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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion 05-24-2022, 06:32 PM  
New vs Old lenses resolution
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 56
Views: 5,106
Macro lenses are fairly simple optically, I strongly doubt that a decent macro lens from even the 70s is going to be significantly worse than a modern one. Pentax, Nikon, Yashica, Lester A Dine, etc are all respectable lenses.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 06-21-2016, 12:51 PM  
New glass - old glass. Which lenses should Pentax revisit?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 204
Views: 25,123
This. The K-series was really Pentax's heyday, before they cheapened the designs and lightened the build quality.



It's about sharpness, not speed. The f/3.5 lenses are sharper wide open than most f/2 lenses stopped down. Unless you really need the extra stop and a half, they are a better choice.



As someone once put it, they don't think it be like it is, but it do.

Leica glow is spherical abberation. Smooth bokeh can be produced with defocus control or apodization elements. "3D effect" is the result of good microcontrast and good lighting.

I don't deny that certain lenses have something people define as "character", but it's definitely possible to optically analyze what's going on and replicate it in another lens. There is no "magic fairy dust element" in a lens.

It's fine to like the rendering characteristic of a lens, but don't over-romanticize it. It's perfectly possible to set an atmosphere with a new superlens, or even a crappy old lens. Historically most photographers have worked with something like a triplet, Tessar, or Planar, and that's that.

---------- Post added 06-21-2016 at 04:08 PM ----------



Yeah, the 50/1.2 is just scarce. It was an expensive lens and not that many were produced and sold compared to the 50/1.4s. It's not scarce in absolute numbers, but there's not enough to go around relative to the number of people who want it.

Forget modern lenses, personally I think 50/1.2s are actually the epitome of "bland, boring lens". It's the same Planar optical formula as a 50/1.4, except pushed so fast that the corners turn into mush. OK, whatever floats your boat, I'm not paying $600 for that. A 35/1.4 beats 50/1.2 any day of the week for low-light shooting, and there's tons of good-looking short-tele lenses for portraits.

I could see the merit of owning something like a 50mm f/0.95, but practically speaking I know the 35/1.4 is still just as good in the role and doesn't cost as much as a full P645Z setup.

The A* lenses are pretty overpriced in general. They're nice lenses, but they're very scarce and not worth the prices they go for. I'd rather shoot a K135/2.5 or a Nikkor 105/2.5 and keep the money in my pocket.

I would actually put the K28/2 in the same boat. I'd love to own one, but I can't justify it. The K28/3.5 is fantastic too, and much more reasonably priced. Oddly, the K28/2 and K35/3.5 are dirt cheap in their P67 incarnation - you may know it as the Pentax 67 55/4 and the P67 75/4.5. :D


---------- Post added 06-21-2016 at 04:18 PM ----------



This is absolutely pathetic, guy's blaming the lens for differences in lighting and small variations in focus placement.

The comparison with "flat nose and head" is different because the background in the second is farther behind and thus is more out-of-focus, meaning the subject is more isolated. And sure, defocus-control lenses isolate the subject from the background very sharply - but wasn't he just complaining about modern characterless super-lenses?

The one thing I will say is that I think aspheric elements can sometimes give funky bokeh. Not nervous, not ringed, just "weird" somehow. Might be something to do with apodization caused by light passing differently through the aspheric elements or something. Could just be a lack of spherical abberation, or all in my head.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 06-21-2016, 01:52 PM  
New glass - old glass. Which lenses should Pentax revisit?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 204
Views: 25,123
Even Pentax is still using the Planar as a base. Every 50/1.4, 50/1.8, 50/2, 55/1.8, or 55/2 lens is a Planar at its heart. Pentax used to have some other designs back in the Asahiflex days - the 58/2.4 was a Heliar type and the 58mm f/2 was a Sonnar type.

The fact that coatings were finally coming of age was a major reason why the other types died out. They had fewer air-glass interfaces and so tended to flare less and lose less contrast. Once coatings fixed this problem with the Planar's many air-glass interfaces they faded away.

They seemed to work particularly poorly as SLR lenses, as there are some rather good Heliar and Sonnar lenses for rangefinders and LF cameras.



A lot of the modern lenses are essentially direct descendents of the film lenses, sometimes with few changes other than slapping a screwdrive on the focus mechanism. There would probably be some tweaks, but also probably less than you would expect.

Really that's been the story thoughout the process of lens development. What happens when you split the triplet's rear element into a doublet? Why, that's a Tessar. Replace the triplet's single front and rear elements with doublets? Well, that's a Heliar. Lens design has some specific rules and the modifications that can be made are pretty straightforward. There's a fantastic chart of the various lens families somewhere on MFLenses, but I can't seem to dig it up.

You can go hog wild and computer-optimize radical new lenses, but people don't seem to like that. If you want it, just buy Sigma.

