[hadi]

for what its worth, the learning curve on each program of each camera maker shouldn't be held against them.
for example, when i first picked up the pentax k-x, everything was new to me.
if i pick up any canon or nikon or sony, everything will be new to me. in comparison, some stuff maybe backward to pentax, others maybe better. while the other differences would be just that - different. after a while we get used to different programs and start hating on what we are not familiar with

[Nicolas06]

Some people are naturally conservative and will not accept something that works differently from what they've used all their lives, or that requires them to change their habits in some small way. It reminds me of trying to sell people on electric cars. . .

The difference is some people actually buy and enjoy mirroless... They have around 1/4 of the market. Now what the market on electric cars ouside of government subventions programs?

And please don't say it is innovative or whatever, the first car where electric. We shifter from that for reasons that are still valid:
- it is not practical to have a car that doesn't have much autonomy and can't refuel in less than 5 minutes in most places.
- it doesn't make sense economically. Renting the batteries is more expensive than the gazoline.
- it doesn't make sense ecologically to make electricity with fossil energy, get a good share of it lost while transforming it into electricity and another share lost into the distribution network to finally put into higly poluting batteries.

People agree to be ecologists, but they'll not pay more for a vastly inferior product. Brain washing can get rid of the last argument but not of the first two.

[Nicolas06]

Let me tell you one neat thing about mirrorless. If you want to take a long exposure at night, with an OVF, its always a bit of a guess, at least for me, to get the exposure right. With a mirrorless, or at least my Sony, you just crank up the iso, lengthen the TV, or open the aperture, and you see the effect of the change, immediately, on the EVF. You don't have to wait for 20s to see what the trial shot is going to look like.

Is that an essential feature? No. But it sure is a time saver and convenient.
.

I don't get it, you camera has metering no? As long as it is less than 30s (here in example 20), you have it. And you can still crank crank the iso shot a picture and get instant feedback on the exposure.

Anyway, on tripod, you are more likely using liveview.

[Nicolas06]

"Performance" is a pretty vague word, when you think about it. You need to specify what aspect, or aspects, of performance you are measuring. A given f-ratio will project the same intensity of light without regard to the sensor size. The required exposure level (shutter speed and ISO sensitivity) will be the same. Of course small sensors don't generally have the same ISO performance (i.e. signal-to-noise) as larger ones, so maybe that's what you were thinking about. . .?

In term of exposure 100 iso f/2 is the same as 200 iso f/2.8, 400 iso f/4 and so on. So for exposure, there really nothing interresting on the apperture number except that too large apperture may produce overexposure or too narrow apperture may produce underexposure if you encounted the limit on min/max exposure time or iso settings.

It has been years that camera can do all the exposure computation in full automatic mode with great success, so one doesn't need to think one bit of apperture 99% of the time to get the exposure right. Even when exposure it not right, there no point to compute yourself, you switch to spot metering or just dial in an exposure bias.

What make somebody wish for large apperture is either shallow deph of field or better controlling shutter speed and isos (noise).

The thing is the Q at iso 100 as much more noise than a K1 at iso 100. It is more like Q at iso 100 match K1 at iso 1600 for picture quality. As for dof control f/2 on a Q is more like f/8 on an FF.

There nothing bad or wrong with that, it is just better to know it and understand it and know if it is important for you or not. If you shoot action/sport/wildlife/low light or shallow deph of field, it is. In other conditions it might not be that much.

The equivalence allow to perfectly match the field of view and shallow deph of field and get also a noise equivalence if using the same sensor technology. That a quick way to know what you'll get on another camera. I don't think how that can be bad?

Me my issues with such compact system in general, is that I tend to see the lack of spice and quality in the photo and so I tend to prefer a somewhat big sensor. APSC is okish. FF is better but is too big/expensive for me.

In the end choosing the Q is just a different tolerance for weight/size/quality. Nothing wrong or bad with that.

But saying that f/1.9 on a Q and on a K-1 is the same on all purpose, this is not at all the case. Only the exposure would be the same, all the other stuff would be quite different: field of view, deph of field, picture quality.

