[123jippo]

suddenly i just had bad feeling about pentax ff...i hope so much that u guys know better

[Kunzite]

Honestly I just did realize that there will be no Pentax FF DSRL. This is business and FF is not going to make much profit for Ricoh. They just not want to say no strait cos its not good to do business in that way. There is no Pentax FF digital and newer will be. That has been plan in Pentax for many years now. As result there is no FF zoom lenses in production.

Ok we all know this allready. But there is something new happened that we must notice. FF has been like maybeif promised to come for long time now but still nothing. Instead this forum has started to marketing other brand FF dsrl cameras for pentax users to use with their current FF pentax lenses. This all can read between the lines. No Pentax FF DSRL is coming sorry.

Suddenly you realized that. Interesting.
Could you please inform the Ricoh Imaging's Head of Business Development, Mr. Kitazawa, because he doesn't know what you just realized? Also call Ricoh Imaging Russia and tell them to stop lying, too, because they indicated Pentax has FF products planned.

[ElJamoquio]

As of six months ago, they had a FF planned. All rumors and press releases since then have indicated that as well.

The only question is 'when'. If it's late 2014 I think it's just a silly amount of time, but I'm not in the camera making business.

[traderdrew]

Does anybody actually want 24MP, let alone 36MP? Whatever for? There are very few professionals left...

I want those 24MPs for strong crops. I will argue about it too. One of my friends is one of the best photographers in Florida and she would rather use her 24MP Sony than her 16MP A55.

[ElJamoquio]

24MP is awesome. 36 is great for FF but I don't know that I'd want it for APS-C.

[PePe]

24MP is awesome. 36 is great for FF but I don't know that I'd want it for APS-C.

I quess 36 MP for FF is pretty much state of the art for the time being. But I cannot see cell development ending here.

[ElJamoquio]

I quess 36 MP for FF is pretty much state of the art for the time being. But I cannot see cell development ending here.

I agree. It's just that in the tradeoff (right now) between memory/hard disk and extra resolution, I don't see expanding beyond 24 MP on APS-C as being that valuable (to me).

In the future when memory and hard drives are less expensive a 36 MP APS-C might be worth it to me for the extra ability to crop.

[PePe]

I agree. It's just that in the tradeoff (right now) between memory/hard disk and extra resolution, I don't see expanding beyond 24 MP on APS-C as being that valuable (to me).

In the future when memory and hard drives are less expensive a 36 MP APS-C might be worth it to me for the extra ability to crop.

For APS-C 24 MP is quite sufficient at the moment. Also for me :-)
However, to get even close to the same pixel density for FF you would need a lot more MP´s, actually more than 36 MP.

[falconeye]

For APS-C 24 MP is quite sufficient at the moment. Also for me :-)
However, to get even close to the same pixel density for FF you would need a lot more MP´s, actually more than 36 MP.

At the same technology, #MP should scale with 1/crop^2. However, larger sensor sizes seem to bump their MP at bigger steps, meaning their #MP moves forth and back between like 1/crop^0 (read, is the same) and 1/crop^2 wrt to the next smaller sensor size. I found that heuristically, it is safe to assume #MP to scale like 1/crop on average.

This means that 14, 18, 24, 36, 60 MP are balanced resolutions for 1", m43, APSC, FF, MF(54x40) with a moderate advantage wrt reach for the smaller format, and a moderate advantage wrt image quality for the bigger format (with differences both smaller than a comparison by crop factor alone would suggest).

The next step will be a "resolution shift down" with 24MP for m43, 36MP for APSC, 55/60MP for FF and 80-100MP for MF.
Seems like a shift is due about every 3 years or so, with 2012 marking the current state. This would make 2015 the year for 55MP FF and 36MP APSC.

Of course, it won't last forever. I see a point of vanishing return around 100 MP for FF. Assuming a slow down of pixel count increases, this would make 2020 the year where this point is reached (60 MP APSC, 100MP FF). With probably no significant increase in pixel counts afterwards. And an emphasis on preprocessed downsampled raw output.

I may be totally off track. Its just my 2 cts, my current best guess.

[gazonk]

In the future when memory and hard drives are less expensive a 36 MP APS-C might be worth it to me for the extra ability to crop.

Just the other day it occured to me that the computer I used 22 years ago would only have room for 1 or 2 K-5 DNG files - it had a 40MB HD.

I expect to be using 500TB laptop (or whatever I will be using for image processing) drives and at least 16TB of memory card or in-camera storage in 15 years when I might retire and hopefully have a lot of time for photography. That would leave room for 1000 16GB images on the camera - not even 250mp 32 bit RAW images will be that large :-)

[mamethot]

Or we might see a completelly new sensor tech where number of MP won't be in the same scale...who knows.

[gazonk]

Or we might see a completelly new sensor tech where number of MP won't be in the same scale...who knows.

One thing we might see are cameras that "bracket everything" i.e. for each shot bracket both exposure and focus, and take a quick series of shots as well. If you end up with perhaps several hundred single RAW images for each single shot you want to take, maybe 16GB per image isn't unrealistic at all..

[ElJamoquio]

Just the other day it occured to me that the computer I used 22 years ago would only have room for 1 or 2 K-5 DNG files - it had a 40MB HD.

I expect to be using 500TB laptop (or whatever I will be using for image processing) drives and at least 16TB of memory card or in-camera storage in 15 years when I might retire and hopefully have a lot of time for photography. That would leave room for 1000 16GB images on the camera - not even 250mp 32 bit RAW images will be that large :-)

In 1998... hmmm... I had seen a digital camera. I recall a coworker explaining that his camera took an ENTIRE 3.5" FLOPPY DISK for each picture taken.

That's 1.44MB. I believe it was JPG but it could've been BMP which of course would mean it wasn't high resolution.

Right now I'm using 64 GB cards, about 40,000x larger. It's tough to believe that on-camera memory will be 2800TB in 2028 but we'll see. Perhaps it'll be off-camera on 'the cloud'.

[gazonk]

In 1998... hmmm... I had seen a digital camera. I recall a coworker explaining that his camera took an ENTIRE 3.5" FLOPPY DISK for each picture taken.

That's 1.44MB.

Well, you were a bit late , in 1994 you could already buy cameras with 1MB built-in flash, and in 1998 you could get 128MB flash cards. I think 1998 or 99 was the year I stopped using floppy disks...

[ElJamoquio]

Well, you were a bit late ,

I know! I was still <shudder> using film. Actually at that point I was barely taking pics because I was sick of film's drawbacks. My pics certainly weren't very good.

Now I've had a burr over the past year or so to buy a film camera again.

Hmm, so 128GB now, 128MB then... 128TB in 2028? That seems more reasonable. Unfortunately we'd have to have a 'quantum' shift in pics before we'd be taking pics that would require that amount of space.

Let's say that in 98 the average digital camera was 1 MB... maybe 2 MB 'raw'?
Today the average DSLR is maybe 20 MB, give or take, raw... so 10x the MB. In the same time period storage went up by a factor of 1024, give or take.