[ElJamoquio]

The 7D fits my hand better than the K-5 but I hate-hate-hate the button layout of the 7D. I also am willing to sacrifice ergonomics (7D grip shape/size) for portability (K-5 grip shape/size).

[Miguel]

The 7D fits my hand better than the K-5 but I hate-hate-hate the button layout of the 7D. I also am willing to sacrifice ergonomics (7D grip shape/size) for portability (K-5 grip shape/size).

This stuff is quite subjective.
The more I used the 7D the more Iiked the button layout; conversely, the more I use the K-3, the less I like it.

M

[ElJamoquio]

This stuff is quite subjective.

Absolutely.

[Paul MaudDib]

But, if I understand the argument correctly the need for FF is going to be driven by the adoption of 4k monitors. Hmm, makes sense but is that going to happen? How many people are going to buy a new, big, expensive monitor so that their pictures look worse; requiring them to buy a new, bigger, expensive camera and lenses just to get back to the image quality they already had?

It's not just "the image quality they already had", 4K monitors provide a much higher PPI. You know how Apple users love to jerk themselves off over how great Retina displays are? There's a reason for that, high-PPI screens really do look good. However, desktop monitor technology has basically stagnated since 2000 or so. My monitor in 2014 isn't much higher resolution than my CRT in 2000 (1600x900 vs 1280x1024). Unlike the the mobile device market, no company's marketing department has really bothered telling consumers about the benefits of 4K (or high PPI in general) on the desktop. But the benefit is the same as the mobile market: retina displays look better, and particularly for the professional market you can work natively with 4K video or image sources.

They're also not really expensive. Right now you can pick up a cheap 39" Japanese 30hz 4K screen for $500. This year at CES Dell announced they're going to bring a $700 30hz 28" screen to market, and ASUS or someone announced a 30" 60hz screen for the same price. Smaller screens will have higher PPI for equal resolution. The catch here is that Seiki and the Dell screen only have HDMI 1.4, which maxes out at 30hz at 4K. 30hz is really a bit slow for some things (gaming), but it's no problem for a lot of others.

So would you pay $700 for a TV if it had quadruple the resolution of 1080p? That's not really that expensive for a TV (or in camera dollars), and you get a lot of utility in other areas. I have to admit I'm thinking about one of the 60hz screens when they come out, it would be great for programming work and games would be spectacular at that much resolution. So will movies, when 4k video streams become common.

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Last edited by Paul MaudDib; 01-11-2014 at 11:40 AM.

[Paul MaudDib]

But in the years ahead if we can come up with some 4x5 camera backs, then an FF will be exactly what it was when it was created, a very limited system for shooting on the go, but no one with time to set up will ever use one. The current FF fad is completely a factor of the high cost of sensors. An anomaly of a single point in time. You might be able to envision a time when FF is king, but why stop there? In my fathers day, 6x6 images were the tourist cameras, I still have his old Ricohflex, and I have many images taken with it... this tendency to see FF as some kind of end point is puzzling.

Absolutely, FF is not the end, it's just a technology that's maturing sufficiently to hit mass market consumption. It's long been my hope that they will figure out some way to build much larger sensors more reliably so I could have large-format digital. You hear about printing OLEDs onto sheets of Mylar, and TV sizes have gone up in parallel with yield, I'd love to see some of that magic for light receptors instead of light emitters.

Full frame just happens to be hitting the "sweet spot" of affordability. $2k cameras new means prices for the used stuff is pushed down closer to $1200 and the first-gen used stuff is near $500 at this point. 645 Digtal being $10k new means the used cameras are around $5k, which is still too high but a lot more workable than the $15-40k range they used to be in.

[normhead]

Absolutely, FF is not the end, it's just a technology that's maturing sufficiently to hit mass market consumption. It's long been my hope that they will figure out some way to build much larger sensors more reliably so I could have large-format digital. You hear about printing OLEDs onto sheets of Mylar, and TV sizes have gone up in parallel with yield, I'd love to see some of that magic for light receptors instead of light emitters.

Full frame just happens to be hitting the "sweet spot" of affordability. $2k cameras new means prices for the used stuff is pushed down closer to $1200 and the first-gen used stuff is near $500 at this point. 645 Digtal being $10k new means the used cameras are around $5k, which is still too high but a lot more workable than the $15-40k range they used to be in.

The 645D is about 7k right now, and I've seen them on sale at 6k. I'm hoping it won't be long before you see used 645Ds for 4k. If I was a Yank, with the Canadian dollar falling 10% in the last week, I'd look at a 645D at Henry's right now, before they put the price up. That's like a 10% discount on your American dollar.

[jogiba]

The 645D is about 7k right now, and I've seen them on sale at 6k. I'm hoping it won't be long before you see used 645Ds for 4k. If I was a Yank, with the Canadian dollar falling 10% in the last week, I'd look at a 645D at Henry's right now, before they put the price up. That's like a 10% discount on your American dollar.