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Last edited by Nicolas06; 05-01-2016 at 06:01 AM.

[totsmuyco]

In term of exposure 100 iso f/2 is the same as 200 iso f/2.8, 400 iso f/4 and so on. So for exposure, there really nothing interresting on the apperture number except that too large apperture may produce overexposure or too narrow apperture may produce underexposure if you encounted the limit on min/max exposure time or iso settings.

It has been years that camera can do all the exposure computation in full automatic mode with great success, so one doesn't need to think one bit of apperture 99% of the time to get the exposure right. Even when exposure it not right, there no point to compute yourself, you switch to spot metering or just dial in an exposure bias.

What make somebody wish for large apperture is either shallow deph of field or better controlling shutter speed and isos (noise).

The thing is the Q at iso 100 as much more noise than a K1 at iso 100. It is more like Q at iso 100 match K1 at iso 1600 for picture quality. As for dof control f/2 on a Q is more like f/8 on an FF.

There nothing bad or wrong with that, it is just better to know it and understand it and know if it is important for you or not. If you shoot action/sport/wildlife/low light or shallow deph of field, it is. In other conditions it might not be that much.

The equivalence allow to perfectly match the field of view and shallow deph of field and get also a noise equivalence if using the same sensor technology. That a quick way to know what you'll get on another camera. I don't think how that can be bad?

Me my issues with such compact system in general, is that I tend to see the lack of spice and quality in the photo and so I tend to prefer a somewhat big sensor. APSC is okish. FF is better but is too big/expensive for me.

In the end choosing the Q is just a different tolerance for weight/size/quality. Nothing wrong or bad with that.

But saying that f/1.9 on a Q and on a K-1 is the same on all purpose, this is not at all the case. Only the exposure would be the same, all the other stuff would be quite different: field of view, deph of field, picture quality.

I agree, it's really knowing what you want and sticking to it. I think that in choosing a system you must have a game plan in order to maximize the amount of cash that you put into your system. I'm a person who isn't awash with cash and can jump from one system to another and just ditch my gears for a bargain. Or, a person who can build up and maintain two or more systems. When I ventured into Pentax, I read all the reviews I can get and decided whether this system is for me or not. After choosing my system, I try to grow into it.

As for MILC, maybe there is a need for Pentax to go into it and maybe the future is towards that direction. But, whatever that is, I sure do hope they won't ditch the k-mount.

[shootfreeordiehard]

This is not another thread bashing Pentax but I've been watching a lot of videos where pros are switching from FF CaNikon to Sony and Fuji mirrorless cameras. In all case, the pros all say that the AF won't keep up with DSLRs but the lightweight more than makes up for it. Pentax DSLRs are just about as compact with decent AF.

Search You Tube and you'll see everyone from Zack Arias to Kevin Mullins giving testimonials on how great Fuji is for fashion, street, and wedding photography. Jason Lanier has his 10 reasons I switched from Nikon to Sony. In all cases, the pluses described by these pros for Sony and Fuji, Pentax has in spades. They talk about the light good quality prime lenses. Pentax Limited and FA primes are terrific! They are as good as anyone's lenses. I would put a K3II or K3 against anything from Fuji or Sony. Yeah the A7RII should crush a K3II and it had better for $3500. Is the XPro2 or the A6300 any better than the K3II? I doubt it.

Pentax, you are watching, please take advantage of this...

What people don't seem to realize is that mirrorless sales have actually stagnated as of late. Sony seems to be hitting it's high water mark.

Besides, there's tons of downsides to mirrorless and I'm absolutely uninterested in going that route.

[Rupert]

Once I mount my Bigma 50-500 on a small mirrorless body...where is that small camera advantage? Even a 70-200 eliminates the "small size" advantage...and if you have small hands ( I don't...my hands are Huge...if you know what I mean!) then it just makes handling more difficult with a tiny body.

I think there is a definite place for mirrorless...street shooting is one..but I don't see DSLRs disappearing anytime soon.

