[Aristophanes]

When there will be new DFA*28-70mm/f2.8, DFA*80-200mm/f2.8; DFA*85mm/f1.4; DFA*200mm/f4 macro; DFA*500mm/f? and DFA*1.4xTC the lens line is complete enough to make a good start.

Finding a new niche in this market is also very important. So a small camerabody is important.

Good Lord!

You just laid out 5 years worth of lens development.

They'd also require a 14-24 equivalent.

There is no FF sensor on the market that Pentax could use, much less design a body for.

And as for "compactness" the MS-D is about as small as one could get.

FF is a pro market for the most part now, and pros spend their money on big zooms. There are not enough Pentax prosumers to drive a small prime line-up for FF sensors.

At least the 645D is cheaper than a Leica S2 by a large margin.

The economics and capital investments say that FF will not move down the chai for at least 5-7 years.

Do you want to keep arguing that long?

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Last edited by Aristophanes; 07-07-2011 at 07:46 PM.

[Blue]

Good Lord!

You just laid out 5 years worth of lens development.

They'd also require a 14-24equivalent.

There is no FF sensor on the market that Pentax could use, much less design a body for.

And as for "compactness" the MS-D is about as small as one could get.

FF is a pro market for the most part now, and pros spend their money on big zooms. There are not enough Pentax prosumers to drive a small prime line-up for FF sensors.

At least the 645D is cheaper than a Leica S2 by a large margin.

The economics and capital investments say that FF will not move down the chai for at least 5-7 years.

Do you want to keep arguing that long?

Yeah, lets argue for 5 years. Why not. We have been arguing about it for years. There are sensors available from Kodak. However, I don't see as big a need for one given the 645D system is there. It has a Kodak sensor btw.

Edit: The TC already has been designed with working prototypes displayed at photokina in the past and much of the work has been done on the optics with the biggest hurdle on the gear motors. As far as body size goes, I will believe the *istD was supposed to be full frame until someone at Pentax in on the development of the MS-D and *istD states otherwise.

[jsherman999]

There is no FF sensor on the market that Pentax could use, much less design a body for.

Why do you say this?

FF is a pro market for the most part now,

Not true - Majority of D700, 5DII and A850/A900 shooters are not 'pros', but enthusiasts.

and pros spend their money on big zooms. There are not enough Pentax prosumers to drive a small prime line-up for FF sensors.

Pros do spend a lot of money on big zooms, and so do enthusiasts. They also spend money on primes for portraiture, and most folks looking at Pentax for a second system - if it offerred uniqueness in terms of size - would be looking at the smaller primes pretty closely. In fact, the FA limiteds would probably be a big selling point for Pentax-as-FF for those folks.

At least the 645D is cheaper than a Leica S2 by a large margin.

Yep. But it's still a limited-use camera at a very, vey igh price (for most people.)

A $2500, smallish FF DSLR paired with small but great primes (and the necessary zooms) would be enticing for all K-mount shooters, new FF upgraders, and folks looking for a smaller, prime-centered second system.

The economics and capital investments say that FF will not move down the chai for at least 5-7 years.

Maybe, maybe not. Before Hoya? Never. With Hoya.... maybe. With Ricoh? I'd say the possibility is greater now than ever before, and probably at a quicker timeframe than 5 years if so.

Do you want to keep arguing that long?

Oh, yes. When I'm right I'll never stop arguing.



.

[Aristophanes]

You're missing the point.

The reason the 645D body is so expensive is because of the custom-designed, Kodak sensor.

There is no off-the-shelf sensor for FF on the market. You'd need to charge near the price of a 645D for a custom made Pentax FF from Kodak until Sony says otherwise because Canon and Nikon are in-house proprietary fabs. No word from Sony...

Until that dynamic changes you cannot economically source a Pentax FF sensor for a $$6,000 body much less a $2,500 body. Why do you think Nikon strips its loyalists for $6,500 on the D3s?

It's to pay back the costs of setting up the new sensor fab.

As for pros versus enthusiasts, the pro market margins drive sales for FF especially on heavy-use glass. Without those pro clients and their product turnover there would be no FF from Canikon at all. This is a point Sony has learned the hard way a they have none of that profit-driving cost-shifting going on.

Second systems kill in-brand opportunity costs. Every $ spent on a Pentax FF is likely a $ NOT spent on a 645D or K-5. There is not enough market elasticity to have all Pentax prosumers buy into one without giving up the other. The only way to overcome that is to gain market share from either:

1) Canikon users in numbers large enough to shrink their base
2) 100% new entrants to FF

No way on the former given their own legacy investments and not anywhere enough trickle-up for the latter due to the huge overhead on price necessary to get that sensor fab paid off.

