[reh321]

I think the kids are spot on. They know what "photography" means to them and, much to the chagrin of the industry, it's not a clumsy, bloated, complex DSLR with 2000 bucks worth of glass rattling around in a camera bag. I only wish the industry would get it and get on with designing real, practical, shooters gear optimized for those of us who are serious about available light still photography.

I guess I'm just too old to understand. The total gear in my bag {K-30 + 10-20mm + 18-135mm + 55-300mm} cost me perhaps $1200 {I bought some of it used-like-new}, and it meets my real, practical needs in a way that no cell phone ever has.

[wildman]

I guess I'm just too old to understand.

The operative words are "what photography means to them"

[reh321]

The operative words are "what photography means to them"

Selfies?

[RobA_Oz]

The operative words are "what photography means to them"

In which case, the rest of us are "spot on" as well, or at least a similar proportion, perhaps. Attaching meaning to things is a human habit to satisfy ourselves that we understand our place in the universe, when we probably don't.

[wildman]

Selfies?

Among other things - yes.

[reh321]

Among other things - yes.

In that case, your earlier statement is irrelevant. In 1960 Polaroid and Pentax were courting different markets; that was OK, because no product was going to be successful in both. Likewise, today Apple and Pentax court different markets; neither is wrong or bad - they are simply in different markets, just as IBM and Pentax are in different markets. {and this whole discussion is totally off topic}

[RobA_Oz]

In the cases of Polaroid and phone cameras, the users decided what was "good enough" for them. It's also good enough for us DSLR users, in some situations. It isn't good enough when you want to get a particular type of photo in particular circumstances*.

Anyway, to the OP, thanks for the link. I think most of us here knew in general terms what the limitations on sensor sizes were, but this article filled in a bit more of the detail.

* there I go again, attaching meaning to the essentially meaningless, I know.

[photoptimist]

I wonder if the industry is just pandering to it's perceived photo base rather like a politician panders to it's political base - pandering keeps them in business.


I think the kids are spot on. They know what "photography" means to them and, much to the chagrin of the industry, it's not a clumsy, bloated, complex DSLR with 2000 bucks worth of glass rattling around in a camera bag. I only wish the industry would get it and get on with designing real, practical, shooters gear optimized for those of us who are serious about available light still photography.

Excellent points!

Perhaps a larger issue for the DSLR makers is the divergence in what people want in a camera and what it means for camera design.

This thread started with the issue of how much silicon can cost-effectively go into the sensor. Yet the most popular cameras in the world (smartphones) dedicate more silicon to CPUs & GPUs than to the sensor. And for most "photographers" (in the loosest sense of the word) it is the phone's powerful automagical, instantaneous post processing more so than the intrinsic quality of the raw pixels that matters. And a software architecture that lets them install crazy image filters and interface with complex cloud databases and they are happy. At the moment, perhaps the billions of CPU transistors makes a bigger difference than millions of pixels.

Personally, I'm more like you in wanting "real, practical, shooters gear optimized for those of us who are serious about available light still photography." And I'm hoping that Pentax (or someone) will resist the siren call of making cameras for the masses to make cameras for people like us.

[reh321]

Personally, I'm more like you in wanting "real, practical, shooters gear optimized for those of us who are serious about available light still photography." And I'm hoping that Pentax (or someone) will resist the siren call of making cameras for the masses to make cameras for people like us.

How would one of these mythical cameras "optimized for those of us who are serious about available light still photography" differ from what they are doing now? They most certainly are not making cameras for the masses - Apple is the company which does that. They most certainly are not making cameras "optimized for those of them who are serious about available light video photography" {look at the complaints every time Pentax announces a new camera}.

[reeftool]

My iPhone's light meter is far more accurate than any DSLR I have used. So is my wife's Samsung Note. Yes, I know all about how cameras meter reflected light and how we need to make adjustments and blah, blah, blah. Yet, I can shoot just about any scene with my phone from sunsets to parties indoors and it seems to almost always get it right without any test shots and then making + or - EV adjustments. Why can't my DSLR do that? The biggest problem I have with my phone's camera is keeping it steady while taking a shot.

I'm certainly not saying that my phone is a better camera than my K5. But it's better than any P&S I have used and that's a big problem for the camera industry. There's no learning curve other than not causing camera shake tapping that "shutter button" (for lack of a better term this late in the day) on the touch screen. But younger, steady hands without arthritis can do a good job. Those little, tiny phone sensors are getting better and better with each new model and so are the PP apps in the app stores. Of course, nobody takes them seriously. Even the PC industry didn't take them seriously until their sales dropped off considerably.

[tim60]

My iPhone's light meter is far more accurate than any DSLR I have used. So is my wife's Samsung Note. Yes, I know all about how cameras meter reflected light and how we need to make adjustments and blah, blah, blah. Yet, I can shoot just about any scene with my phone from sunsets to parties indoors and it seems to almost always get it right without any test shots and then making + or - EV adjustments. Why can't my DSLR do that? The biggest problem I have with my phone's camera is keeping it steady while taking a shot.