---------- Post added 06-21-2016 at 05:04 PM ----------



My understanding/theorycrafting here is that speed tends to introduce abberations. The faster you go, the farther you are away from a theoretically-perfect pinhole aperture. Similarly, going farther away from a normal lens tends to be trickier too.

You have a certain number of element surfaces that you can use to focus the light. When you use your element surfaces to try and intensify the light or bend some insane field-of-view onto the film, you can't spend them correcting abberations as easily. So the slower lenses have less abberations to correct and more ability to correct them. Obviously, more elements gives you more ability to bend the light, but increases weight, cost, and complexity. And even with Super-Multi-Coating, at some point you will start to lose some contrast and flare-resistance.

In particular the SMCT 35/2 and K35/2 and it just never seemed worth it. It's not that great wide open compared to modern lenses and you're giving up the incredible contrast/resolution of the f/3.5 lenses.

The K28/2 is a Distagon, it's supposed to be a very nice lens, it's just way too expensive for what it is. The P67 55/4 is also a Distagon and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. The K30/2.8 is also much more affordable.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 04-12-2016, 08:51 AM  
The High ISO Scam?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 111
Views: 13,855
It all depends on what kind of shooting you do. If you usually shoot in good light or with flash, it's not a problem. Image stabilization gets you even farther nowadays.

But if you're going to do available light photography in areas where light is not available, high ISO is quite useful. Typically the very highest ISO setting on any given camera is useless for artistic imaging, but it's nice to know it's there. Down one stop is quite noisy and some loss of sharpness, but usable if needed. Two stops down is usually quite good. On my NEX-5N I find that ISO 6,400 to 12,800 and a Samyang 35/1.4 let me shoot in some quite dark areas without a flash, and I find this useful. A stabilized sensor would be even better for many subjects.

Obviously at that point you do get some noise. Typically applying chroma noise reduction will mostly fix the problem - it's still there but much less noticeable. Lumi noise reduction will reduce the leftover grain, but it also hurts sharpness. Typically though some grain doesn't look out-of-place for the shots where you are using those kind of settings though.

At this point it's pretty much a "gimme" in any sensor that's new within the last 5 years. There's nothing wrong with keeping that capability in your back pocket in case you need it.
Forum: Pentax Medium Format 11-09-2015, 04:52 PM  
How Did You Know MF/film is Better?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 82
Views: 11,350
This is stupid but one of the draws for me is that it's easier to get good scans out of MF film. Consumer scanners lie like crazy about their resolution - a V500/V600 flatbed puts out about 1500 real dpi, a V700 puts out about 2300 dpi. For a 35mm negative that translates into 3.6 MP for a V500 and 7MP for a V700. In comparison scans from 120 scans are much more workable - even 6x4.5 is 2.6x the area (and resolution) of a 35mm negative.

Being honest, film is fun but there's no question whatsoever that it's expensive and it's a hassle. If I'm going to deal with it, I at least want it to be reasonably competitive with the quality I could get from digital. To do that with 35mm would be prohibitively expensive - to start getting an appreciable amount of the resolution from digitizing a 35mm negative you are really talking about a professional film scanner ala Nikon/Imacon/etc or drum scans. That's too much upfront cost. On the other hand I can get a very reasonable amount of resolution from any 120 negative even with a crap scanner. And at the same time, it lessens the requirements on the rest of the process. I can get results that look reasonable on the scanner with even modest MF gear. And dust is not quite as constant a battle as on 35mm - it's there but it's much easier to ignore or to spot.

Next point - wet printing is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm a software engineer and I spend all day on the computer. Pulling the negatives out of the photo-flo and seeing the thing you've been slaving over to protect in pure darkness is so rewarding. And, going into a quiet darkroom and making some prints with my hands is incredibly relaxing. Wet prints are the sharpest way to make a print, bar none. 35mm makes a fantastic 8x10 and MF prints are something to behold. Honestly wet prints are part of the thing that makes flatbed scans so disappointing for me. They prove to me that the resolution is there on the neg - I just can't get it out with my scanner. Also despite being pretty good with a scanner I still can't hold a candle to my split-filter printing. I can take the crappiest, most blown exposure, and in five minutes it's a beautiful print. I moved away from my last darkroom - I really need to get back into it. :(

The shoulder of negative film is also amazing. Being able to blow an exposure and have a reasonable chance of recovering it is very, very useful. Again, see split filter printing and how you can recover terrible negatives.

The last factor is that 35mm gear is still sought-after by digital photographers. MF gear has been out of favor for almost a decade now and prices are very affordable. You can buy professional-grade gear for peanuts. There are good buys in 35mm gear, like Samyang and Sigma, but MF gear is in "impulse-buy" territory for all but the best kits.

