[normhead]

I will admit one of the more amusing things this forum brings me is imagining Norm trying, trying, trying to keep himself from clicking on the 'ignored'. And failing. Every single time. Hi Norm! (now, imagine him whistling, looking away, pretending he didn't read this...)

Norm, if you notice, we butt-heads when you wander in to the FF or off-brand forum to throw insults. You can't keep away, but your befuddlement and misinformation does have the positive effect of providing a foil to bounce the truth off of - for the benefit of everyone else, I guess.

.

Too funny Jay, I love how your "arguments" are basically name calling and labelling with very little info. I don't butt heads with you int he Pentaxx forums because... wait for it... you don't own any Pentax cameras, so you aren in the Pentax forums.... too funny you see yourself as some kind of guardian of the truth. If only the world would just listen to jsherman, it would be a better place? I've stopped reading you for useful information, and started reading you for the laughs. Although in fairness, you have provided some useful information. Just not information that means what you think it means.

The 150-450 is attractive if the AF is a fast as rumored. But I still don't see a reason for FF over APS-C.

Why anyone would waste a 150-450 on FF is beyond me. Maybe because you can't afford an FA* 250-600? Kind of like buying a 24-70 for your APS-c. Some focal lengths just don't make sense on some formats.

[jatrax]

What I need is a high quality slow aperture standard zoom, something along the lines of an FF version of DA 16-85 and/or the DA 20-40, or perhaps a Pentax version of the Canon FA 24-105 f4.

All good points and I agree 100%. I use DA*16-50 because I want the quality but never at f/2.8, I don't need that. I love the DA*60-250.

DFA 24-105 f/4 would be perfect and what I'm hoping for but your are right it will probably be a slower 'kit' lens unfortunately.

[monochrome]

All good points and I agree 100%. I use DA*16-50 because I want the quality but never at f/2.8, I don't need that. I love the DA*60-250.

DFA 24-105 f/4 would be perfect and what I'm hoping for but your are right it will probably be a slower 'kit' lens unfortunately.

It seems to me Pentax will continue to surprise us with higher spec FF lenses than we expect, so an f/4 medium zoom is quite likely.

[disconnekt]

Either a 24-105 or 24-120 f/4 would be nice.
Making the 17-70 a FF lens would be nice though, that way those who have a K3/K5 would have the 24-105 eqv. and could use it on the FF camera as well.

[stillshot2]

I just thought of something... are there any full frame shutters available for Pentax to use that are as quiet as the K3 and K5 models? If not, would Ricoh have the capacity to manufacture their own? I ask because it seems a super quiet shutter on the new full frame would be desirable to many photographers, and is a rather nice feature of the K3 and K5.

[ElJamoquio]

I didn't trash the D600. I said the way Nikon handled the D600 sensor stain issue was worse than anything Pentax has ever done. So, what you pointed out, was in error. I'm sure you can find lots of reason to disagree with my point of view, without making up stuff. By the way for the most part, we don't fawn over Pentax stuff here either. We're just not big on any fawning. But particularly not for off brands.

I had the D600 spots. Also had the Pentax string-of-pearls. Both companies owned up to the problem. Heck if I want a brand new D610 I could probably get one tomorrow.

[cheesehead]

I'm a lurker here, not sure if I've ever posted before. This has been a great thread.

I'm an amateur. I'm the guy that unemployed friends go to for cheap wedding, graduation & prom photos. I like taking landscapes, just walking around with my camera. I aspire to walking pieces of the Pacific Crest trail with my camera. For me, this is fun, a hobby, not my living. On the table in front of me in my mancave are my original 1978 K1000 (did some B&W with it just last winter) and my K-5. I really like the K-5, and from what I read the K-3 is even better. I've got a pretty nice set of old glass, including the K135 f2.5, K30 f2.8, M85, and FA 100mm f2.8 macro (which I love). The K100D that got me started in digital is with my daughter at college (playing the starter role the K1000 played for me), and I just bought a K-30 for my spouse. Finally got rid of my 645n & lenses last year, after about 8 years of playing around with medium format.

There are things I like about the APS-C format, and I love the Pentax in-camera shake reduction... but there's just something about full frame that I miss with APS-C, and I'm not sure I can put a finger on it. Some of that might just be that I'm cheap and I'm working with the old glass.

I'm looking to upgrade sometime in the next couple of years, and I hate to say it, but I'm not sure I'll stick with Pentax. A quick look on ebay tells me I can get about $2000-$2500 for my current Pentax gear. If the K-FF is a dud, my upgrade could be a D750 or D800 & you could find my K30 f2.8 with original case and lens hood on the auction block. So I guess you could say that I'm Ricoh/Pentax's target market - the guy who's invested in Pentax, but could easily jump ship.