All of this then presumes that any Pentax FF has the zoom lenses capable of matching a similarly priced Nikon D800. Another lesson learned by Sony and probably rightfully terrifying Pentax managers whenever the gung-ho engineers with lots of legacy glass bring this up. It's been assumed that the D700 is actually a loss leader for Nikon on margin, made up in volume, and that the real margins are paid for by the high res D3s series. This two-pronged approach by Nikon gives them a stick to beat down Sony, hamper Canon, and makes for zero space in the FF market for Pentax. Only Leica is able to squeeze in.

And as for size, unless FF mirrorless is in your dream, a D700/800 form factor is about as small as an FF DSLR will be able to go.

The only way you'll see Pentax FF is when APS-C development stalls enough that the marketers and bean counters see FF as a way to inject capital in such a way as to create an equally cost-effective market advantage. That day will come, but the horizon is at minimum a half-decade away. We know it will come because Sony, Canon, and Nikon have partly laid the table for it. The only hedge I give to all this is Sony's pellicle innovation. They may put some eggs in the basket for an FF offering here, but Sony has other pressures, not the least of which is some very unprofitable consumer lines and an aging PS3 money-maker.

[jsherman999]

You're missing the point.

The reason the 645D body is so expensive is because of the custom-designed, Kodak sensor.

There is no off-the-shelf sensor for FF on the market. You'd need to charge near the price of a 645D for a custom made Pentax FF from Kodak until Sony says otherwise because Canon and Nikon are in-house proprietary fabs. No word from Sony...

Sony, for one, just may be looking for customers for it's newest two sensors. Aptina has also been mentioned. Nikon was instrumental in the design of the D3/D700 stitched sensors, but AFAIK they have no real in-house fab capability beyond some prototyping stuff.

Until that dynamic changes you cannot economically source a Pentax FF sensor for a $$6,000 body much less a $2,500 body. Why do you think Nikon strips its loyalists for $6,500 on the D3s?

It's to pay back the costs of setting up the new sensor fab.

I suspect it's mostly because they can.

I'm going to quote someone below - this is part of a PM sent to me on dpreview, and it has some further insight (and some educated guesswork) :




"...The D3x has a sensor that costs Nikon US$450 more than the D7000, and a body build that in the film days sold for about US$1000 more. So let's see, US$1450 added to US$1200 = US$2650. No, I think they're making a fine profit on the D3x.

...

As far as I know Sony Imaging is still fighting the battle to release another full frame body in 2012. For Sony Semiconductor its really a matter of whether or not there's a paying customer. The basic ability is already in their system now. Scaling up APS sensors (or down for that matter) is simple enough to do. The hard part was getting the stitching to work on a production line with a good yield.
"

As for pros versus enthusiasts, the pro market margins drive sales for FF especially on heavy-use glass. Without those pro clients and their product turnover there would be no FF from Canikon at all. This is a point Sony has learned the hard way a they have none of that profit-driving cost-shifting going on.

I think that's mostly speculation, right? We don't know the breakout in sales numbers within the Sony DSLR line, lens sales numbers, etc. Not even really for Canon/Nikon either AFAIK, beyond sales numbers for all DSLRs and SLR lenses.

It is looking like Sony is coming out with at least one more FF body - and another sensor that could be placed on the general market - if they have a buyer(s).

Second systems kill in-brand opportunity costs. Every $ spent on a Pentax FF is likely a $ NOT spent on a 645D or K-5.

Every $? I wouldn't go that far. For one thing, existing K-mount shooters in the market for a k-1 may already have a K-5. This also doesn't take into account the money lost by k-mount shooters going to Canon or Nikon or Sony who would have preferred to stay with Pentax if hey had the opportunity - a K-1 keeps that money in-house.

There is not enough market elasticity to have all Pentax prosumers buy into one without giving up the other. The only way to overcome that is to gain market share from either:

1) Canikon users in numbers large enough to shrink their base
2) 100% new entrants to FF

No way on the former given their own legacy investments and not anywhere enough trickle-up for the latter due to the huge overhead on price necessary to get that sensor fab paid off.

Again, I see no reason why they would need to develop their own fab capability.

And as for size, unless FF mirrorless is in your dream, a D700/800 form factor is about as small as an FF DSLR will be able to go.