Anyway, with that, if anyone wants to sell some pro-grade scanner gear that might do better at 35mm please hit me up. I can't darkroom in my current apartment and it kinda sucks. If the scanner will deliver and you've got the software to run it - I'm willing to run SCSI, MacOS, whatever.
Forum: Pentax Medium Format 09-25-2015, 03:29 PM  
Changing focus screen in Pentax67?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 8
Views: 9,794
Fuji makes some top-shelf gear across the board, from 35mm to LF. They can compete on a level playing field with Zeiss, Schneider, or Nikon. However, they do a really shitty job of marketing and distributing their gear in the Western world so they're relatively unknown. Maybe it's better in Japan, dunno.

This is compounded by the fact that their nomenclature didn't give a way to distinguish optically different versions of a lens with the same aperture and focal length. You know how there's some Super Takumar lenses where you have to know the secret handshake to tell them apart? Like the 7-vs-8 element 50/1.4, or the 35/2? That's every lens in the Fujinon lineup. Writing being on the inside, or outside, or in a different font can all signal drastically different lenses. In some cases this can be up to 30mm of difference in coverage. Only a handful of lenses have distinguishing series numbers (like -CMW or -A).

Here's a panorama I made with my GS645 folder by taking a pair of shots and running them through Auto Stitch in Photoshop. Wide open and slow, 1/30 and f/3.4, handheld.



And here's a 1:1 crop on the high-tension tower you can see down in the valley near the bottom right:

Forum: Pentax Full Frame 05-30-2013, 08:22 AM  
why is a full frame Pentax such a holy grail?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 427
Views: 51,880
You do indeed assume that you know what we need better than we do, I'll cite you right here.



I know what field of view I want for my shot, if you think that's a useless concept then I don't know what to tell you. And yes, I think my image should be exactly a certain way, the way I imagine and want it. Somehow you apparently think this makes me a bad photographer, I guess because you don't like the word "equivalence" or something?

Let me put it another way, if I build up a collection of really nice paintbrushes and then a new paint comes out that doesn't work with the paint well with them, why is your automatic response "buy another set of expensive paintbrushes"? Do you still feel this way even given the existence of things like the Speed Booster?

Frankly that would be a great way to make a much cheaper quasi-full frame camera - build the telecompressor right into the DSLR/mirrorless body. That's how Nikon made their E-series of DSLRs, that's how Konica made the RD-170 DSLRs. It would be an extra-deep K-5, or a K-01 with something useful put in the space provided by that stupid long register. It would cost far less than an actual full frame sensor and you would get the bonus of extra speed too.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 09-17-2014, 02:26 PM  
Why FF over MF?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 66
Views: 7,928
Cost.

FF bodies can be had brand-new for $1700-1900. A new 645Z will run you $8500. Pretty big bump in price, even before we start looking at things like most people already owning a bunch of FF lenses but not owning 645 lenses.

I myself do have some 6x7 gear so lenses wouldn't be awful. It's just waaay expensive for the body. Yeah, cheaper if we look at used, or older models - but you can pick up a used 5D Classic for $500.

Autofocus performance isn't a factor for my shooting, I likely wouldn't be using it all that much, but that affects some people too. FF bodies generally have the best autofocus available with lenses that can keep up. Medium format typically is a couple generations behind due to slow product refresh cycles, lower max apertures on the lenses, and having to rack a significantly greater weight of glass.

If someone handed one to me I'd shoot it, it'd be great. In another decade or so when the prices have been pushed low enough, I'll probably pick one up.

---------- Post added 09-17-2014 at 05:48 PM ----------



Fuji is doing just fine with their DX cameras because they're turning out exactly what photographers want - refined, feature-rich cameras and compact, fast, sharp lenses. And they're doing them by the dozen - Fuji released 15 lenses in 2 years. Most of them are "good" lenses - f/1.4, f/2, or f/2.8 lenses that perform well. They've been pushing out new bodies with new technologies and backfilling them into the older models with FREQUENT firmware updates. Doesn't make them a dime upfront - pays off big in terms of brand loyalty.

In comparison Pentax has put out only a handful of new lenses over that time period. One of them is a warmed-over kit lens that listed at close to $1000. And no, "same lens with different coating" does not count as a "new lens", red ring or no. Pentax's lineup is actually very thin in a lot of places - very few f/1.4 primes, or fast pro-grade superzooms like 24-70 or 24-105. There's an awful lot of 90s-era lenses lurking around, which just aren't sexy in this era of high element counts and exotic/aspheric glass. Overall just not a very exciting lineup with not a lot of room to move up.

