[peterh337]

Yes I think that is accurate.

But if your name is Pentax you don't want to shrink to serving an ever declining fraction of a market which is really very mature.

The advantage Pentax have is that Canon and particular Nikon have really militant user bases and will find it hard to introduce "trendy" features. Sony are free to do that.

But Sony are also constrained by their own media agenda which is occassionally irritating. I can't remember the details but when I was looking at the A7 I found the video format was something "special" which my video editor (Vegas) would not import. An irritating small thing (would have to run a converter on it first) but illustrative. Yesterday I was trying to get a Sony TV to play videos from a network drive acting as a DLNA server (a good use for a TV, and illustrative of the "convergence" requirement). It would not play anything... after a lot of googling I found that Sony refuse to support mp4 !!! They do support it on their action cams though...

[ThorSanchez]

Next time you are "somewhere scenic", watch someone with a DSLR. There won't be many of them Watch them take a pic with the DSLR and take the same pic with a phone to send to someone. That is a right PITA and is completely avoidable with very simple technology.

Having really easy automatic pic transfer to a phone would be a killer feature. Basically, sync suitably downsized jpegs (say 10-15MP) to the phone's DCIM/CAMERA (or similar, "camera roll" on Apple phones) path. The phone can then sync them to dropbox if needed.

It's pretty frequent that my wife's photo of a moment (from her cellphone, often blurry, low-res, objectively not great) becomes the version my extended family and friends see instead of the objectively much better one I take with my Pentax. That's because hers is immediately shared via message, email, Facebook, etc. And mine lags by at least minutes but often hour(s). In the case of vacations sometimes day(s). I'll sometimes follow up with the better one, but often not because what's the point?

---------- Post added 12-14-18 at 08:43 AM ----------

On the other hand, if we are talking about Pentax in particular, they need to invest their money in other areas -- primarily video and auto focus from a camera tech standpoint -- and in completing the DFA lens line up as fast as possible. Those sorts of things are the ones that are needed right now. If everything else was perfect and Pentax was trying to figuring out how to spend billions of dollars they were making from camera sales then perhaps the situation would be different.

Pentax doing better connectivity and processing may be a little like Audi doing user interface design. Audi makes wonderful cars, beautifully engineered, I love my S4. The part of the car I like the least is the user interface to the media/nav system. It's a 2014 model car and I had a dramatically better UI on my phone from 2008. To enter an address on the nav system without using the voice controls (which getting to work is no mean feat) is kind of like spelling out a complex sentence using a rotary-dial phone. It's technically possible if you're parked, and that's about as nice a thing as you can say about it. To see what's playing on a Sirius/XM channel you have to use a dial to navigate to that channel, then hover on it for three or four seconds until the details window pops up. The monochrome LCD display on my first standalone satellite radio from 2004 was leaps and bounds better. And it's not just Audi, it's most manufacturers. Almost every car company now includes Android Auto and/or Apple CarPlay because they've given up trying to do this right and it was killing their customer satisfaction scores. But it took a decade or more of failing before even aggressively competitive car companies reached that decision.

You are probably right that Ricoh/Pentax does not have subject matter expertise in some of these areas like charging and connectivity, and they're unwilling (probably due to limited resources) or unable to go get it. Unfortunately, some other companies probably will.

[TER-OR]

Wouldn't it be nice to take your DLSR and put it down on your wireless charging pad and have it wirelessly auto-download all your RAW and JPG files to your local computer and upload to your Flickr/Google/Apple/etc online repository? You come back a few minutes later and files are where you want them, and the battery is topping itself off, all without wearing those weather seals on the battery and SD card compartments for the 1000th time.

Upload to computer, sure. Not to my Flickr, or I'll have to delete them all immediately so I can sort and edit the images before posting. WiFi is something useful. Real tethering to computer or tablet would be even more useful.

Removable battery is vital if you want to use your computer in the winter or very hot summer. Batteries are fragile, and chemistry is chemistry. Too cold, they stop working. Swap out a battery from your warm pocket and keep shooting. DSLR is supposed to be a serious tool, let's have serious capabilities.

Of course smartphones are good enough much of the time, I use mine a lot. It's no replacement for my K3II with 100mm macro and ring flash. It's no replacement for my K3II with DA300.

[niblue]

I never, ever upload pictures to social media without doing some basic editing first - so despite several of my cameras having wi-fi it's not something I use.

[ThorSanchez]

Removable battery is vital if you want to use your computer in the winter or very hot summer. Batteries are fragile, and chemistry is chemistry. Too cold, they stop working. Swap out a battery from your warm pocket and keep shooting. DSLR is supposed to be a serious tool, let's have serious capabilities.

I don't understand why wireless charging and removable batteries are mutually exclusive. Why can't I be wirelessly charging the battery in my camera while also charging my backups in dedicated chargers?

[reh321]

I don't understand why wireless charging and removable batteries are mutually exclusive. Why can't I be wirelessly charging the battery in my camera while also charging my backups in dedicated chargers?

How long are you thinking that charging removeable D-Li109, or D-Li90, would take? That is my primary issue.

[reh321]

"They might however be deal-clinchers for someone buying a DSLR for the first time, choosing between different brands and models. Such people often only count the marketing feature tick-boxes, because they have nothing better to go by"

I have been shooting since 1975.

Fujica 605 (?)
OM1
OM1N
OM2SP
OM4TI
IST-DL
K100
K200
K5
K3
K1
and some others in between.