On to the question of the thread - What will make ME buy the new K-FF?

1) I have to have the money. But I just did my taxes, and that's looking good.
2) It has to be roughly equivalent to at least the D750. I know there will be some items where it's better, some worse, but again, roughly equivalent. I'm not too concerned with mp, although I'd love 36mp. I don't need 50mp, that would just let me take more crappy pics but now with higher resolution!
3) It has to be something that gives me faith that Pentax will still be here - and growing, and taken seriously by the industry - in five years.
4) It has to inspire companies like Sigma to start fully supporting full-frame K-mount lenses. Please, give me the 24mm f1.4!

If the K-FF wasn't too much heavier than the K-5 that would be awesome, but heavier isn't a dealbreaker. Better video would be nice, but I've already got a Canon HFM300 with shotgun mic which does a really good job & is pretty easy to use.

I've been impressed with the route taken by Ricoh so far. I'm hopeful that by this time next year I'll be testing out my new K-FF camera.

[ElJamoquio]

1) I have to have the money. But I just did my taxes, and that's looking good.
2) It has to be roughly equivalent to at least the D750. I know there will be some items where it's better, some worse, but again, roughly equivalent. I'm not too concerned with mp, although I'd love 36mp. I don't need 50mp, that would just let me take more crappy pics but now with higher resolution!
3) It has to be something that gives me faith that Pentax will still be here - and growing, and taken seriously by the industry - in five years.
4) It has to inspire companies like Sigma to start fully supporting full-frame K-mount lenses. Please, give me the 24mm f1.4!

All of these are just guesses...

1) Some cameras are released in May, but most are released in September/October. You might have to hoard that refund for a few more months.
2) Pretty sure you'll be OK. I don't think they'll use 50MP, but I don't think they'll use 24MP either.
3) With what I think the camera will have (excellent low light performance, high resolution, light weight, best low light capability in the Pentax world), the camera will be the best one Pentax has ever produced.
4) This one will take a while. My opinion only of course. Sigma and Tamron have their hands full already, with excellent lenses, and they're cutting back availability overall.

[normhead]

I'm a lurker here, not sure if I've ever posted before. This has been a great thread.

I'm an amateur. I'm the guy that unemployed friends go to for cheap wedding, graduation & prom photos. I like taking landscapes, just walking around with my camera. I aspire to walking pieces of the Pacific Crest trail with my camera. For me, this is fun, a hobby, not my living. On the table in front of me in my mancave are my original 1978 K1000 (did some B&W with it just last winter) and my K-5. I really like the K-5, and from what I read the K-3 is even better. I've got a pretty nice set of old glass, including the K135 f2.5, K30 f2.8, M85, and FA 100mm f2.8 macro (which I love). The K100D that got me started in digital is with my daughter at college (playing the starter role the K1000 played for me), and I just bought a K-30 for my spouse. Finally got rid of my 645n & lenses last year, after about 8 years of playing around with medium format.

There are things I like about the APS-C format, and I love the Pentax in-camera shake reduction... but there's just something about full frame that I miss with APS-C, and I'm not sure I can put a finger on it. Some of that might just be that I'm cheap and I'm working with the old glass.

I'm looking to upgrade sometime in the next couple of years, and I hate to say it, but I'm not sure I'll stick with Pentax. A quick look on ebay tells me I can get about $2000-$2500 for my current Pentax gear. If the K-FF is a dud, my upgrade could be a D750 or D800 & you could find my K30 f2.8 with original case and lens hood on the auction block. So I guess you could say that I'm Ricoh/Pentax's target market - the guy who's invested in Pentax, but could easily jump ship.

On to the question of the thread - What will make ME buy the new K-FF?

1) I have to have the money. But I just did my taxes, and that's looking good.
2) It has to be roughly equivalent to at least the D750. I know there will be some items where it's better, some worse, but again, roughly equivalent. I'm not too concerned with mp, although I'd love 36mp. I don't need 50mp, that would just let me take more crappy pics but now with higher resolution!
3) It has to be something that gives me faith that Pentax will still be here - and growing, and taken seriously by the industry - in five years.
4) It has to inspire companies like Sigma to start fully supporting full-frame K-mount lenses. Please, give me the 24mm f1.4!

If the K-FF wasn't too much heavier than the K-5 that would be awesome, but heavier isn't a dealbreaker. Better video would be nice, but I've already got a Canon HFM300 with shotgun mic which does a really good job & is pretty easy to use.

I've been impressed with the route taken by Ricoh so far. I'm hopeful that by this time next year I'll be testing out my new K-FF camera.