Pentax seems to have quickly upped the game with their newest cameras, so whatever they are planning or doing, I suspect it will be to our advantage. I'm just guessing...but I'm pretty sure they know more about it than I do?

Regards!

[UncleVanya]

With many Mirrorless cameras the sensor size is smaller as well which confuses the issue. An apsc sensor Sony lens at the same focal length as a Pentax lens for the k-3 will lose size advantages on the telephoto end. The shorter lenses as has been pointed out are potentially smaller due to design differences. (Registration distance etc. ).

With smaller sensors things get more complicated since there is a crop factor to consider. M4/3 is a 1.33x crop of apsc so a 500mm on apsc can be replaced by a 375mm on m4/3.

For me I'm still playing with m4/3 but it is hard to know if that system is a keeper for me.

[Cynog Ap Brychan]

I'm not a market analyst, so I don't know if Pentax has missed the boat or not. I do know that right now, the K-1 is floating my boat!

[Tony Belding]

The difference is some people actually buy and enjoy mirroless... They have around 1/4 of the market. Now what the market on electric cars ouside of government subventions programs?

And please don't say it is innovative or whatever, the first car where electric. We shifter from that for reasons that are still valid:
- it is not practical to have a car that doesn't have much autonomy and can't refuel in less than 5 minutes in most places.

How often do you drive more than 200 miles in a day? For many people the sheer convenience of charging at home and starting every morning with a "full tank", and never having to go to the gas station again, far outweighs the inconvenience of long road trips. Then, when you do eventually take that long trip, having to stop for 20 or 25 minutes at a fast-charging station probably won't kill your soul. (Especially if the station is next door to Collin Street Bakery, like the one in Waco!)

- it doesn't make sense economically. Renting the batteries is more expensive than the gazoline.

Who is renting batteries? Where did that even come from? Electricity is far less expensive than gasoline -- even at today's gas prices, never mind whenever the next oil shock hits. Plus, there's very little routine maintenance required: no oil, belts, filters, spark plugs, and typically much less wear on the brakes due to the regenerative braking.

- it doesn't make sense ecologically to make electricity with fossil energy, get a good share of it lost while transforming it into electricity and another share lost into the distribution network to finally put into higly poluting batteries.

This single sentence contains so many mis-statements, I'm going to have to break it down item-by-item.

1. All electricity is not made with fossil energy. All gasoline is. Due to its higher efficiency, the electric car is already cleaner. I think it's widely understood by now that we need to clean up the electrical grid, and that's happening and will continue to happen. Thus, the electric car only gets cleaner. Of new power generation that came online last year, the majority was solar. Meanwhile, coal is dying rapidly.

2. Energy production and distribution is far, far more energy efficient than the production of gasoline. To start with, gasoline refineries are some of the biggest users of electricity in the country, and the electrical power used to refine your gallon of gasoline could propel the electric car roughly the same distance. Gasoline engines top out around 30% efficiency, as compared with 90+ for electric motors.

3. Lithium-ion batteries are not highly polluting. Lithium is non-toxic, and it's perfectly OK to put the batteries into household garbage and landfills -- not that you'd want to, since the material contents are worth recycling.

People agree to be ecologists, but they'll not pay more for a vastly inferior product. Brain washing can get rid of the last argument but not of the first two.

I agree that people will not pay more for a vastly inferior product. They will, however, pay more for a vastly superior product, which is why Tesla have been selling the Model S as fast as they can produce it. That's also why there were, at least count, 400,000 people waiting in line to buy the Model 3. That's no small cadre of eco-weenies.

[MarkJerling]

The Tesla is, to my knowledge, the only electic car currently on the market that will travel further than 200 miles (360km) on a full charge. The other cars on the market range from 60 - 85 miles. That would not do, for most of us, so until the technology improves it, unfortunately, puts electric vehicles off the map for many potential users. 75% of our electricity (New Zealand) is of renewable sources, either hydro or wind generated.
But, until that range improves, I have no choice but to stick with a V8!

[philbaum]

What people don't seem to realize is that mirrorless sales have actually stagnated as of late. Sony seems to be hitting it's high water mark.

