[redrockcoulee]

Pentax accepted by the market? Where do YOU live? How many Pentaxians have been laughed at for still carrying Pentax? How many jobs did Pentaxians miss because their clients wanted FF format pictures?

The low quality of the Pentax products was caused by lacking QC. (bad thing.) Not because they were so busy anticipating the evolving market. (That would have been a good thing.)

Are saying that people actually laugh at you for using a Pentax?

[mysticcowboy]

Are saying that people actually laugh at you for using a Pentax?

I usually get the opposite reaction. People may be surprised but generally not derisive.

[Lowell Goudge]

Are saying that people actually laugh at you for using a Pentax?

I usually get the opposite reaction. People may be surprised but generally not derisive.

actually, the only time I have ever been asked what camera I was using, I was in prague, on the charles bridge, and a guy was following me around looking at my images as they flashed on the display and commented that they looked so much better than his, and what camera was I using? He had a canon

People that know what pentax is, know what it can do, people who don;t know pentax, I could care less about.

In fact today I tripped over someone scrounging for pentax compatible M42 lenses in one of my haunts, because they were so much better and lower cost than lenses for his canon.

[RobA_Oz]

Actually, it's 40%. A FF 35mm sensor is more than twice the size of an APS-C sensor.

My mistake. The calculation should have yielded 43%, not its complement. I shouldn't attempt mental arithmetic in my sleep.

There simply will never be the same degree of artistic flexibility with 4/3rds as there is with FF.

And there'll never be a large percentage of camera users who are sufficiently interested in that flexibility to pay the premium involved, but, of course, that number will also never be zero. Don't get me wrong: I'm probably one of those, but I don't kid myself that I'm in anything but a small minority there.

[rawr]

Pentax accepted by the market? Where do YOU live? How many Pentaxians have been laughed at for still carrying Pentax? How many jobs did Pentaxians miss because their clients wanted FF format pictures?

This is the strangest comment I've read here for a long time.
Wherever you live must be a very weird place.

[cali92rs]

In Nikonian terms, a FF D600 might be nice, but it's simply not twice as nice as a D7000. Plus if you want to shoot wildlife or sports, which a lot of amateurs like to do, there are still advantages to crop that are going to be hard for FF to overcome.

There's a lot of Nikonians out there that believe that Nikon's DX lens lineup is being purposely neglected. The idea being that when people buy their D7000, they buy a few DX lenses, which are of course lacking. So then they buy some nice shiny FX lenses, which leads them to believe that they need to buy an FX camera to take full advantage of those fancy lenses. And then Nikon's mission is complete. Meanwhile, the consumer that bought the D7000 with the DX lenses feels screwed.

I guess long story short, is that crop sensor cameras are really a ploy to get you to eventually buy FF gear (lenses and cameras). Of course, if youre a Pentaxian, you don't have to worry about that

[pinholecam]

FF going to be main steam?
Not so soon.

1. Not like $2K falls from the sky into everyone's lap.
2. Physically, its still big. If it were the size of flim cameras, then yes, but a large chuck of brick as an everyday camera as the 'norm'; No way!
3. FF sensors are getting cheaper, but APS-C will get cheaper too.
4. APS-C IS getting smaller with new introductions like the XE-1 and NEX with 3rd party lenses.
5. The general market for layman is still for a $200-$600 camera which takes pictures. This used to be pns and some of the better pns. Now its shifted to some cheaper aps-c MILC and DSLRs (in the $600 range); Unless every layman in the world gets a boost in their disposable income and spending behaviour, it not going to change.
In fact, APS-C is going mainstream (if not already so).

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Last edited by pinholecam; 09-27-2012 at 09:57 PM.

[twitch]

Probably more interesting is the K-5IIs vs the new Fuji X-E1. Similair prices (Fuji a bit cheaper), same sensor sizes, no AA filters, both from systems that have an emphasis on primes, both trying to be as compact as possible........but very different form factors.

I think the K-5II has as much to worry about from the Fuji camp as they do from Nikon.

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

Pentax has been a conservative company.

The best historical example is how long they stayed with screwmounts while other companies were creating bayonet or breech mounts:

M47 mount: 1952 (Asahiflex)
M42 mount: 1957 (Asahi Pentax)
Nikon F mount: 1959
Canon FD mount: 1971
Pentax K mount: 1975

And the Pentax engineering solution for adapting M42 lenses to the new mount was to adapt the bayonet mount into a screwmount instead of adapting the screwmount lens into a bayonet one. The genius of being different!

These brands get away with treating their customers like this because, for what ever historical means they have the market share that lets them do it and get away with it.

So you think that if you have a larger market share, it is easier to leave it in the dust and then pick it up again with a different product?

Canon got away with dropping the FD mount because they offered a much better system - both better than their old one and better than anyone else's. To get away from the K mount, Ricoh also needs to introduce a much better system. That is all. It's not simple, but it doesn't have anything to do with how large the current market is, it just has to do with the capability of producing a product that people want to use.

[philbaum]

Probably more interesting is the K-5IIs vs the new Fuji X-E1. Similair prices (Fuji a bit cheaper), same sensor sizes, no AA filters, both from systems that have an emphasis on primes, both trying to be as compact as possible........but very different form factors.

I think the K-5II has as much to worry about from the Fuji camp as they do from Nikon.

Possibly, but Fuji isn't there yet as a system. only 3 primes available. flash synchro is limited to 1/180s on the xp1, 1/160s on the xe1, no zooms available, poor af performance on xp1, apple and adobe have yet to support raw conversion, raw is confined to a limited range on xe1. buying into fuji requires an act of faith at the moment, but cameras seem attractive.

[52mm]

Well, I haven't used a new Fuji in a while, but judging from e.g. the S9600, their idea of a user interface tends to be somewhat... interesting. I never really liked the operation on that camera. By contrast, when I got to try out a K-x in a store back when their were still available, the menu system was basically love at first sight. (My little Olympus SP-310 fell somewhere in between, neither bad nor perfect.)

[reeftool]

I think aps-c sensors are still the bread and butter for all the camera manufacturers. Around here, the stores that sell cameras don't stock FF cameras. They are full of Canon Rebel's and Nikon DX models. I was at a hot air balloon festival last weekend and as always, a surefire camera magnet. The only FF camera I saw was the guy from the local paper who had a D700 (it isn't his). Soccer moms are not going to be lining up to buy FF cameras until the prices come down to current aps-c camera prices. That may well happen before long. It wasn't all that long ago that the cheapest DSLR cost thousands. The real market for the future isn't going to be determined by most of us but whatever format today's teenagers and 20 somethings choose to embrace. The DSLR will always be there but will it be the "good camera" of choice for the next generation? The guys who answer that question wrong will be the next decades Kodak.

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

but Fuji isn't there yet as a system.

They sold a lot of cameras to Canon and Nikon users and that means they are onto something.

Their lens roadmap is very exciting too and they are delivering it.

[rawr]

They sold a lot of cameras to Canon and Nikon users and that means they are onto something.

LOL. 'If Canon or Nikon users are buying something, it must be great!'.
The Pentax user inferiority complex seems in-grained sometimes.

[mysticcowboy]

Possibly, but Fuji isn't there yet as a system. only 3 primes available. flash synchro is limited to 1/180s on the xp1, 1/160s on the xe1, no zooms available, poor af performance on xp1, apple and adobe have yet to support raw conversion, raw is confined to a limited range on xe1. buying into fuji requires an act of faith at the moment, but cameras seem attractive.

Only 1/180 second flash sync? And Pentax does better?