Most of Pentax's bodies have just been marketing refreshes, not significant improvements in feature sets. Everyone has weather sealing nowadays, everyone has image stabilization, the M4/3 crowd also has the SR sensors, and image stabilization just doesn't matter when your bodies can shoot ISO 25,600. WR and in-body IS may have sold cameras a decade ago, they don't mean jack nowadays. And Pentax actively cripples their bodies' ability to utilize classic lenses so they can sell more product right now.

So in short: product innovation and brand loyalty. Fuji gets away with it because they've figured out what their base wants and gives it to them, and continually supports and improve their products to build brand loyalty. Pentax gives their base last year's model with LEDs on front, or last year's lenses with a new coating that improves transmission from 99.7% to 99.9%. They continually ignore what the base wants and even remove functionality.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 11-22-2014, 12:10 PM  
Sony 50MP Full Frame Sensors Coming in 2015…
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 170
Views: 18,148
I think it's hard to overstate what a huge story that is for Sony. 5-axis full frame sensor shift, compatibility with almost every piece of manual glass... Yes please! :eek:



Yes, bigger is more or less just better. You're really starting to see a lot of interesting action in the digital MF field - first the 645D, now the 645Z, Sony/Zeiss and Mamiya are rumored to be collaborating on a mirrorless chassis, etc. APS-C has hit the wall in terms of diffraction and that's the obvious way forward.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 11-09-2014, 09:40 PM  
New Lens or upgrade to FF?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 61
Views: 6,556
Missed this earlier, but: it depends on your setup. With a stock focus screen and no focus assist? Yes, focusing a f/1.4 lens on equipment that maxes out at f/2.8 is problematic. With a focus screen (DSLR) or focus peaking (MILC)? It's not too bad at all.

Again, I actually prefer it in some senses, because it's simply a problem of getting the lens to the proper place at the proper time to shoot your image. There's no equipment problems with "focus hunting" or anything like that - if your shot is out of focus, it's your fault. With some practice and the proper tools, it's not too hard to hit focus. The screens or the digital assist (highlighting the in-focus area) really help with that.



Don't discount the 18-35 either, it's a real solid lens for APS-C, and I doubt you'll lose much by holding on to it for a couple months if you buy used. I really like primes - but f/1.8 with prime-like sharpness is really attractive too. The half stop doesn't really matter if it can keep up in sharpness and offer a zoom range too.



I don't at all. I have a preference to 35mm equivalent for a walk-around lens just because I think it's more versatile, but 50mm is very, very popular for a reason, and I shoot my 50mm equivalent lenses a lot. A lot more than I shoot anything longer in FL (except for portraits). Some people have an eye for telephoto landscapes - I've never been able to do that.

If I take 1 lens, it's 35mm equivalent. If I take 2 lenses - it's 28mm and 50mm.

Something like the 43mm Ltd would probably be nice too.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 11-07-2014, 06:17 PM  
New Lens or upgrade to FF?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 61
Views: 6,556
Absolutely... My DSLR lost half its value in 3 years - even getting a great deal on a used body to begin with. The kit lens that came with it lost 25% of its value over a 4-year timeframe. Glass that isn't consumer crap holds its value outright.

It's really, really rare that you lose significant amounts of money from owning glass, unless you get ripped off to start with. You may lose Paypal fees and shipping, but usually the glass itself won't sink in price, it's just a slightly-less-liquid asset with some trading fees. Because I'm an incorrigible bargain hunter, I've actually made a decent profit just from buying and selling glass, and I get to keep the real gems. It doesn't come close to funding the hobby, but it helps defray the cost of some nicer toys than I could normally afford.

Now that said, if you did not own a body that is capable of shooting reasonably at ISO 3200 or 6400 (which the OP's K-30 is), then I HIGHLY recommend jumping to a body that can do that. High ISO + fast glass is a wicked combination, and they're not that expensive these days.

Also - if you are willing to lay out some cash, jumping to FF is worth it. It's not the same value proposition as APS-C, but it IS higher performance at a higher cost. A D600 is a really nice shooter, or an A7/r is a serious value/capability proposition if you're into manual focus primes. /activates flame-proof suit



Without question, that's a top-notch lens.

The Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 beats it in terms of value and zoom range - but it can't match the aperture or the performance, and the focusing motor sounds like an angry hornet's nest. If you want to jump to something more than just maximizing your value - the 18-35/1.8 is a great contender.

My other suggestions would be a Sigma 35/1.4 Art or Sigma 50/1.4 Art. Both of those are top-of-the-line primes. If you want to go cheap and are willing to deal with manual focus - the Samyang 35/1.4 and 24/1.4 are both fabulous too, and the value CAN'T be beat. We're talking a top-of-the-line 35/1.4 for $300 if you shop around, that's chump change in Photo Dollars (current exchange rate between $2.0 and $10.0 USD to $1 photodollar depending on your level of addiction :eek:). Buy yourself a $30 focus screen off eBay using the $500 you saved over the Sigma, or maybe even splurge for the katzeye, and focusing will be easier than you ever imagined. I don't trust AF in low light anyway.

