[Lowell Goudge]

Agreed with 1/: ISO should be displayed in VF, period.

Within the realm of keeping the changes possible within the software only, I'm not sure about ISO unless there is a concession to reduce the displayed valye by a factor of 10. the frames left counter only as 3 digits.

[Lowell Goudge]

As an aside from the entire wish list, and I have not seen a published compilation of all "wishes" one thing that should be requested is whenever there is a new camera, features that are totally software related are made across all existing supported platforms possible. I think N does this

[lol101]

Within the realm of keeping the changes possible within the software only, I'm not sure about ISO unless there is a concession to reduce the displayed valye by a factor of 10. the frames left counter only as 3 digits.

So how do they display ISO in TAv mode or Tv and Av with ISO enabled on one of the DIAL?

[noblepa]

I agree that many of the upgrades suggested here would be useful.

However, I keep coming back to the question: why would Pentax want to do this? It seems to me that they have to walk a fine line between annoying customers who purchase a camera, only to find a new model announced in six months that includes a lot of upgrades, and on the other hand, undercutting their own future sales.

In other words, it is not really in Pentax' best interests to provide free upgrades to existing customers. They derive no profit from that. Its better for them if we all buy new cameras every two years.

That said, if they anger their existing customers too much, we might walk, along with our money, over to the (dare I say it) Canon or Nikon counter the next time we buy a camera. For many of us who have had Pentax cameras for years, Pentax' support for virtually every Pentax lens ever made is one of the reasons we bought our dlsrs from Pentax, so customer good will is important.

Bug fixes and minor upgrades in the first year after a model is introduced are one thing. But the K100D and K110D are almost two years old and the K10D is about a year old. New cameras are probably in the offing, so why should Pentax potentially undercut the sales of those new cameras?

Would anyone here be willing to pay for firmware upgrades? How much?

Paul Noble

[Lowell Goudge]

I agree that many of the upgrades suggested here would be useful.

However, I keep coming back to the question: why would Pentax want to do this? It seems to me that they have to walk a fine line between annoying customers who purchase a camera, only to find a new model announced in six months that includes a lot of upgrades, and on the other hand, undercutting their own future sales.

There are 2 kinds of upgrades, hardware and software. Hardware upgrades are impossible to offer to customers, but software upgrades are a different matter. If functionality can be improved on an existing camera, this does not change the prospect of future sales because future sales will not be generated by adding an extra menu feature. That is not significant enough.

In other words, it is not really in Pentax' best interests to provide free upgrades to existing customers. They derive no profit from that. Its better for them if we all buy new cameras every two years.

If they really believe this, they are completely crazy. People will only get new cameras when the old one dies, or the technology in total has changed sufficiently to warrant it. eg 10MP over 6MP. I started with an *istD, and still use it even though I also have a K10D. This is because each camera does some things better than the other. Having said that, virtually every request for an improvement that I have made to Pentax is equally applicable to the *istD and K10D

That said, if they anger their existing customers too much, we might walk, along with our money, over to the (dare I say it) Canon or Nikon counter the next time we buy a camera. For many of us who have had Pentax cameras for years, Pentax' support for virtually every Pentax lens ever made is one of the reasons we bought our dlsrs from Pentax, so customer good will is important.

Customer loyality is all that has given them the market they have in DSLRs. I waited several years for the *istD after C and N had released them, because I shot pentax for 20 years on film.

Bug fixes and minor upgrades in the first year after a model is introduced are one thing. But the K100D and K110D are almost two years old and the K10D is about a year old. New cameras are probably in the offing, so why should Pentax potentially undercut the sales of those new cameras?

There would be no undercutting of sales, If they gave us the features we ask for in the presnet bodies, it might actually give us the encouragement to buy the next one sooner to take advantage of additional hardware features.

Would anyone here be willing to pay for firmware upgrades? How much?

Paul Noble

Hell yes! given what I have paid for my 2 DSLR bodies, I would be willing to pay an additional $25-$50 if they did the 10 changes I have asked for.

I think someone said pentax is shipping something like 15,000 K10Ds per month. given a market of 100,000 cameras to go at, even at $25 per upgrade this is several million, software is NOT that expensive, considering it can be rolled into the future hardware releases proven in the field already.

[DMH]

When compensating exposure, it reverts always to ISO 200! PLease fix this...and why does it do it?

[MJB DIGITAL]

does anyone else ever wish that we could shoot in cmyk color space?

why dont we pioneer the frontier of the printmakers and join forces with the natives of that land

....on horses

haha im getting silly...i should be studying

but really, i always wonder why we shoot in rgb and then convert to cmyk to print
wassup with that homey?

so my wish is that we can have the choice of cmyk color space and maybe adobeCMYK also

[AVANT]

Sensors calibrated to be sensitive to 3 colors vs sensors sensitive to 4 colors. So big one would be cost is my guess.