The 645D only got a 7.6 (good) rating vs the Nikon D800E 8.7 ( very good) rating here on PF so how is that a good deal when the 645D body and lenses cost much more ?
Nikon D800E vs. Pentax 645D - Conclusion - PentaxForums.com
SMC Pentax-DA 645 25mm F4 AL [IF] SDM AW Reviews - 645 Wide-Angle Primes - Pentax Lens Reviews & Lens Database

[Rondec]

The 645D only got a 7.6 (good) rating vs the Nikon D800E 8.7 ( very good) rating here on PF so how is that a good deal when the 645D body and lenses cost much more ?
Nikon D800E vs. Pentax 645D - Conclusion - PentaxForums.com
SMC Pentax-DA 645 25mm F4 AL [IF] SDM AW Reviews - 645 Wide-Angle Primes - Pentax Lens Reviews & Lens Database

The 645D is probably still a better camera for landscape photography. If you want something that has top of line auto focus, wider array of lenses, then D800 will be better, but I am pretty impressed by the CCD sensor in the 645D, even compared with the D800.

[normhead]

The 645D only got a 7.6 (good) rating vs the Nikon D800E 8.7 ( very good) rating here on PF so how is that a good deal when the 645D body and lenses cost much more ?
Nikon D800E vs. Pentax 645D - Conclusion - PentaxForums.com
SMC Pentax-DA 645 25mm F4 AL [IF] SDM AW Reviews - 645 Wide-Angle Primes - Pentax Lens Reviews & Lens Database

I've done all the comparisons, I have a couple 645 A lenses and I'm quite comfortable with A lenses for landscape, The 645 still resolves detail on the IR test images that neither a D800 or A7r can resolve, even though the measurebator charts are pretty close. For what I want it for, it's just a better camera.

Sensor size of APS-c to FF 1:1.5, APS-c to 645D equals 1:2. And anyplace I'd be likely to carry a D800, I'd be likely to carry a 645D.

The only thing stopping me from going 645 is the initial cost. To me, an APS-c +645D is a better combination than APS-c FF, and I'm certainly not giving up my APS-c gear.

Sometimes when you do your research, look at the charts, look at the images, evaluate what you want to do with what others want to do, you come to a different conclusion than everyone else does.

The 645 is marked down for lack of being versatile. If you buy it for what it is, you don't care how versatile it is.It's lack of value, if you get it for cheap enough it's a great value, and lack of AF, I'm not planning to use AF. For my use the camera is rated just as High as the D800 and I can show that by re-calculating without the features that don't mean anything to me.

[SteveM]

Re FF and the market in general.....If you look back over time, there have been a few periods where the photography consumerism has flourished. Semi-affordable cameras killed the street photographer in the late 50s-70s ( i.e Foncies Corner), there were a few different periods during the 60s through 80s that saw massive sales, then the market died out for a few decades with a few insignificant bumps of mediocre sales until digital caused another wave. Unless there is a compelling reason to pick up a new camera, the market will shrink, and I think we are close to the tail end of the current cycle.

You have to ask yourself; what is the market? How many consumers are willing to sacrifice convenience and cost for the sake of IQ? Not many. I would expect the enthusiast/professional market to be a money loser, but it drives brand recognition and sales, and the R&D will eventually trickle down into the bread and butter lower end consumer market. There is currently an opportunity to sell something smaller as a replacement to the mom and dads that are getting tired of carrying around a dslr, but not much of a reason to go replacing one dslr with another, unless you are interested in photography itself. I think this is one of the reasons that the Q has done well (but it’s unfortunate that it wasn’t released as a smart phone). I would expect both FF and APS-C to decline, unless there is some massive improvement.

Remember during the mid 80s when everyone was a “professional” photographer…..much like today? If there is a silver lining, interest in photography may wane again, and professional service rates will go back up…..

[normhead]

You have to ask yourself; what is the market? How many consumers are willing to sacrifice convenience and cost for the sake of IQ? Not many.

Or you could ask yourself, how many people are looking at their APS-c or 4/3 images, or even Q images right now, and saying.. "this isn't good enough IQ" ? I don't think there are many.

[Ash]

The megapixel race isn't over despite the law of diminishing returns. Consumerism drives the race rather than practicality, so we just have to live with that. What company will produce a 10-16 megapixel FF camera today with the sensor technology we have now and base it on the pragmatic fact that 'we don't really need any more resolution'?

[Ash]

The 645D only got a 7.6 (good) rating vs the Nikon D800E 8.7 ( very good) rating here on PF so how is that a good deal when the 645D body and lenses cost much more ?
Nikon D800E vs. Pentax 645D - Conclusion - PentaxForums.com
SMC Pentax-DA 645 25mm F4 AL [IF] SDM AW Reviews - 645 Wide-Angle Primes - Pentax Lens Reviews & Lens Database

This is nothing to base a comparison of such different cameras on. Cost does not determine the cameras' utility, but when the next generation of MF camera is developed by Pentax, there will be a shifting in the 645D pricing anyway, particularly in the second hand market.