Interesting. Why do you say this with such conviction?

The only way you'll see Pentax FF is when APS-C development stalls enough that the marketers and bean counters see FF as a way to inject capital in such a way as to create an equally cost-effective market advantage. That day will come, but the horizon is at minimum a half-decade away.

We know it will come because Sony, Canon, and Nikon have partly laid the table for it.

I think it will come for Pentax as soon as they can get the go-ahead for new lens funding, which is a bigger spin-up than a FF body. I really think that was the major stopping point with Hoya, and Ned Bunnell hinted that in an interview. If that doesn't happen, FF doesn't happen for Pentax, IMO.



.

[fuent104]

It seems to me that many of the arguments against full-frame are based on a few things:

1. Intimate knowledge of the R&D costs of developing an ff system.

2. The assumption that the market for such a camera will remain for the next few years what it is today.

3. A lack of belief in the creativity of the engineers at Pentax (i.e. "full-frame can't get any smaller than it is now." -really? I don't think there are any immutable laws of the universe preventing it from happening).

4. The notion that R&D for ff would be undertaken from scratch. It is very well documented that this is not the case.

5. A lack of acknowledgment that business deals exist. Just because "there is no sensor available" now doesn't mean there won't be one tomorrow. Pentax has obviously entered into agreements for sensors in the past. Why one earth would they not be able to do it in the future?

6. The assumption that ff is for professionals only (as someone mentioned in an earlier post). Only one or two of the ff users I know are professionals. The rest of them are enthusiasts.

[fuent104]

By the way, this concern about the R&D costs also ignores the fact that some of the current products have increased Pentax's profile to the public, and that may continue to be the case. For example, even the forum seems to hate the Q, despite most of its users having never seen more than a handful of images taken with the camera, I have never seen a Pentax product generate so much attention. Additionally, I don't think anyone can deny that the colored dslrs have also brought attention to the brand. What if they actually continue to move forward with products and this keeps happening?

Most companies don't head into the future under the assumption that future market conditions will be same as current and past market conditions. I don't see why Pentax should, either.

[fuent104]

"The only way you'll see Pentax FF is when APS-C development stalls enough that the marketers and bean counters see FF as a way to inject capital in such a way as to create an equally cost-effective market advantage. That day will come, but the horizon is at minimum a half-decade away. We know it will come because Sony, Canon, and Nikon have partly laid the table for it."

Aristophanes, did you really just predict the next half decade of the photographic market? Were you also making accurate predictions about the 2011 market in 2006? In particular, did you know about the 645D and its price, the Q and its price, HD SLR video, digital cinema systems such as RED, and the availability of useful iso settings of 12,500?

If so, I will legitimately be amazed.

[Emacs]

Good Lord!

You just laid out 5 years worth of lens development.

They'd also require a 14-24 equivalent.

There is no FF sensor on the market that Pentax could use, much less design a body for.

And as for "compactness" the MS-D is about as small as one could get.

FF is a pro market for the most part now, and pros spend their money on big zooms. There are not enough Pentax prosumers to drive a small prime line-up for FF sensors.

At least the 645D is cheaper than a Leica S2 by a large margin.

The economics and capital investments say that FF will not move down the chai for at least 5-7 years.

Do you want to keep arguing that long?

In Moscow many pentaxians switched to FF canikon (not cropped ones, of course).

1. They spent much on pentax lenses, they had large lens sets
2. They switched to FF and now spend much for canikon lenses, so, Pentax lost much. It's about thousand dollars at least
3. When they were switching they selling a lot of pentax glasses, so losses for pentax again

It's my advice to you: don't measure the profit on the camera only. DSLR means lenses too. Who spend much on camera, will likely spend much on lenses.
As for me, I would buy UWA lens (about 12-15mm), fast 135mm prime, and 24-70,70-200 f2.8 zooms.

[Aristophanes]

In Moscow many pentaxians switched to FF canikon (not cropped ones, of course).
They spent much on pentax lenses, they had large lens sets
They switched to FF and now spend much for canikon lenses, so, Pentax lost much. It's about thousand dollars at least
When they were switching they selling a lot of pentax glasses, so losses for pentax again
It's my advice to you: don't measure the profit on the camera only. DSLR means lenses too. Who spend much on camera, will likely spend much on lenses.
As for me, I would buy UWA lens (about 12-15mm), fast 135mm prime, and 24-70,70-200 f2.8 zooms.

This is a contradiction.

