Originally posted by Clavius Such a fast release cycle seems like a luxury-problem to Pentaxian eyes. Oly, Panny and Fuji's still have very exciting products though. Especially Fuji who is rumored to be working on a 135mm sensor format camera. They have to, because Sony is going in for the kill:
Yes, there will be even cheaper and smaller Sony Full Frame E-mount cameras! | Mirrorless Rumors So, there will be FF cameras that are both cheaper
and smaller then the A7. That means that the price of an FF camera will be moving into flagship APS-C DSLR pricing territory. In its turn moving APS-C flagships into the expensive M4/3 flagship category: "Nice, but why?" And the compactness of an APS-C DSLR will have no added value, because such an FF MILC with a pancake will be many times more compact.
To me, the sheer number of new models coming out from the camera industry is an extreme case of banging your head against the wall in order to cure a headache. Many of these models and pretty well all DSLRs are premised on the world of about 2005, before smartphones, tablets, social networking and the 99c app. It's not just that an awful lot of people don't need a DSLR to do what they want to do with photography these days, it's that the DSLR simply couldn't do what they'd want it to do anyway. No wifi, or wifi only as an expensive optional extra instead of a given, no apps, no gps, no in-camera software on a par with something like camera+ for the iPhone, hopelessly clunky and old-fashioned operating systems, no facility to do things which a 99c app can manage standing on its head, like sweep-mode panoramas - the list just goes on before one even gets to form factors and OVF vs EVF, tethering et al. I mean, dear, dear old Pentax is still in the era of clockwork lenses over some of its product range. Want wifi for your K3? Welcome to the Flu card, a costly add-on with a crap reputation: the kind of solution most sane people would run a mile from. Where I live Flu is something you get a vaccination for.
Yes, more new media things are coming in but in an achingly gradual and piecemeal fashion, and at least the new D5300 has a few more than most. TBH, I don't really have much faith in any of the camera-makers. "Japan Inc" has really blown this one, imho, having proved quite incapable of coming to terms with the new world of mobile and software coming from Silicon Valley and South Korea. The first camera-maker to give up head-banging and look at really redoing its whole approach to photography could do pretty well. Perhaps that is what has sparked some interest in the Sony A7; it's at least a big move in the right direction. What we've had over the past few years are format wars in which sensors and form factors have been imposed on the market regardless of whether they are appropriate to the customer's needs, which is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The D5300 sounds a pretty good camera, in fact, but it's just continuing Japan Inc.'s habit of saying "You'll take what we give you" and so it's really just another illustration of the problem.
Last edited by mecrox; 10-31-2013 at 08:15 AM.