[Paul MaudDib]

While we here have great understanding of how pixels work and what all that stuff means, most consumers only rudimentarily understand it. They get that more pixels can mean a better image, but they don't quite know how or why. Look at when 1080p first came out. People bought it listening to the marketing that it would be a lot better than their 720p TVs. In many cases, it wasn't. They bought too small a screen for their seating distance, so the better image quality couldn't be seen.

It's more like: "This monitor has higher resolution, it's better!" So people buy them. And then they find out that it doesn't work like they thought. That's more of what I meant.

More resolution actually is better, though. I don't really know anyone who went from 720p to 1080p and was super disappointed in the image quality. I expect 4K would be fairly noticeable on large (>60in) screens, assuming you fed it with a 4K video source. That's probably the source of more heartbreak than the difference between 720p and 1080p - there's a lot of 1080i Bluerays out there, and there's no more data in 1080i than 720p. Also, cable TV and Dish tend to squish the HD channels into very little space as well, to bump up the number of "HD Channels" they can advertise for the same amount of satellite bandwidth. It's better than SD, but it's not really giving you the best your fancy screen can offer. It's not enough just to have a high-res display, the whole chain has to be up to hi-res and consumers are being fleeced about what they're getting. Regardless, the difference between 1080p and 4K is more than twice as large an increase as between 720p and 1080p. 4x the pixels is usually a noticeable jump.

Now, conversely, there's another argument for PCs. PCs generate the images right there for you, so your desktop or a game you play at 4K resolution has a high-quality video processing chain (or you can upsample 1080p DVDs, etc). And people love high-PPI displays (see: Apple Retina), and they appreciate having more desktop space, etc. It particularly makes a difference when it's not a TV you're sitting across the room from, you're mashing your face right into a monitor by comparison so you need a higher PPI. Now that 4K displays have crashed from $3-5k to $500-700 in the last year you'll see a lot more takeup. Just like how FF takeup is accelerating now that they're no longer flagship products costing $3-4k.

What we're likely to see is DSLRs take advantage of "smaller." Obviously, there's two things they can't fix: lenses (limited by the physics of optics) and sensor size. Right now, the average smartphone has way more processing power than even the most powerful SLR. Smartphones can use average optics and make up for it with fancy signal processing, something we don't see on SLRs, probably because SoC are too expensive to mix with the necessary expensive components. As tiny processors become more cheaper and more powerful, we may see SLRs move to become a bit smaller--at the very least, they will become a lot more advanced.

You are totally barking up the wrong tree with this one. You can apply as much signal processing to a DSLR image as you want. It's called "shooting RAW", and yes, you can usually squeeze quite a bit more out of an image than the onboard JPG processor. A RAW is more or less a direct readout of the CCD/CMOS data and you can apply more intensive algorithms in Aperture/Lightroom than a DSLR body could support.

The size thing is partially a function of sensor size (you have to fit a mirrorbox and a viewfinder in there, which get bigger as the sensor does), partially a fixed cost (the image processors really don't get much smaller or larger relative to the format, current draw probably won't vary hugely so battery sizes are relatively constant for a given battery life target, etc), and partially ergonomics (given how many buttons manufacturers want to squeeze on their cameras). I think the big shift here will be when manufacturers alter the ergonomics equation - mostly touchscreen with a few assignable controls will allow you to fit the same functions into a smaller space.

I generally feel that the "I have big hands" argument is simply the result of poor ergonomic design, given that virtually all SLRs used to be smaller than the smallest DSLR bodies today (Canon SL-1, etc). Get rid of all the useless "direct print" buttons the marketing department put on and focus on delivering usable ergonomics in a smaller body size. If ISO, shutter speed, and aperture are physically controllable, everything else can be on the touchscreen so far as I am concerned. Or even just ISO and aperture with aperture-priority mode. You can build a body much smaller like that. Give me a digital Pentax ME, basically.

Of course mirrorless can inherently be smaller than DSLRs since you don't have to fit a mirror box in there. That is, as long as you are willing to make a leap and require that DSLR compatibility requires an adapter. Otherwise the legacy mount makes your camera fat, like the K-01. That advantage gets bigger as the sensor format gets larger. Most DSLRs operate using legacy full-frame mounts (35mm), if sensor sizes get larger manufacturers will be forced to increase register distance to fit the bigger mirror, whereas MILC can remain relatively thin so long as the angle of incidence doesn't become too extreme for the sensor/microlenses at the edge. I've heard there are organic sensors that are much better at extreme incidence angles coming down the pipe.

As time goes the technical advantages are moving from DSLR to MILC. Lack of phase detect autofocus was the biggest problem in mirrorless, and the sensors with built in phase-detect pixels will hopefully fix that. The remaining DSLR advantages are longer battery life and an optical viewfinder. MILC are simpler to build since you don't have to deal with a swinging mirror, and people charge their cellphones daily anyway. Right now they aren't taken seriously but I think better AF will change that.

[Rondec]

All of this discussion about 4K screens really avoids the reality why most people's images aren't great. It has nothing to do with lack of megapixels and a lot more to do with lack of good glass and good technique with shooting. I don't expect 4K screens to be a big seller of full frame cameras at all.