I don’t understand all the concern about full frame body size, whether or not shake reduction, whether a K-mount lens will work on a full frame. Seriously?
First: A half century of 35mm cameras have demonstrated that the necessary mechanisms will fit in a body much smaller than just about any current DSLR’s.
Shake Reduction: That’s gotta be what, a quarter inch thick?
LED screens are now paper thin if a little more expensive. The idea of a flipout screen on a pro camera is just silly. That’s for the Walmart crowd.
Processor: Any of the current iPhone, Android, caliber of products have dual processors of way more computational capacity than these petty DSLRs.
The Pentax in-camera lens drive motor obviously hasn’t been a hindrance.
And all these technologies are only getting smaller and more power efficient.
There is absolutely no reason a full frame camera has to be any larger than the current (and perfect) K5, except …Marketing. Mine is BIGGER than yours because I PAID MORE.
As for full frame lenses, if all they did was dust off the CAD files of the already engineered FA series and went back into production using modern coatings, how much could that cost? The hard part is already done. Some folks will complain about the screw drive. Those same folks would complain if you hang em with a new rope.
I like the screw drive, I like the feedback. I find the SDM is so quiet, I question whether it did anything.
They need Zeiss. The quality and the cache. Ricoh needs to patch that relationship and provide some guarantees. If Zeiss can make the reportedly excellent AF zoom for the Sony, they can do it for Pentax. Ricoh will have to make some guarantees to Zeiss.
As they did with the 645D, a lot of work has already done on the K series. It’s not like all these components have to be engineered from scratch. A full frame isn’t that big of a leap.
One more thing, Ricoh Pentax Imaging Corporation should Not put their name on Pentax cameras. Harley Davidson may have benefited technologically from the AMF years but the relationship is not remembered fondly. Singer owned Graflex at one point and made a fine camera but does anyone even remember that?
I don’t want someone coming up to me saying “Oh, I see you bought a PRIC”.
Last edited by MoldyJohn; 10-22-2011 at 12:31 AM.
Reason: additional thought