What can I say, I like available light shooting, so I favor fast primes (or superfast zooms) and high ISO :lol:
Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands 10-30-2014, 05:19 AM  
Next camera body....maybe a Sony.
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 70
Views: 7,964















You Tube




PDAF-sensor mirrorless is getting quite good. For example, the AF on the Panasonic GH4 and Sony A6000 is almost as good the flagship Nikon D4s DSLR. Not quite as good, but "close enough to be basically equal".

Meanwhile, in low light Contrast Detect AF has always had the edge.

Sorry, "mirrorless AF is bad" is a dumb meme based on the first generation of cameras where things hadn't been fully ironed out yet. The current generation are exponentially better, and are basically matching the performance of cameras that cost 3-4 times as much, even in those niche situations.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 10-21-2014, 04:07 PM  
What could be 'different' about Pentax FF?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 863
Views: 84,815
ISO bump adjusts the analog gain setting. However, it typically only works in whole stops. The rest of it is done by digital adjustment. So if you dial in ISO 800, it sets the amplifier for 800. If you ask for ISO 540 - it sets the amp to 800 and digitally amplifies -0.67 stops. That's why non-whole ISO steps are bad - you get the noise of the next whole setting and you lose some of your color depth too, as you squished the curve down into a smaller range of bits.

Basically the analog signal gain controls mapping electrical signals into digital values - digital signal gain controls what happens to the digital values after that. Over-amplifying and then squishing your digital signal produces worse results than applying the proper amount of amplification in the first place. They aren't equivalent due to clipping, bit-depth limitations, etc.

As a practical example of what you can do, the Magic Lantern guys got a 3 stop DR improvement by tweaking the amp setting during readout (at the cost of half of their vertical resolution). Check out "Magic Lantern Dual ISO".

If you assume that the signal path is fixed, then yeah there's some limitations on what you can do - you can turn some knobs, but the bulk of it is fixed. But the Samsung guys basically turned their image processor into an FPGA, so they can reconfigure the signal path on the fly. Attach or detach electrical elements, determine the order things happen, and so on. In combination with some signal pins from the processor, pixels could (theoretically) be processed in several different ways in arbitrary patterns as the image processor dictates.

Couple dumb ideas:
  • Reading out a fraction of the normal video rows for a "high speed camera" setting

  • For low light, you read out a 2x2-pixel block into the signal amplifier at once, to produce higher signal level (2 stops) at 1/4 the normal resolution

  • Adjusting signal amplifier gain for a 16x16 pixel block by taking one picture, finding best gain settings for each block, and then taking a second with adjusted gain for each block. Use the 2 raws to produce a final adjusted image that smooths the joins between the different Zone settings. The idea being to control contrast kind of like a staining developer - get lots of contrast out of each region while keeping everything within the DR of the sensor. The first exposure is the "stain layer", the second is the "silver layer". This would increase color depth.

Forum: Pentax Full Frame 09-17-2014, 03:40 PM  
Why FF over MF?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 66
Views: 7,928
It's over-hyped in the same way that owning a nice car is over-hyped. You don't really need to own a car that gets 50 mpg, can do 200 miles/hour, and how often do you really need to move a flatbed of cement around? People have lived without anti-lock braking or electronic traction control for a century. A no-frills beater car gets you around just fine.

Of course, there's no reason that an APS-C DSLR is the stopping point on this train of thought. Most people would be fine with a smaller cheaper M4/3 body, or an RX100. In fact most people could probably get away with a $150 P+S for most of their work (cat pictures). Are you willing to take the Fun Police argument to its natural conclusion?
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 09-30-2014, 07:32 PM  
We forgot to see the "big picture" (some FF thoughts)
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 118
Views: 10,328
Someone better tell Sony, because the A99's full frame SR sensor is apparently impossible!

Lotta armchair camera designers here declaring things "impossible" and "unprofitable" and so on, and then Sony goes on to prove them totally wrong over and over again. Can't count how many times I've read that "there's no profit if you can't sell many lenses", "there's no profit in downmarket FF bodies", "FF SR sensors are impossible", etc etc. You can throw the "digital rangefinder" niche into that too, until Fuji became the phototoy du jour.

It's really rather funny because it's all so obviously a rationalization of Pentax's R&D and marketing failures. There's always some armchair justification for why Pentax isn't listening to their customers, until someone else goes ahead and does it anyway.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 09-23-2014, 02:42 PM  
OK guys, which is which?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 92
Views: 9,657
No, I compared a modern AF internal focus lens against a modern AF internal focus lens. The Pentax-FA 400/5.6 ED IF lens there slugger - release date 1997. 70 grams (6%) savings moving to the 300mm APS-C equivalent of that lens. Meanwhile the lens you chose to compare against? Literally a 30 year old manual focus Nikon lens.