I'm surprised you shot MF for 8 years, and you think you can be happy with FF. It didn't work that way for me, I shot both MF and FF film, and it's the MF images that really stand out for me. Too bad you sold your MF lenses, you can find 645Ds advertised for $2,999 in good shape. I don't know if you saw the email exchange with Sigma, but they don't anticipate Pentax market share increasing because of the full frame, so right now they are writing Pentax out of their long term plans for FF lenses. The only thing that will get Pentax back in will be dramatically increased market share, and the 5 to 10% increase in sales they might see because of the FF won't help much with that. They really need to quadruple their market share up to about 16-20% IMHO to be a real player in the market again.

About the D750, the things that stand out in my mind, 24 Mp ouch, personally, I don't even know why you shoot full frame if you aren't taking advantage of the extra resolution, 11 frames per second, great sports/wildlife camera, for me, it's the camera I would probably own if no one had ever come up with APS-c. But, you have to remember what you're giving up. I've seen Nikon shooters have problems with images ruined by shutter shake and mirror shake (D800 and D810) to the point where they were checking every image as they took them. That is just way more time consuming than I'm willing to put up with.

Here's why I think the Pentax FF is going to be worth it for me. I think they are going to come out with a hi res sensor shift option that will give me 50 MP quality from a 36 MP sensor for my landscapes. That technology would be significantly better than anything Nikon currently has to offer for landscape images. SO for me, I'd advise waiting to see what Pentax comes up with. Having shot Pentax film for years, I have many images that I prize, that wouldn't have been as effective shot on APS-c. But I so rarely get to shoot that type of image anymore, it's not really a factor for me. And my absolute favourite images not shot with 8x10 film are MF. If I look back through the years at my images, most of them would have been better shot with APS-c. Especially since most of my film images were shot with fairly high speed film and were't really enlargeable past 11x14. Today I print 13x19 as a standard and go to 30x20 on canvases for my favourite prints, or anything I think I might be able to sell. APS-c is so much more than film FF, at least in terms of print size.

[Homo_erectus]

These days, I use my k5iis for fun shooting where the low AF accuracy doesn't matter so much. I kept only my 60-250 and the AW 1.4 TC and sold everything else.

I switched to Nikon for my professional work because the AF on my K5iis was giving me only about 60% of shots correctly focused. With the D750 it's a surprise when the occasional shot isn't perfectly focused. As far as I'm concerned, everything else is a wash between the two cameras.

So, there is only one feature that will make me buy the Pentax FF, or another Pentax camera at all: autofocus accuracy.

[normhead]

These days, I use my k5iis for fun shooting where the low AF accuracy doesn't matter so much. I kept only my 60-250 and the AW 1.4 TC and sold everything else.

I switched to Nikon for my professional work because the AF on my K5iis was giving me only about 60% of shots correctly focused. With the D750 it's a surprise when the occasional shot isn't perfectly focused. As far as I'm concerned, everything else is a wash between the two cameras.

So, there is only one feature that will make me buy the Pentax FF, or another Pentax camera at all: autofocus accuracy.

Good story... I wonder what you'd think of the AF on the K-3.

[Homo_erectus]

Good story... I wonder what you'd think of the AF on the K-3.

By all reports it's better than the k5ii but still not as good as offerings from Canon or Nikon. I knew from previous experience using Nikons that their AF is excellent which is why I went with the D750.

I'm hoping that in a few years Ricoh will have had enough success with Pentax that I can go to a local store and try out their new bodies in person rather than rely on reports from the internet. If they get their AF up to the standard I need then I will happily, no excitedly!, buy their gear again.

I'm not dumping on Pentax, I truly love my K5iis and 60-250. I use them every chance I get. It's a huge pain to have two different brands of gear running in parallel. I would *love* to be able to do my work and fun shooting with the same equipment.

[Rondec]

I'm surprised you shot MF for 8 years, and you think you can be happy with FF. It didn't work that way for me, I shot both MF and FF film, and it's the MF images that really stand out for me. Too bad you sold your MF lenses, you can find 645Ds advertised for $2,999 in good shape. I don't know if you saw the email exchange with Sigma, but they don't anticipate Pentax market share increasing because of the full frame, so right now they are writing Pentax out of their long term plans for FF lenses. The only thing that will get Pentax back in will be dramatically increased market share, and the 5 to 10% increase in sales they might see because of the FF won't help much with that. They really need to quadruple their market share up to about 16-20% IMHO to be a real player in the market again.

About the D750, the things that stand out in my mind, 24 Mp ouch, personally, I don't even know why you shoot full frame if you aren't taking advantage of the extra resolution, 11 frames per second, great sports/wildlife camera, for me, it's the camera I would probably own if no one had ever come up with APS-c. But, you have to remember what you're giving up. I've seen Nikon shooters have problems with images ruined by shutter shake and mirror shake (D800 and D810) to the point where they were checking every image as they took them. That is just way more time consuming than I'm willing to put up with.

