[jogiba]

That camera combined sensor and lens.


Maybe not everyone would buy this to switch sensors, some would just buy one sensor. But they can pick the one sensor they want. Why are there so many fights about MP? Some people want 12 MP, some want 36. Different needs. Separating body and sensor could make it easier to accommodate for that. Maybe offer another body for the same sensors. One mirrorless, one DSLR.


A cartridge system would make the most sense I guess.


As for IR photography... as long as the sensor itself is unchanged, turn the IR filter into, well, a filter. Make it removable. The cartridge could accommodate that. Take out the sensor (you're able to clean it too that way!) and remove or add the filter, or even use other filters.


The possibilities are endless, the question is if some manufacturer has the balls to do it. I do think it would find a market... I'd be willing to spend a bit more on a camera that offers me that amount of flexibility. Perhaps even if that means changing brands.


@john: But you could take out the sensor, and clean it. Without having to fumble through a long tunnel. You have very easy access to it.


One problem for Pentax would be that stabilizing that thing will be hard. The cartridge will add weight, and that's what you don't want. Also getting rid of the heat will be difficult, though you already have that problem with the SR system. Air cooling perhaps...

There is zero chance of a Pentax FF with sensor cartridge system. How about a pill that turns water into gasoline ? Same chance.

[monochrome]

How about a pill that turns water into gasoline ? Same chance.

That would be a seed of corn in Iowa - so . . . . .

[ElJamoquio]

That would be a seed of corn in Iowa - so . . . . .

.....that seed turns diesel fuel and federal subsidies into presidential caucus votes?

[luftfluss]

That would be a seed of corn in Iowa - so . . . . .

... that seed gives me a place to grow my weed?

[kadajawi]

There is zero chance of a Pentax FF with sensor cartridge system. How about a pill that turns water into gasoline ? Same chance.

Actually there are machines that turn sunlight/electricity, water and CO2 into gasoline.


The K-3/K-30/K-50/K-01 SR also introduces a lot of wobble into the stable video (top part of the video stays stable, lower parts of it move around in a funny way), and there are random light streaks and blurriness all the time.


The tracking problem stems from the camera not using the sensors built in to find out how it has to stabilize the video. It is relying on software only (which is included in the Milbeaut processor Pentax and Nikon use... and guess what, Nikon doesn't even give the option of using it, because it is that useless). So it is easy to trick the system. Pentax has a system inside the camera that works (you can even use it in live view), yet choses to deactivate it and to use the junk that a manufacturer that has no alternative won't use.


Electronic SR does NOT work. Ever. Unless you throw ridiculous amounts of processing power at it. Sony does a better job, but to call it acceptable would still be quite a stretch. Basically you'd need to have a processor that is able to analyse the movement of the camera in order to remove the rolling shutter effect (Sony seems to be able to do this to a certain degree, or their a57 has ridiculously little rolling shutter to begin with), and that is also able to take this data to calculate how the camera was shaken and reconstruct the actual image from it. i.e. take a photo that was shaken (motion blur in random directions) and reconstruct a sharp photo from it. 24 to 60 times a second. This feature exists in Photoshop AFAIK, but takes a long time on very fast processors. We'd need thousands of the latest i7 Haswell chips inside our cameras to do that fast enough.

It's not just the bitrate, the encoder, at least on early firmware versions is buggy, creating ugly artefacts even though the bitrate for that particular scene should be high enough. I've heard that was fixed silently. Lots of detail and movement will create a mess though, while the K-5 will handle those scenes beautifully.


Powered zooms in the SLR market were a bit of an oddity, weren't they? I did shoot film too, but never had a camera that could do it, or a lens that could. To be honest while it might be useful sometimes... I don't think I would use it. For video yes, it'd be great there.


Higher resolution sensors have also produced 4K video, though yes, around 12 MP seems ideal.

[easyreeder]

The tracking problem stems from the camera not using the sensors built in to find out how it has to stabilize the video. It is relying on software only (which is included in the Milbeaut processor Pentax and Nikon use... and guess what, Nikon doesn't even give the option of using it, because it is that useless). So it is easy to trick the system. Pentax has a system inside the camera that works (you can even use it in live view), yet choses to deactivate it and to use the junk that a manufacturer that has no alternative won't use.

The tracking problem is a deal breaker, given that Pentax has nothing in the way of IS lenses. I love the K3, the way it feels, the form factor, the pictures, but the one thing that feels dishonest about it is the SR. This tracking issue is so glaring that it's hard for me to imagine the Pentax engineers didn't know about it. This SR isn't good enough to release. The learning curve on the SR for the Pentax is: first you ruin lots of video, then you turn it off.

[noser]

Actually there are machines that turn sunlight/electricity, water and CO2 into gasoline.


The K-3/K-30/K-50/K-01 SR also introduces a lot of wobble into the stable video (top part of the video stays stable, lower parts of it move around in a funny way), and there are random light streaks and blurriness all the time.


The tracking problem stems from the camera not using the sensors built in to find out how it has to stabilize the video. It is relying on software only (which is included in the Milbeaut processor Pentax and Nikon use... and guess what, Nikon doesn't even give the option of using it, because it is that useless). So it is easy to trick the system. Pentax has a system inside the camera that works (you can even use it in live view), yet choses to deactivate it and to use the junk that a manufacturer that has no alternative won't use.