What's really shameless here is you - you don't know the first thing about the lenses you're talking about (lol), you don't even know your own camera system's lineup (seriously lol), and yet you keep trying to lay out sick ice burns accusing me of making the mistakes you're making in literally the same post.

Take a chill pill, Phil. Why are you so convinced that APS-C is the One True Format? A bit emotionally invested maybe?

---------- Post added 09-23-2014 at 05:54 PM ----------



Oh, cool, you edited your post. So now the Nikon lens needs to be full format AND a full stop faster, because reasons. Totally intellectually honest reasons.

The FF lens can actually be 1 stop slower and have equivalent depth of field, and can bump the ISO by 1 stop (with equivalent quality) to make up the shutter speed difference. In the (reasonably fair) comparison you originally made - the Nikkor 400/5.6 - we're talking a grand total difference of 130g. That's your "APS-C advantage" right there - 1/3 of a can of soda. Or less, if you shoot the Pentax FA* version instead of a heavy old Nikkor.

That's your comparison there, by the way. It's a reasonably fair one, but 70g isn't much of a difference - as you yourself just noted. Doesn't really support your argument.



It's really funny that you are slinging around words like "nonsense" when you accidentally realize that your argument didn't work and you need to compare a slow APS-C lens against a faster FF lens in order to make it work. Who's the fool here?

I can clearly tell you have some experience at cherry picking from your revised argument, no need to convince me. Just let me know when you settle on your final argument so I can address it once instead of perpetually moving the goalposts.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 09-18-2014, 11:49 AM  
Why Pentax SHOULD make a full frame, an answer to the link on homepage
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 302
Views: 27,047
Nah, that's rarely what's argued, I think you're seeing what you want to see and then arguing against those strawmen.

FF is advantageous compared to a contemporary APS-C, not one that's 5 years newer. So for Canon that's a T1i, which the 5d2 beats handily especially in low light. For a K-3 you should be comparing to something like a D800E, which again trounces the APS-C fairly easily. Not surprising, both use Sony sensors. Which, by the way, are rather outperforming Canon generally these days.

Moving up in format is certainly less bang for your buck than APS-C - you can probably buy a generation newer APS-C for the same money. But apples to apples, comparing contemporary cameras, FF outperforms APS-C, and you get that IQ bump across all your lenses.

Similarly, MF is better, but much more expensive, than a contemporary FF camera. Does that make MF "worse" than FF because you can buy a new D800E for the price of a used 645D? Pentax makes a 645, so forumites here consider that a legitimate decision, but Pentax doesn't make FF so this forum doesn't consider that a legitimate option. That's really the logic that's operating here.

And really, even a 5D classic suffices for many kinds of shooting. Some guy was shooting weddings with that camera 5 years ago, after all. Are you printing this shot so large that you need the extra megapixels of a modern camera? Do you not have an APS-C camera you could use in low light situations? Do you not own f/1.4 primes, or a 24-70 f/2.8, or a flash? Those arguments cut both ways.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 09-17-2014, 07:11 PM  
What could be 'different' about Pentax FF?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 863
Views: 84,815
Yeah, you could make an interesting poke at the Df like that with a "camera for legacy lenses" concept. DSLR styling with an EVF, squeeze in an AF motor, add the mechanical metering arm for K/M to mirror the Df's capability for pre-AI, speed booster. You can use whatever lenses at your native fov and get a bit more effective speed and resolution out of them through the speed booster. "Shoot your old lenses better."

Dunno if you could make a SR sensor work like that, vignetting might be an issue.

Alternately a 645 body that telecompresses down to a full frame sensor.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 09-17-2014, 03:24 PM  
What could be 'different' about Pentax FF?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 863
Views: 84,815
Not much at this point. Again, most of the niches have been filled, and Pentax's FF lens lineup mostly consists of leftovers from the early 90s.

FF SR sensor would be innovative. Astro tracker is innovative. An APS-C camera with a built in Speed Booster would also be an innovative product in the FF market. A fully modular Ricoh GX-R style full frame camera would be innovative. Open source scripting language ala CHDK or SONY Nex apps?

Everything else has been filled by someone else already, or someone else is already working on prototype products for that niche (eg variable-register-distance cameras are being worked on by Sony). Native compatibility with M42 and Pentax-mount lenses is about the only other major advantage Pentax holds, and it's severely degraded because they don't meter non-electrical lenses and Pentax hasn't done significant improvements in its FF lens lineup for 20 years.

Why, what do you think could be innovative? LEDs on the front? Neon-colored bodies?
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 09-15-2014, 01:03 PM  
Why Pentax SHOULD make a full frame, an answer to the link on homepage
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 302
Views: 27,047
Hahahahahahahahah.