Clearly I must be stupid because film did everything I needed Provia 100 was not too bad. I used to shoot 25 rolls on a trip. Oh I used to shoot a pic of a piece of paper with my name and address, on every frame, to reduce the "lost in processing" percentage... Of course real men do their own E6 processing.

People like (some of) you lot are the biggest challenge for Marketing, which has to balance the hardcore militant fanboys with the people who actually buy the new stuff.

I have been shooting since 1969, mostly Kodachrome

Yashica Minister III rangefinder
Canon QL19 rangefinder
Pentax ME/SE
Pentax Super Program
Canon EOS Elan
Canon digital compact camera
Canon Rebel
Canon Rebel
Pentax K-30
Pentax KP

Even the first 7mp digital compact camera gave me better images than Kodachrome 25 ever did, and the K-30 is much, much better.
On a vacation I would routinely shoot 60-100 unique images a week.
I press the shutter many fewer times to get that number of images using digital than I had when using film.

I'm not sure what this comparison has to do with subject of this thread.

[peterh337]

"I never, ever upload pictures to social media without doing some basic editing first"

Same for anybody with a brain

But in any case I was not advocating that capability because there are basically only 3 ways to do it

- camera on a wifi network (cafe, hotel, etc) - this is rare
- camera on a wifi network provided by your phone
- camera contains a SIM card - almost nobody would want that, for SIM contract cost reasons

and in all cases the camera would contain the destination login credentials, which with no keypad would be a total PITA to enter.

Just auto sync to the phone's picture folder would fulfil the whole requirement. Then you can do what you like with it.

Auto sync may be possible already, with a suitable phone app, but the camera's wifi is way too slow. It would be ok if the camera synced a lower res jpeg, but that would need camera firmware modification which is impossible.

[niblue]

Just auto sync to the phone's picture folder would fulfil the whole requirement. Then you can do what you like with it.

I never sync photos to my phone either - and it isn't really something I'd be interested in doing anyway. I always have a laptop with me, even on holiday, so prefer to wait until I'm back with that and then follow the same workflow for my holiday snaps as I would for any other photos. That does introduce a bit of delay - however I do get a lot of folks saying "why are your photos so much better than mine" (and I do tell them it's as much down to editing as anything else!).

[photoptimist]

I still don't see the utility of wireless charging for bigger cameras.

I generally never leave my camera sitting out on a table or shelf. It typically goes in a bag or a drawer. A bag could have a wireless charging pad inside it but then the bag would also have to include a large battery (all of which is heavier and less reliable than simply carrying a spare battery and swapping) and the bag would need a connector (replicating the hassles of wired charging). I suppose the drawer could have a charging pad but then there's the tricky bit of routing the wires to the charging pad without the wires being damaged every time I open and close the drawer.

I totally see the advantage of wireless charging for phones because they always need to be out and it does not matter if they get dusty or knocked about. And the fact that most phones don't have swappable batteries and don't last long on a charge means they absolutely need to be on the charger as much as possible. But cameras have swappable batteries, very different patterns of use (often requiring a fast swap to a fresh battery in the field), and are typically kept in a protected location when not in use.

[Larrymc]

It would not take "billions" to fix the simple stuff like the near-useless wifi and connectivity and charging. Perhaps 100k... I've run an electronics design and mfg company for 40+ years.

I am ambivalent to the wifi, if the camera has to lose its present functionality to gain wifi I have no use for it as I transfer RAW files from card to computer. It seems to me that the charging thing is a solution in search of a problem. There will be just as many components to wrestle with as there are now with conventional removing and charging batteries and inserting a spare battery then continuing. As for the 100k "fix" cost I'd much prefer that money go towards work class autofocus and IQ. and better write speeds.

[Rondec]

I still don't see the utility of wireless charging for bigger cameras.

I generally never leave my camera sitting out on a table or shelf. It typically goes in a bag or a drawer. A bag could have a wireless charging pad inside it but then the bag would also have to include a large battery (all of which is heavier and less reliable than simply carrying a spare battery and swapping) and the bag would need a connector (replicating the hassles of wired charging). I suppose the drawer could have a charging pad but then there's the tricky bit of routing the wires to the charging pad without the wires being damaged every time I open and close the drawer.

I totally see the advantage of wireless charging for phones because they always need to be out and it does not matter if they get dusty or knocked about. And the fact that most phones don't have swappable batteries and don't last long on a charge means they absolutely need to be on the charger as much as possible. But cameras have swappable batteries, very different patterns of use (often requiring a fast swap to a fresh battery in the field), and are typically kept in a protected location when not in use.

It does sort of beg the question about what sort of a wireless platform you would need if you are going to set your K-1 and DFA *70-200 or 15-30 on it. Certainly something a bit more sturdy than what the typical smart phone would need.

[TER-OR]

I don't understand why wireless charging and removable batteries are mutually exclusive. Why can't I be wirelessly charging the battery in my camera while also charging my backups in dedicated chargers?

True enough. If compatible with Qi or Samsung's wireless charging pads I'd be in.

[Rondec]

True enough. If compatible with Qi or Samsung's wireless charging pads I'd be in.

How much weight can those pads hold?

[awscreo]

Again, isn't wireless charging works much better with for glass and glass like surfaces? And works pretty bad with fully metal bodies, such as pro grade dslrs.