is going to have a very good christmas season I think

[andygonza]

When it comes to FF....99% of customers of Pentax simply do not care. That's the reality. As 99% of people no longer print, APS-C delivers "good enough" IQ for 99% of Pentax's customers and therefore revenues. Pentax's real issue is mirrorless possibilities in APS-C (and how/when Ricoh will kill the GXR).

Tell us when and where did you take a poll of Pentax users to arrive at your results?

[Rondec]

Tell us when and where did you take a poll of Pentax users to arrive at your results?

In other news: 62 percent of statistics are made up.