This Fox has a longing for grapes:
He jumps, but the bunch still escapes.
So he goes away sour;
And, 'tis said, to this hour
Declares that he's no taste for grapes

I mean I'm not gonna disagree with you that there's greener pastures to be had elsewhere. But "hey guys why don't you buy someone else's products" is not exactly a good marketing pitch for Pentax's products.

And on the remote chance that Pentax actually does release a FF, these posts are going to be hilarious to read as you all line up to fork over your cash for a full frame.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 09-01-2014, 08:33 AM  
What could be 'different' about Pentax FF?
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 863
Views: 84,815
What could be different about a Pentax FF?

Well, it could have an APS-C sensor and some green LEDs on the front...
Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion 01-08-2014, 01:42 PM  
DA 20-40mm Limited review posted
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 80
Views: 12,922
PentaxForums tends to live in a bubble. This is what a real, honest review looks like. It's not normal to have the site's head fanboy give a handjob to every mediocre product that passes through his hands. Or rather it sadly is in certain circles (Ken Rockwell with Nikon, Steve Huff particularly with Leica, etc) but you'd best take the "pros" with a grain of salt and read the "cons" carefully, or just read it for the technical info. Similarly when those fanboys can't find anything nice to fixate on except "it's small", it's a good time to consider the alternatives available to this $1000 lens. But just blasting reviewers in general because a lens you like performed poorly is childish and stupid, particularly given which reviewer did this one.

To respond to the specific points above: the first article is asking "what is the point of this lens existing?" 15mm is a niche that is already hugely covered in Pentax's lineup, and a lens that is better (faster, internal focusing, etc) with a nearly identical focal length was less than a year out. This is ignoring the gobs of 10-20mm type (8-16, etc) wide-zooms out there. It's reviewer's job to help their readers not waste their money, including asking "why?" at times.

The second article is Photozone, and their technical analysis is really not to be called into question. They get it right far, far, far more often than they mess it up. If they say that it's nothing exceptional, maybe they got a bad copy, but their copy probably is not the best lens they've seen in the world. Pretty much any lens produced by a camera manufacturer in the last 20 years is "good enough". You can make great photos with a kit lens, and you can enjoy the photos you've taken. But it doesn't mean that a kit lens is a fabulous optic producing superior resolution - at normal screen or print sizes, anything less than mushes of color will be non-distracting at least. If all you want is some pretty pictures from the lens, Photozone has that too, as does every other review.

As described in the review, the optics aren't repellant. They behave a lot like a kit lens - stopping down is highly suggested for good optical performance, particularly on the long end. In that light it's an OK lens, although corner issues are still disappointing and it's kind of a poor overall performance for a limited-range zoom The problem is asking big-boy bucks for them - that much cash could buy a real pro-grade zoom or a used full frame body instead of a warmed-over kit lens And yes, if you want to spend $1000 you can certainly get metal-bodied lenses if that turns your crank.. If you showed up with one of these at a wedding you'd get laughed out, and that's range this lens is priced at. Heck, these days $250 buys you a used Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 which is faster and sharper with a wider range at 1/4 the price.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 01-11-2014, 03:55 PM  
¡¿another pentax ff image?!
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 28
Views: 4,583
Not so far-fetched as you might think. With Canon's CHDK/Magic Lantern firmware you could set up a server at home, use a wireless file transmitter, and then set up a custom Magic Lantern script that would shoot a blank shot (embedded with your current GPS coordinates) with a special filename. You could map all this script to a special button. When you push it, the file gets dumped to your server at home, where a script notices the special filename, strips your GPS coordinates out of the image, and uses a website to place a predetermined pizza order to be delivered to the street address nearest to your coordinates.

Magic Lantern doesn't work on 6Ds yet so far as I know, but it's only a matter of time. As usual, Pentax has lost the initiative in this market segment. Come on already Pentax, I'm hungry.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 12-20-2013, 06:43 PM  
Treading The FF Waters
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 47
Views: 6,152
Anyone who wasn't deluding themselves. Sony sold 200% of their expected preorders, and there were lines out the door to get them in Korea. The numbers don't compete with Canon or Nikon's sales of their combined amateur/midrange/professional product lines, but it's really, really, really good for a brand new system with no existing mindshare or marketshare. I love seeing this kind of stuff when for years the proclamation was "there's no market for a downmarket FF SLR", it really shows how much groupthink is directed at excusing Pentax's lack of innovation.

And remember, this is sales of a camera with basically no lenses or accessories. The system isn't there yet, people are buying it anyway for adapting old glass and stuff, third party lenses, and the expectation that a company that's innovating like Sony is won't let them down. You'd do better if you had Canon's lens library or something like that. Or Pentax's for that matter.