I'm certainly not saying that my phone is a better camera than my K5. But it's better than any P&S I have used and that's a big problem for the camera industry. There's no learning curve other than not causing camera shake tapping that "shutter button" (for lack of a better term this late in the day) on the touch screen. But younger, steady hands without arthritis can do a good job. Those little, tiny phone sensors are getting better and better with each new model and so are the PP apps in the app stores. Of course, nobody takes them seriously. Even the PC industry didn't take them seriously until their sales dropped off considerably.

The camera in my phone also meters reflected light - so the issue is not the source of light, it is what it does with it.

I expect that the DSLR is designed around the idea of metering the reflect amount of light at the sensitive points and giving a result to the photographer, who must then use judgement to adjust actual exposure to get the desired result. The phone does this task by applying an algorithm based on some assumption about what is likely to be wanted and makes the adjustments. That is kind of like the old days of film and getting prints done by the local D&P shop, where things like night pictures of city lights usually failed because of the exposure algorithm used in the print machine.

BTW: the reason I bought a DSLR was to get back this control over exposure, and also the stability of the user interface of looking into the viewfinder. Such an improvement over a little P&S.

[wildman]

I can shoot just about any scene with my phone from sunsets to parties indoors and it seems to almost always get it right without any test shots and then making + or - EV adjustments.

I hear you.
My Olympus m4/3 has pretty much solved that problem. You see a fully adjustable hgram on the VF before you take the picture. With a wheel you can push the hgram around in real time until you get it right and then pull the trigger. A big deal if you are RAW ETTR shooter as often I am. The little Olympus always gives me perfectly exposed RAW files within the limits of the sensor. Try that on my K-5, what a pain in the a**.

[photoptimist]

How would one of these mythical cameras "optimized for those of us who are serious about available light still photography" differ from what they are doing now? They most certainly are not making cameras for the masses - Apple is the company which does that. They most certainly are not making cameras "optimized for those of them who are serious about available light video photography" {look at the complaints every time Pentax announces a new camera}.

I'd start but completely re-envisioning the shape of the body because current cameras are still based on the old physical constraints of moving film from a roll on one side of the focal plane to a roll on the other side which forces one to hold the camera with the wrists at an unnatural angle. Maybe the camera body should be shaped and held more like binoculars (one barrel contains the interchangeable lens, sensor, & viewfinder) and the other "barrel" hold many of the controls.

I'd mount the sensor+mount+lens assembly on a rotating connection to the body so that switching from landscape to portrait is a simple 90° twist of the mount. (No more double grips or L-plates).

I'd have four dedicated dials for shutter, aperture, ISO, and EV. And each dial would be roll-to-scroll + click to center/autoadjust (like the scroll wheel on a computer mouse than can be clicked to do something).

I'd add an easy to use "macro" language for defining complex modes/sequences (e.g, focus-stack + HDR + pixelshift + interval)

Until then, I love my K-1.

[reeftool]

The camera in my phone also meters reflected light - so the issue is not the source of light, it is what it does with it.

I expect that the DSLR is designed around the idea of metering the reflect amount of light at the sensitive points and giving a result to the photographer, who must then use judgement to adjust actual exposure to get the desired result. The phone does this task by applying an algorithm based on some assumption about what is likely to be wanted and makes the adjustments. That is kind of like the old days of film and getting prints done by the local D&P shop, where things like night pictures of city lights usually failed because of the exposure algorithm used in the print machine.

BTW: the reason I bought a DSLR was to get back this control over exposure, and also the stability of the user interface of looking into the viewfinder. Such an improvement over a little P&S.

Our cameras have 3 metering modes: spot, center weighted and matrix. My old film cameras only offered center weighted metering. The idea of matrix (or multi segment as Pentax calls it) is to meter the whole scene and make an overall exposure. On both my K10D and K5, I rarely see any difference between matrix and center weighted. Is there some reason for this? If there is then we need a fourth metering mode called Meter like my phone does!

I am fully aware of the need for exposure control in a DSLR and by no means do I want to see it go away. We buy these cameras for the artistic control they offer. But we also buy them for the high IQ that a larger high resolution sensor offers and also sharper lenses. When I shoot a wedding reception or party I'm always doing a lot of exposure adjustments in PP that aren't needed in my phone shots. I know a lot of people who bought DSLR's in recent years who have ended up leaving them on a shelf because the "good pictures" they desired never came. The reasons why are known to all of us. Depth of field issues, wrong shutter speeds, and incorrect metering. Yet the marketing departments carry on about the perfect automatic control their cameras offer and "anybody can get great shots" TV ads. Yet, the DSLR sits on a shelf and now they use a phone and another customer bites the dust.

[normhead]

I wonder if the industry is just pandering to it's perceived photo base rather like a politician panders to it's political base - pandering keeps them in business.


I think the kids are spot on. They know what "photography" means to them and, much to the chagrin of the industry, it's not a clumsy, bloated, complex DSLR with 2000 bucks worth of glass rattling around in a camera bag. I only wish the industry would get it and get on with designing real, practical, shooters gear optimized for those of us who are serious about available light still photography.

Back in the day kids didn't use SLRs either. They used those tiny little pocketable throw away cameras, or 110 cameras. Kids have never been concerned with IQ. They are concerned with documenting their lives. Nothing has changed. SLR users have always been people looking for a little bit more than that.