Besides, there's tons of downsides to mirrorless and I'm absolutely uninterested in going that route.

You are in error on that stagnating comment. The 2016 CIPA report for the period of Jan-Mar compared to the same period in 2015, show that in 1000 yen units, mirrorless sales are up 44%, DSLR sales are down 18%.

In 2015, DSLR sales outnumbered mirrorless sales in a ratio of 3:1. In 2016, because of the continuing slip of DSLR sales, DSLR sales now only outnumber mirrorless sales in a ratio of 2:1. How far are DSLR sales going to slip, noone really knows, but i suspect they will slip below parity with mirrorless.

@Rupert: There's no law saying one has to hang a heavy long tele zoom off a mirrorless - where'd you get that idea? This last Saturday, i photographed a fashion show along a 40' runway, and the AF tracked the models walking towards me, turning around and then walking away. This was with a Sony 70-200 F4 lightweight lens which was no problem to hold. Never seen tracking like that before with my K3. I'm sure there are lots of things to like about the K1, but don't fool yourself, the Sony FF also has a lot of things to like.

[Nicolas06]

How often do you drive more than 200 miles in a day? For many people the sheer convenience of charging at home and starting every morning with a "full tank", and never having to go to the gas station again, far outweighs the inconvenience of long road trips. Then, when you do eventually take that long trip, having to stop for 20 or 25 minutes at a fast-charging station probably won't kill your soul. (Especially if the station is next door to Collin Street Bakery, like the one in Waco!)

Only if I drive from home to work. And it is not 200miles for most cars but more like 40-50. For many people just forgetting to plug the car one day mean they'll be stuck at the end of the next day to commute. It also mean that when I go to ski on the weekend (200km return trip) I am stuck. Fast charging station? There are none, in particular, not near the ski station. Go back see my father by car? 500kms on highway so how many time will I have to wait 20-25mins, counting that most stations don't even have support? It will add 2 hours to the trip and would be very boring. At that point I'll take the plane and theses guys don't work with electricity.

Fast charge reduce drastically the efficiancy of charge (so more electricity is needed) and destroy the batterie life meaning you polute more and have to replace them as used more often.

Who is renting batteries? Where did that even come from? Electricity is far less expensive than gasoline -- even at today's gas prices, never mind whenever the next oil shock hits. Plus, there's very little routine maintenance required: no oil, belts, filters, spark plugs, and typically much less wear on the brakes due to the regenerative braking.

The batteries are very expensive and need to be changed often. The idea also to not make people wait for charge at the refill station and to avoid drastically reduced efficiancy of fast charge, you directly exchange your empty batteries with one full. Were I live I can't buy an electric car and own the batteries. I can only rent them, the monthly cost for the rent is arround the price of 30-50 gallons of gazoline a month.

This also avoid to say have to spend 10K$ or more after 5 years for new batteries, maybe only 1-2 years for new batteries if you abused the "fast charge". The guys would have the impression you ask them to buy a new car each time.

1. All electricity is not made with fossil energy. All gasoline is. Due to its higher efficiency, the electric car is already cleaner. I think it's widely understood by now that we need to clean up the electrical grid, and that's happening and will continue to happen. Thus, the electric car only gets cleaner. Of new power generation that came online last year, the majority was solar. Meanwhile, coal is dying rapidly.

Most of it is made with fossil energy or nuclear energy. And gasoline can be made from crops. They are so called "bio" even if I find it a joke to use crop for gazoline while we could give the food to people, but anyway. You just don't need to replace anyway. If all transport was using electricity, you have to more than double electricity production worldwide. And until we have way to solve the issue that renewable don't produce all the time, but at best like 1/4 of the time, that mean multiply capacity by 10. Maybe in 200 years, and only if you sacrifice huge area of the earth to that, replacing forests etc with this.

2. Energy production and distribution is far, far more energy efficient than the production of gasoline. To start with, gasoline refineries are some of the biggest users of electricity in the country, and the electrical power used to refine your gallon of gasoline could propel the electric car roughly the same distance. Gasoline engines top out around 30% efficiency, as compared with 90+ for electric motors.