Electronic SR does NOT work. Ever. Unless you throw ridiculous amounts of processing power at it. Sony does a better job, but to call it acceptable would still be quite a stretch. Basically you'd need to have a processor that is able to analyse the movement of the camera in order to remove the rolling shutter effect (Sony seems to be able to do this to a certain degree, or their a57 has ridiculously little rolling shutter to begin with), and that is also able to take this data to calculate how the camera was shaken and reconstruct the actual image from it. i.e. take a photo that was shaken (motion blur in random directions) and reconstruct a sharp photo from it. 24 to 60 times a second. This feature exists in Photoshop AFAIK, but takes a long time on very fast processors. We'd need thousands of the latest i7 Haswell chips inside our cameras to do that fast enough.

It's not just the bitrate, the encoder, at least on early firmware versions is buggy, creating ugly artefacts even though the bitrate for that particular scene should be high enough. I've heard that was fixed silently. Lots of detail and movement will create a mess though, while the K-5 will handle those scenes beautifully.


Powered zooms in the SLR market were a bit of an oddity, weren't they? I did shoot film too, but never had a camera that could do it, or a lens that could. To be honest while it might be useful sometimes... I don't think I would use it. For video yes, it'd be great there.


Higher resolution sensors have also produced 4K video, though yes, around 12 MP seems ideal.

The whole processor speed thing is a red herring.

The CPU in your phone or laptop is slow for good reasons; it has lots of different thing is can be doing, sometimes concurrently ( and if you have two, in parallel).

But dedicated image processors use different architectures, and can achieve ridonculously high apparent bitrate througputs for very conservative true clock speeds. Just for fun, look at FPGA's.

[kadajawi]

You forget that phone processors these days feature dedicated image processors, some of them seem rather powerful, suporting high resolution sensors. And the new Lytro features a Snapdragon 800, because it needs a lot of processing power.

In any case what I was talking about was that to get the electronic SR working they need to pour in supercomputer levels of processing power. Or they could simply reactivate mechanical SR, which works very well, and has proven itself for a long time without many drawbacks (which aren't serious and can be worked around).

The tracking part isn't all, the wobbling, the random blurring etc. are more extremely noticeable and annoying problems.

[Tan68]

Electric blue &/or Cotswold effect

Next best thing would have been mirrorless before Sony
I am not sure there will be much call for modular camera bits

I do agree 'different' is good to have. Some 'catch' or 'draw'
I think mirrorless will have to do. May be able to compete better there than with SLR where the expectation (pro level this and that) will be different.

[Winder]

Next best thing would have been mirrorless before Sony

I think mirrorless will have to do. May be able to compete better there than with SLR where the expectation (pro level this and that) will be different.

If Pentax would release a FF camera like the A7 with Pentax ergonomics, in-body image stabilization, & DNG support it would be a big seller even in a new mount. People have no trouble using an adapter with the A7, people wouldn't have a problem using a Pentax with an adapter.

[noser]

In any case what I was talking about was that to get the electronic SR working they need to pour in supercomputer levels of processing power. Or they could simply reactivate mechanical SR, which works very well, and has proven itself for a long time without many drawbacks (which aren't serious and can be worked around).

I do agree on the mechanical SR. It's butter smooth on the K-5.

On the electronic version, really look up FPGA's as an example of an on-chip architecture that is RADICALLY different than how standard CPU's operate. I'll have to read up on your examples to see what the pipeline currently looks like in an iPhone or dSLR, but given that I detect a slowdown for image filters on the K-5, I know it's not what I'm describing.

For example it's typical to have the clock distributed to the entire array, so in ONE clock cycle you initiate ALL the calculations on an entire frame (and you can double buffer, or more, if you like). For a single logic operation, you complete in that same clock cycle. The effective rate of a silly little 200 Mhz chip could become equivalent of performing thousands of operations on millions of pixels sequentially on an old school CPU; ie tens of Ghz per frame x tens of Ghz of interframe buffer compares. And it happily chugs along in realtime, because it's rock-solid deterministic.

Here is an example of a 600 Mhz chip - but look at the memory speeds within the core in figure 2 - and remember that you define the functionality before flashing the chip, so that segments of core are operating in parallel, so the numbers blow up pretty quick:

The World's Fastest 40-nm FPGA

In a different practical example, a chip running Forth actually generates it's scanline video output signal as a result of the running code, almost as a side effect. It's bizzare but it works.

I'd bet that it's still more efficient from a battery perspective to power the physical SR than a chip, though.

EDIT:

After posting this I thought it might have a better application than stabilization.

How about a FF light field camera, like a pro-Lytro ?

[monochrome]

People have no trouble using an adapter with the A7, people wouldn't have a problem using a Pentax with an adapter.

I suppose not. Other than people who want to use Pentax AF lenses.

[Winder]

I suppose not. Other than people who want to use Pentax AF lenses.

Pentax needs to appeal to a larger market than the existing Pentax user base.

[monochrome]

Pentax needs to appeal to a larger market than the existing Pentax user base.

Sure. But if in so doing they downgrade us to 'Other' user status we/re not interested. Consequently 100% of their potential target market is 'Other."

They need to figure out a way to make a Pentax FF camera 100% backward compatible with Pentax AF K-mount lenses and also adaptable to other lenses.

[Winder]

Sure. But if in so doing they downgrade us to 'Other' user status we/re not interested. Consequently 100% of their potential target market is 'Other."

They need to figure out a way to make a Pentax FF camera 100% backward compatible with Pentax AF K-mount lenses and also adaptable to other lenses.

Which is no different that what Sony is doing with A-mount. The A7 is outselling the A99 and generating a lot more excitement in the market from outside the existing A-mount user base. Sony hasn't abandoned the A-mount. They have new A-mount CZ glass on the way.