Here's why I think the Pentax FF is going to be worth it for me. I think they are going to come out with a hi res sensor shift option that will give me 50 MP quality from a 36 MP sensor for my landscapes. That technology would be significantly better than anything Nikon currently has to offer for landscape images. SO for me, I'd advise waiting to see what Pentax comes up with. Having shot Pentax film for years, I have many images that I prize, that wouldn't have been as effective shot on APS-c. But I so rarely get to shoot that type of image anymore, it's not really a factor for me. And my absolute favourite images not shot with 8x10 film are MF. If I look back through the years at my images, most of them would have been better shot with APS-c. Especially since most of my film images were shot with fairly high speed film and were't really enlargeable past 11x14. Today I print 13x19 as a standard and go to 30x20 on canvases for my favourite prints, or anything I think I might be able to sell. APS-c is so much more than film FF, at least in terms of print size.

I would prefer to have 24 megapixel full frame combined with 24 megapixel K3. Nice combo. If you need the reach, you can have it. If you need shallow depth of field and better high iso, then you have that -- without killing your computer and hard drive in the process. I don't max out the resolution of the K3 with regard to printing size and don't think I really need 36 megapixels either. Having a full frame camera with K3 specs and similar megapixels would be fine in my book and keep APS-C for what it is good at.

[normhead]

Just to add a bit to what you could possibly get with an FF..... the top, a comparison between the k-3 and D7100- the bottom some times for the D750.

The 27-point autofocus system is quick. All save the leftmost and rightmost point are cross-type, which means that they analyze focus vertically and horizontally. This puts cross-type sensors across a wider area of the frame compared to the D7100; only 15 of its 51 points are cross-types sensors. With ample light the K-3 can lock focus and fire its shutter in as little as 0.05-second, but in very dim light the focus speed can slow to about a second; the D7100 matches the 0.05-second speed and is just a little bit faster in dim light at 0.9-second.

the D750 locked onto a target in an average of 0.7-second in very dim light, while the D810 required just under a second to do the same. In bright light the focus speed was about the same, under 0.1-second.

From PC magazine.... that is a pretty impressive difference in AF speed. I've noticed with the K-3 you can only achieve a reasonable burst with AF priority turned off. With a D 750 you could conceivably get 5 fps with focus priority turned on. That could be huge for BiFs etc.

So the point being, Nikon and Pentax are about the same on their APS-c cameras, but nothing Pentax currently makes matches the Nikon FFs. Is Pentax going to be able to use the larger sensor to produce faster AF? If they save bucks by using K-3 components as they did with the 645z, the answer will definitely be no.

It is the old, on a cropped image, and almost all Bif images are fairly heavily cropped, I'll get better IQ with my K-3, but , I might not get any acceptable image. SO the question becomes, a chance at a great image, or more chance of an acceptable one. I almost always go with the gamble... less capability in capture, but more possibility in IQ.

[Homo_erectus]

Just to add a bit to what you could possibly get with an FF..... the top, a comparison between the k-3 and D7100- the bottom some times for the D750.



From PC magazine.... that is a pretty impressive difference in AF speed. I've noticed with the K-3 you can only achieve a reasonable burst with AF priority turned off. With a D 750 you could conceivably get 5 fps with focus priority turned on. That could be huge for BiFs etc.

So the point being, Nikon and Pentax are about the same on their APS-c cameras, but nothing Pentax currently makes matches the Nikon FFs. Is Pentax going to be able to use the larger sensor to produce faster AF? If they save bucks by using K-3 components as they did with the 645z, the answer will definitely be no.

It is the old, on a cropped image, and almost all Bif images are fairly heavily cropped, I'll get better IQ with my K-3, but , I might not get any acceptable image. SO the question becomes, a chance at a great image, or more chance of an acceptable one. I almost always go with the gamble... less capability in capture, but more possibility in IQ.

My K5iis can bang out misfocused shots all day long at a much higher rate than my D750 bangs out in focus shots.

And PentaxForums own review of the K3 shows that in the real world the keeper rate of the K3 is about 67% while the D610 gets around 97% and the K5ii lags far behind at 53%. Pentax K-3 Review - Autofocus | PentaxForums.com Reviews

It's incredibly nice to be able to chose between a run of shots that are *all* in focus for the one or two that have great expressions or moments of action vs (the all too common occurrence with the K5ii) of being disappointed by the great shot that is misfocused and having to chose between two lesser shots that are perfectly focused.