Either the supposed FF purchasers want to use their old glass OR they are gong to invest in new glass. They may do both, but there is no guarantee of that. Unfortunately, if you are at the sales end of the company, you need to know that decisively before the thumbs up.

If you don't measure the profit on the camera, and lose money on the body because someone wants it at a discount to use legacy glass, then Pentax corporate is subsidizing that consumer.

Legacy coverage depresses new glass sales. Nikon has seen this with their long FF zooms. It took them ages to update the line and their reason was because so many people continued to use existing product.

Unfortunately, in order to guarantee a revenue stream a manufacturer must have those added sales. They cannot take that subsidization risk.

One company that this issue drove into near-bankruptcy was Leica. This is why their bodies are so expensive to begin with. they *must* make top margins on their bodies because of so much quality legacy glass out there. What is rescuing Leica now is the switch to digital and the opportunity to make new glass optimized for that purpose, compelling new and existing buyers into added sales.

The Nikon FF sensors were designed by Nikon. Sony manufactures them. The thinking is Nikon invested capital into the fab as part of an agreement as the companies have long had a close relationship and a common enemy in Canon. This happened at nearly the same time as Sony dropped the A850 FF camera. Speculation is Sony had to make a choice about being an industrial supplier to Nikon or continuing to make their own inferior chips at a loss. Sony Industrial won that argument because, despite hoards of excellent Minolta FF legacy glass and customers out there (much more than Pentax), Sony FF sales were awful. That's a lesson for Pentax; all the legacy customers you have who might want to switch is not enough to go to FF profitably. In order for Pentax to go FF, the costs of the sensors and design have to come down substantially.

Do not forget that Nikon Precision has a senior position in the lithography business and supplies Sony (and Intel, and others) with equipment. Apparently the D4 will also use Sony manufacturing to Nikon spec and that Sony will use the same sensor in their FF pellicle in 2012. The Sony A900 sensor is supposedly similar to the D3 sensor, but Nikon engineers crawl all over the facility in production. There's a whole lot more the sensors than just the array; there's the FPS issue with dumping at high frame rates and the AF system necessary to support that. There's video. There's power. Have you seen the physical size of the K-5 SR and AF systems? And the SR system? Pentax has no AF system capable of competing. It has no lens array and is years behind in development for FF.

FF is a very small market with extremely limited demand and high, high costs. The market is so small that Sony has put more weight into the industrial supply of its consumer competitor Nikon than into supplying its own consumers within the unified brand. That decision alone speaks volumes about the breadth and depth of the market for DSLR cameras over $2,000. Canon makes their own sensors and does pretty much everything in-house for their top-end DSLR's. The FF market could benefit from a third company getting into the race and helping drive down costs, but that company will not be Pentax; it will continue to be Sony itself.

Then there are the disruptors: mirrorless and pellicle. High-ISO sensors enable pellicle and K-mount backwards compatibility in the conformist SLR form factor; but mirrorless creates a new form factor allowing for smaller systems, but likely at the expense of K-mount compatibility meaning a whole new mount and a costly adapter for legacy users. Pentax is very wise to wait and see how those issues play out before leaping. The FF sensor issue will play out at lower costs, just over time measured in years. In the meantime, APS-C becomes more of a commodity and makes it harder to differentiate systems and brands. The moment Canon says APS-H is the "new APS-C" is when the market changes and sensor size becomes a driving force in new consumption.

[Aristophanes]

"The only way you'll see Pentax FF is when APS-C development stalls enough that the marketers and bean counters see FF as a way to inject capital in such a way as to create an equally cost-effective market advantage. That day will come, but the horizon is at minimum a half-decade away. We know it will come because Sony, Canon, and Nikon have partly laid the table for it."

Aristophanes, did you really just predict the next half decade of the photographic market? Were you also making accurate predictions about the 2011 market in 2006? In particular, did you know about the 645D and its price, the Q and its price, HD SLR video, digital cinema systems such as RED, and the availability of useful iso settings of 12,500?

If so, I will legitimately be amazed.

I got the Q right, although not 5 years in advance:

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/1545420-post852.html

Market observations I have made:

1) The lack of visible AF point in the K-x needs to be corrected. Pentax even made that statement when the K-r came out. I even got a free K-x for that essay

2) I have always claimed that video was a necessity for the DSLR crowd to draw people up from P&S.

3) Somewhere I have said ISO 800 is the new 200. In fact, I think the whole metric of sensitivity made be in need of a redesign.