[MJB DIGITAL]

ahhh yes, you have a point...nevertheless it is my wish.

and i wonder if the R&D guys ever think about

[richard64]

Bug fixes and minor upgrades in the first year after a model is introduced are one thing. But the K100D and K110D are almost two years old and the K10D is about a year old. New cameras are probably in the offing, so why should Pentax potentially undercut the sales of those new cameras?

The software industry is an odd thing (I am a software developer). The software companies make you pay for a product that you know is broken and has problems, but you pay because you know it does the job well enough. The big manufacturers know that this is not acceptable and so they provide bug fixes for free, however, the release of those bug fixes are on their terms and to their time table. In effect, fixing the bugs benefits them because they roll the bug fix into the next version of the software that you will pay for.

A digital camera is a computer, the firmware is just the software that runs on that computer. The camera manufacturers like Pentax are software vendors too. If they provide a camera with a bug in the firmware then they are providing a broken product. Does your camera work exactly as the spec describes? No? In that case the manufacturer have a responsibility to fix it.

Bug fixes should be free, period. They are making the camera work according to the spec of the camera that you bought.

Would anyone here be willing to pay for firmware upgrades? How much?

Upgrades are something different. An upgrade is adding new features. These are features not included in the spec of the camera you bought. When you originally bought the camera, if you wanted those features you would probably have bought a different model to get them. You didn't buy the other model most likely because the difference in cost was too much (or the other model was not so good in other ways). So there is a price that you are willing to pay to get those extra features.

So it is reasonable to be charged for an upgrade that gives new features. However, having said that, it is likely that those features will be rolled into future products and so you could argue that the manufacturer is making you pay for the development of a new product! If the upgrade charge is reasonable then few people will complain about this.

Richard

[Lowell Goudge]

The software industry is an odd thing (I am a software developer). The software companies make you pay for a product that you know is broken and has problems, but you pay because you know it does the job well enough. The big manufacturers know that this is not acceptable and so they provide bug fixes for free, however, the release of those bug fixes are on their terms and to their time table. In effect, fixing the bugs benefits them because they roll the bug fix into the next version of the software that you will pay for.

Except that in the case of a camera, unlike, for example photo editing software, camera manufacturers do not sell future versions of sofgtware independant of the hardware.

A digital camera is a computer, the firmware is just the software that runs on that computer. The camera manufacturers like Pentax are software vendors too. If they provide a camera with a bug in the firmware then they are providing a broken product. Does your camera work exactly as the spec describes? No? In that case the manufacturer have a responsibility to fix it.

Bug fixes should be free, period. They are making the camera work according to the spec of the camera that you bought.

I totally agree, and I don't think Pentax disagrees either

Upgrades are something different. An upgrade is adding new features. These are features not included in the spec of the camera you bought. When you originally bought the camera, if you wanted those features you would probably have bought a different model to get them. You didn't buy the other model most likely because the difference in cost was too much (or the other model was not so good in other ways). So there is a price that you are willing to pay to get those extra features.

Unfortunately this is not correct. Many of the features people ask for DON'T exist on any other camera, and as a result, there is no way to establish a market value for them. What people are asking for are things that have evolved out of use of the product that would make it better for everyone, expand the use, etc...

Other upgrades are also outside of the product specification, but they are done for free. An example is the extension of address range for larger memory cards. Pentax has released software just for that. It was not part of the initial specification, but they did it any way.

So it is reasonable to be charged for an upgrade that gives new features. However, having said that, it is likely that those features will be rolled into future products and so you could argue that the manufacturer is making you pay for the development of a new product! If the upgrade charge is reasonable then few people will complain about this.

I agree it may be reasonable to charge for upgrades, such as some of the things I have proposed, such as:

- the ability to change file name prefixes to avoid duplicate names
- the use of the green button (On K10D any way) to calculate change in apature, and permit P-TTL flash on K mount lenses
- an option for green button exposure to display only the exposure (for perhaps 1 second) and make no changes (K10D and *istD) It is nice with manual lenses to be able to know the exposure you have set without changing it!
- the ability to enter exposure compensation curves which are variable by F-Stop, so that you can make all your lenses perform exactly the same
- the ability to enter a teleconverter correction factor (K10, K100, K100 super) in order to have correct focal length for shake reduction, even when using the latest lenses this can't be done
- the ability to have ISO and white balance independant on each operating mode, not just user mode (on K10)
- ISO3200 (on the K10D). I use it a lot on the *istD, perhaps because it is so much better than what I could do 20 years ago with B&W

there are more, but all of these are possible, with minor doftware changes, and would greatly enhance the cameras. Adding them to future cameras is fine, and I am sure that future cameras will be "better" i.e. more pixles, better noise performance, more dynamic range...... BUT none of the above are dependant on the hardware that the other improvements will bring.

N&#@N offers all of the hardware independant features for free when a new body comes out!

[hmanty]

Remote Assistant for D100 Super, please.