[normhead]

Transferring the K-3ii tech to a K-1iii.

As I've said, many times, my problem with the K-3iii is the lack of a tilting back screen.
A K-1 with the same tech would be 101 focus points, 8 frame per second AF-s, 7 APS-c assuming the bottle neck is the through put speed of the bus.

Those are acceptable specs to me. But I'm guessing including that tech would vastly increase the price of the K-1 to D850 levels.

So will Pentax go that route for an FF action camera?
Or will he K-3iii be the action offering, and the K-1 line continue to be useful mostly for landscape and portraits?

Pentax has never had this kind of decision before they always used their best tech in every model.... what say you?

[Smolk]

The expected way would be to transfer the tech, certainly AF and viewfinder, but making it less compact than the K-3. This is what I've been hoping...

[Kevin B123]

The moon lander stays!, touch screen this time.
Take the MX prism, make it out of the new K-3-3 material.
40 something Megapickles is enough too.
Improve the A/F and bosh! your done.

[Paul the Sunman]

I'm sure it will happen, but when may depend on how well the K3iii sells. If they can recoup the development costs of the new tech in good time, resources for K1iii development within Ricoh may flow more freely.

[FozzFoster]

I thought the K-3 III tech was 'nothing special' ... why the change of heart and wanting a those features in the K-1?
:P glad you've come around, norm!

[monochrome]

Transferring the K-3ii tech to a K-1iii.

As I've said, many times, my problem with the K-3iii is the lack of a tilting back screen.
A K-1 with the same tech would be 101 focus points, 8 frame per second AF-s, 7 APS-c assuming the bottle neck is the through put speed of the bus.

Those are acceptable specs to me. But I'm guessing including that tech would vastly increase the price of the K-1 to D850 levels.

So will Pentax go that route for an FF action camera?
Or will he K-3iii be the action offering, and the K-1 line continue to be useful mostly for landscape and portraits?

Pentax has never had this kind of decision before they always used their best tech in every model.... what say you?

Pentax has traditionally spread DSLR development costs across all three formats, and lately some of them from GR into K-3iii. Unless they change their business model I assume the touch screen, optical VF technology, AF sensor and Algorithm, image processor and throughput standards all transfer. I assume Action vs. Landscape is more a function of which image sensor they can get. I assume price will be lower for features than :CaNikon and well below Sony.

My bet is they apply touch screen to the moon lander and keep an all-metal body (so no internal GPS and related apps) and no HH image enhancement.

[robbiec]

K-1 with moon lander, GPS, full pixelshift and the same body. Inside that then will be 7fps (presuming they keep the 36Mp sensor) and UHS-III card capability. I'd be pretty happy with that.

The big question is whether or not they go oversized on the OVF? Then new body, might ditch moonlander, GPS and I'm 60/40 in thinking its a retrograde step but if they put something 645 sized on a FF camera, I'd be impressed, very impressed but would still miss moonlander though.

[interested_observer]

Right after retiring, I upgraded to the K1 rather than wait for the K3II replacement/Knew/K3III. My plan was to wait - but, I'm glad that I did upgrade. There are several things that I can now, not live without (well, I can - but I don't want to)...

• An articulating screen - the moon lander is exceptional. With tripod shooting especially at night - this is an absolute must (for me).

• Fully integrated GPS - not having the external module and having GPS always on, is a real nice benefit.

• Acceleration Chip - I guess we really do not know about this until the K3III actually arrives (I've not seen/read any information on this) - but, it does appear useful and does help (1.5 stops of DR at ISO 640 and above). I could not make up my mind, so I just stayed with my K1 unmodified. Looking at a friends output from his K70, I do see that it's pretty useful, so I do hope that it's available.

• External LEDs - for those of us who shoot at night (especially on a tripod, these LEDs are extremely handy.

• As handy as the top ISO button is, the ISO on the third dial is even more useful.

The one feature I do wish that they would drop are the white dots. They are just %^$#@ &^:=! irritating and annoying.

[normhead]

I thought the K-3 III tech was 'nothing special' ... why the change of heart and wanting a those features in the K-1?
:P glad you've come around, norm!

Oh not completely yet.... the big unanswered question being buffer clearing. And the reason for this thread is, I may wait for the K-1iii to come out with this tech, or the K-Pii.

I like the new accelerator, but that will be in the K-1iii for sure, and 7 fps tracking would be awesome at 36MP.

I am really still on the fence. The tech is good, whether I want it is still up or debate.

I really don't want another camera where I miss shots because it take so long for the buffer to clear.

---------- Post added 03-01-21 at 05:35 PM ----------

I guess we really do not know about this until the K3III actually arrives (I've not seen/read any information on this)

They've bumped it up a stop and a half, they say the K-3iii is better noise reduction than the K-1ii. And it works on base level images. It's actually huge if you want to use an APS-c with better noise reduction than most full frames.

[interested_observer]

Oh not completely yet.... the big unanswered question being buffer clearing. And the reason for this thread is, I may wait for the K-1iii to come out with this tech, or the K-Pii.

They've bumped it up a stop and a half, they say the K-3iii is better noise reduction than the K-1ii. And it works on base level images. It's actually huge if you want to use an APS-c with better noise reduction than most full frames.

Yes!!! a much larger raw buffer please. RAM is cheap and there really is no excuse to not have a larger buffer. Also, they really could adjust their buffer clearing algorithm, to start refilling immediately upon the freeing of any freeing of a slot. Complete buffer cleaning is not necessary.

Implementing additional advanced noise reduction would also be a plus.

[phoebus]

If Ricoh are listening - KEEP THE K-1 TILT SCREEN!!!