Are you sure? Look at that: http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec17.pdf
Geothermal: 16%
Hydroelectric: 90% (don't forget you have to destroy big area to cover them with water to use that)
Solar photovoltaic: 12%
Solar thermal power: 21%
Wind: 26%

And a batterie discharge: (Car Battery Efficiencies
Li/Ion: 80-90% efficiancy
Pb/Acid: 50-92% efficiancy
NiMh:66% efficiancy

For electricity transport from power plan to home: How big are Power line losses? - Schneider Electric Blog

"The overall losses between the power plant and consumers is then in the range between 8 and 15%."

Don't forget also that the better the autonomy, the more batteries you have, the heavier the car, the more energy it need to move. You can store many time more energy (like 20-50 time) in 1 liter of gazoline than with 1kg of batteries.

3. Lithium-ion batteries are not highly polluting. Lithium is non-toxic, and it's perfectly OK to put the batteries into household garbage and landfills -- not that you'd want to, since the material contents are worth recycling.

My father actually worked in env that required instant electricity backup in case of failure. The only viable solution was Pb/Acid. Theses suckers tend to emit hydrogen in some case. This is so conveniant to store, that you need a dedicated building for that (so if it explode, it doesn't burn the hospital with it), it is forbidden to be alone there and there constant monitoring. Yeah sound fun. This is considered high risk.

And also read a bit here: Tesla's new batteries may be harder on the environment than you think | Vital Signs | The Guardian

Even the guys that produce the batteries are cautious with it. The batteries even lithum-ion are highly poluting, still require fossil energy to be made theses days and are not able to store the quantity of energy we need.

If we had all cars replaced with that, we would likely have to mine for a few hundred years to find all the raw material... That's not for tommorow.

I agree that people will not pay more for a vastly inferior product. They will, however, pay more for a vastly superior product, which is why Tesla have been selling the Model S as fast as they can produce it. That's also why there were, at least count, 400,000 people waiting in line to buy the Model 3. That's no small cadre of eco-weenies.

Yeah compared to hundred millions of sales of fossil fuels car, less than 1% and only for insanely rich people that stil have other cars anyway.

[Rondec]

I would just echo what a couple of other folks have said, the K1 is great. I don't know if a mirrorless K-1 would be better (I doubt it), but for those who own a lot of K mount lenses and want to use them on full frame, it works well. Everything is better about it, even auto focus.

(not sure about the whole car discussion -- I live in a rural location and it is pretty frequent that I drive over 100km in a day).

[emalvick]

With regard to the original post, I wonder the same thing.

My wife and I were recently blessed with the birth of our daughter. I considered for a while buying a GR2, or Fuji camera (x100t or x-t1) thinking my wife could have a nice camera to carry around with her conveniently. As I researched the details, I quickly realized that the difference between the cameras I listed an a Pentax dSLR with something like the 21 mm lens on it, was minimal. The size and weights weren't all that different, especially on the Fuji cameras.

Of course Ricoh has the GR2, but if I neglect the fixed lens options, the Pentax camera is quite comparable. Pentax could provide more marketing. I've actually gotten quite hooked to using my K3 with the 21 mm or 43 mm lens for being a relatively compact (for dSLR) system. My wife is now learning and getting hooked on using the K5 with the same two lenses. So, I saved myself $1000 dollars and have finally given up on my zoom lenses for good (at least the wider ones).

As for mirrorless and such... I like the model fuji has with its hybrid viewfinders. I don't like the idea of EVF's, but I feel fuji has made a nice compromise. I like the way their system works as more of a range-finder like system. I wouldn't mind if Pentax could do similar, but I don't need it.

Pentax or Ricoh could probably tap that market, however. Just some clever marketing. They definitely have a cost and size advantage in the dSLR market, and they are competitive with the mirrorless market without even being mirrorless. They just need to show that mirrorless / slr isn't as important of a distinction as the other aspects.