Pentax says it took them 5 years to work out the Q. I'll take them at their word and their metric for a baseline. For that time in development you get one camera in 2 colours, and 5 or 6 lenses, aimed a s sub-$1,000 market category.

FF is 20x the investment for a much, much smaller market. As much as the Q is an interesting if over-priced concept, the FF business case is simply not there for Pentax with an installed user base of less than 5% of the DSLR market.

The cost curve has to come to Pentax; they cannot move it by leveraging their installed base. Not enough there. Sony had the 2-3x larger Minolta base to work with and they could not do it, even with in-house industrial supply of the sensor and other core components.

[Rondec]

I think there are a lot of guesses on both sides of the argument. In the past, Pentax used to have overly optimistic estimations about sales (both of bodies and of glass) and this lead to serious losses (that ended with Hoya's take over). Clearly they don't want to go down that road again and so prices have gone up considerably on both bodies and lenses.

I think Pentax could make and market a full frame camera, but I doubt it could sell for lower than mid 2000s without taking a loss. If unit sales were lower, it would have to be higher cost than that. Hard to see a lot of people giving up their K5s for a full frame camera if the cost is over a thousand dollars higher.

[jsherman999]

... Sony ... could not do it, even with in-house industrial supply of the sensor and other core components.

Sony simply didn't release a product that compelled much beyond the price. It wasn't really any smaller, didn't have any better resolution than the 5dmII, and worse noise and AF than the D700. It carried the Sony name, which at a camera counter is a drawback, no matter what they do.

The Sony FF model is instructive, but it isn't an unavoidable path. Also, AFAIK, there's no evidence that they're losing money with it, and in fact are possibly coming out with one or two more FF bodies.


.

[eddie1960]

I think Pentax could make and market a full frame camera, but I doubt it could sell for lower than mid 2000s without taking a loss. If unit sales were lower, it would have to be higher cost than that. Hard to see a lot of people giving up their K5s for a full frame camera if the cost is over a thousand dollars higher.

that's the real issue. Pentax has been seen as a value brand (remember all the complaining about the K5 price when it launched)
If they want to grow DSLR share I think it would have made sense to keep the Kx and K7 in the stream at reduced prices . one of the reasons canon sony and nikon have larger share is the sheer number of models each offers. 2 bodies just isn't enough, 3 would be a big improvement 4 would be better, best would have been kx/kr/k7/k5/FF
much easier to get front shelf coverage in the shops when you actually have something to put on the shelf
Nikon will have old stock still selling well past it's sell by, just at reduced prices (there is a D3000 kit on sale up here this week for $379. Not an ideal camera, but definitely brings users into the line who may(or may not) add lenses flash etc over time (given it's selling for less than the premium p/s in the line) I'm pretty certain it will be a fast sell out, but the step models like the 5100 will also pick up as once people are in the door the salespeople can show them the benefits of a step, or add on a flash/telezoom,bag,batteries.cards etc

[Aristophanes]

Sony simply didn't release a product that compelled much beyond the price. It wasn't really any smaller, didn't have any better resolution than the 5dmII, and worse noise and AF than the D700. It carried the Sony name, which at a camera counter is a drawback, no matter what they do.

The Sony FF model is instructive, but it isn't an unavoidable path. Also, AFAIK, there's no evidence that they're losing money with it, and in fact are possibly coming out with one or two more FF bodies.


.

You're right about model comparisons between brands, except Sony pays big $$$ already for premium shelf space and have their own retail presence. One more product was not going to make or break. At its core, Sony Consumer is a commodity retail supplier that tries to up-market its brand and create premium margins. That model has died. Apple inherited it.

I think Sony took one look at what Nikon was doing with product from the same fab and went "Uh oh!" and pulled the A850 out of production to prevent losses. Sony realized they needed to re-think and re-tool in the face of less than stellar demand for a low-cost FF. Just like Pentaxians, there is a large group of legacy Minolta users (quite a bit larger than the Pentax legacy) who at least have an FF option, but a vast majority did not buy up.

Anyone paying premium for FF will also demand premium functions like AF, VR, FPS, video, etc. The supporting tech to get there is not available from Sony, nor Pentax. They are definitely getting better, but they are not there to match the Nikon D700 which is the value benchmark for prosumer FF.

Sony is still in the FF biz. I bet on pellicle, one body announced late 2011, released in 2012 with 2 new lenses. Sony will let Nikon market test that sensor first before committing. I don't think Sony has an answer to the D700/800 yet, and that's the catalyst product. Right now there is no market space for a "value brand" and FF DSLR.