I had got slightly complacent about the K-1 design over the last almost 5 years. However, having recently been frequently using a camera with tilt/flip screen for BIF photos, I can not emphasize enough how brilliant the moon-lander tilt screen is on the K-1. That, plus the great ergonomics of the body and controls. It all just works without faff. Not having to pull out the screen out 180 degrees, and then rotate to the needed angle... ...the K-1 screen is SO slick in comparison to any competition.

If the K-1iii has the upgraded electronic innards of the K-3iii, new AF system and gains a newer Back Illuminated sensor, but keeps substantially the same body, complete with GPS and moon-lander screen, I'll pre-order it: Now. Like straight away. This minute.



---------- Post added 01-03-21 at 23:26 ----------

Yes!!! a much larger raw buffer please. RAM is cheap and there really is no excuse to not have a larger buffer. Also, they really could adjust their buffer clearing algorithm, to start refilling immediately upon the freeing of any freeing of a slot. Complete buffer cleaning is not necessary.

Implementing additional advanced noise reduction would also be a plus.

I think the faster buffer clearing is a given, seeing as the UHS-II (or higher) SD Cards allow the data to be written faster, plus the (almost certainly ARM 4 core) multi-core processor allowing things to continue in camera land while the buffer is cleared, AND the new hardware is (again, almost certainly) not as hardware RAM constrained as I believe the current K-1 processor is, allowing a decent amount of RAM to be used. (My suppositions based on the reported hardware architecture of the GRiii and therefore presumably K3iii, which was described as being Android based kernel running on a multi-core processor.)

[interested_observer]

I think the faster buffer clearing is a given, seeing as the UHS-II (or higher) SD Cards allow the data to be written faster, plus the (almost certainly ARM 4 core) multi-core processor allowing things to continue in camera land while the buffer is cleared, AND the new hardware is (again, almost certainly) not as hardware RAM constrained as I believe the current K-1 processor is, allowing a decent amount of RAM to be used. (My suppositions based on the reported hardware architecture of the GRiii and therefore presumably K3iii, which was described as being Android based kernel running on a multi-core processor.)

At this point in time, especially with Apple's M1 introduction, you really have to believe that ARM is working rather quickly reworking the internal architecture of their offerings to at least some degree following what Apple has been able to show. Especially for embedded devices like cameras, reducing power consumption while increasing the efficient thruput / performance of the onboard computing architecture. You have to think really hard if you are a company like Pentax to delay some product offerings to take advantage of this rework effort - otherwise you are taking a several year performance hit on your new products.

Pentax is sufficiently small enough that they would not rework an architecture alone to achieve such a level of improved thruput/performance. However, waiting for ARM to provide such an effort - would enable Pentax to possibly maintain its current level of compute cores - while gaining both an increase in performance and a decrease in power consumption. Increasing their compute cores - especially taking the high efficiency / high performance pairing - is probably very enticing. Extending that approach across the image processing chip (signal processing) would certainly help the overall camera body performance.

Even without this, I would suspect that a new K1III is a year away - and that would also apply to a 645 refresh.

[btnapa]

As I've said, many times, my problem with the K-3iii is the lack of a tilting back screen

Omission of a tilting screen in today's competitive market, what are they smoking in Pentax HQ!?

[Mikesul]

Right after retiring, I upgraded to the K1 rather than wait for the K3II replacement/Knew/K3III. My plan was to wait - but, I'm glad that I did upgrade. There are several things that I can now, not live without (well, I can - but I don't want to)...

• An articulating screen - the moon lander is exceptional. With tripod shooting especially at night - this is an absolute must (for me).

• Fully integrated GPS - not having the external module and having GPS always on, is a real nice benefit.

• Acceleration Chip - I guess we really do not know about this until the K3III actually arrives (I've not seen/read any information on this) - but, it does appear useful and does help (1.5 stops of DR at ISO 640 and above). I could not make up my mind, so I just stayed with my K1 unmodified. Looking at a friends output from his K70, I do see that it's pretty useful, so I do hope that it's available.

• External LEDs - for those of us who shoot at night (especially on a tripod, these LEDs are extremely handy.

• As handy as the top ISO button is, the ISO on the third dial is even more useful.

The one feature I do wish that they would drop are the white dots. They are just %^$#@ &^:=! irritating and annoying.

What white dots? I must be missing something.

[interested_observer]

What white dots? I must be missing something.

White Dots - well overall, on long exposures in very low light situations, you "acquire" small white dots - looks like sand grit randomly across the image.

• Pentax K1 White Dot Issue on Longer Exposures–Same as the other cameras using the Sony 36MP chip @ Photos Of Arkansas
• K1 and white dot issues (Same as the D810) | The GetDPI Photography Forum
• Pentax K1 and white dots (same as Nikon D810 and D800e)

You can deal with them in several ways....

• Using the in-camera Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR) setting - which is essentially dark frame subtraction. This doubles your long exposure with the camera taking a second dark frame to subtract from the first. Or you can take a dark frame manually and in post processing subtract it off (PhotoShop).

.... then there are a couple of approaches through post processing

• Use Camera One (C1) for post processing with out using a dark frame. This raw processing utility removes the white dots automagically upon loading the image. LightRoom is not able to remove them.

• Raw Tharapee (free download) - does a great job in terms of getting rid of the white dot noise - via their impulse noise reduction.

Mid last year, I picked up Topaz denoise AI and that appears to also work, but it also tends to have a heavier hand that what I would like.

The primary way I get them is when I'm out shooting the milky way over landscapes, and really it's only in the foreground where they are really a PIA. I shoot my foregrounds usually at ISO 400 to 800, f4 @ 2, 3, 4 or 5 minutes depending on the location and how it is lit - usually with starlight.