Yeah man, they're not even ripe yet, you didn't want those sour grapes anyway! Who needs those stinking "customers" with their "cash monies" and all the sales they generate! Not Pentax, as shown by their obstinate refusal to listen to what their customer base had been telling them for a decade. Now that "there's no market for a cheap FF" has been shown to be pants-on-head crazy, the goalposts are shifting to how insane you would have to be to want an improved color space, shallower depth of field, better high-ISO performance, better noise, etc.

Again, posts like these are going to go away the second Pentax releases their FF body. You'll line up to hand them your money and you'll proclaim it to be the most innovative piece of camera technology since the SLR. People love shooting with 5D Classics and such even if they're not the most bleeding-edge sensor released and will frequently do so in preference to "more advanced" crop bodies. For most people, unless they're shooting birds or something where you need long reach + fast focus tracking they will probably reach for the full frame body instead.
Forum: Pentax Full Frame 12-19-2013, 01:19 PM  
A7 Envy
Posted By Paul MaudDib
Replies: 52
Views: 6,146
You're quite wrong here. Sony is turning a tidy profit nowadays, and Olympus MILC cameras are selling just fine. The primary drop-off is in sales of low-end P+S cameras, which is really quite predictable.






QuoteQuote:

Meanwhile, Olympus also reported their results. One curious thing I found right up front was "impairment losses on asset mainly in the Imaging business." This was listed as 14.1b yen, or about US$177 million. This was apparently due to a complete re-evaluation of assets within the company, including inventory. Net sales for the year in the Imaging group was down 2%, though the overall loss in the group declined by one third. Still, Olympus hasn't made a profit in cameras for some time now. Like Sony, Olympus stated the flooding in Thailand as a reason why net sales fell. The exact number they gave was 6.5b yen (on total sales of 128.6b yen). That Thailand adjustment wouldn't have been enough to erase the loss in the division had the floods not happened, though.

Olympus did report that Pen and high-value compact camera sales were "steady," which implies that low-value compact cameras were the primary culprit in net sales loss. Moreover, there was an inventory build-up of cameras of 17% over the past year. In terms of overall camera market share, Olympus is claiming a 7% share the same as last year, producing 8.15m units with the total market listed at 116m units.



It's Financial Report Time in Japan | Sans Mirror ? mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras | Thom Hogan

And the latest reports:

Olympus:





QuoteQuote:

Annual sales of mirrorless models will rise to 1 million units as early as in the year starting April, reaching 5 percent share of the global market, Chief Executive Officer Hiroyuki Sasa said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday. Achieving that level of sales will bring about 7 billion yen ($68 million) in operating profit, he said.

Olympus, which has posted two consecutive quarters of losses, is counting on high-end mirrorless digital cameras to make up for the earning shortfalls from compact ones amid surging demand of smartphone sales such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone.
The Tokyo-based company aims for its mirrorless models to compete with single-lens reflux cameras by Canon Inc. (7751) and Nikon Corp., the world’s biggest camera makers.



Olympus Expects Camera Unit to Return to Profit Next Year - Bloomberg

Sony:





QuoteQuote:

The overall company results: The good news is that for the first time since 2008 Sony made a net profit of $458 million.

Imaging Division: Sales decreased 4.1% year-on-year (a 7% decrease on a constant currency basis) to 730.4 billion yen (7,770 million U.S. dollars). This decrease was primarily due to a significant decrease in unit sales of compact digital cameras reflecting a contraction of the low-end of the market as well as a significant decrease in unit sales of video cameras reflecting a contraction of the market, partially offset by significantly higher sales of interchangeable single-lens cameras and the favorable impact of foreign exchange rates.

Outlook for the Fiscal Year ending March 31, 2014: For March 2014 Sony expects to increase the sales and operating revenue by a +10.3%. The Imaging division should grow to: “Overall segment sales are expected to increase due to a significant increase in sales of broadcast- and professional-use products and interchangeable single-lens cameras. Operating income is expected to increase significantly due to the impact of the increase in sales.”

Management focus and topics: In the imaging division Sony has implemented investments for growth such as expanding production capacity for its cutting-edge and competitive CMOS image sensors.



Sony makes profit after 5 years! Sells less compacts and more system cameras. And expects to sell more High End cameras.

(note that increased sales of "interchangeable single-lens cameras" are likely heavily related to Sony's extremely popular new MILC FF cameras)

You're extrapolating a few slightly bad years due to a massive natural disaster and an extremely predictable drop in low-end P+S sales into the death of high-end MILC cameras, which is totally absurd given that they're one of the fastest growing products everywhere in the world except the US.

P+S cameras in particular are feeling the squeeze from both sides. Smartphone cameras are getting better, and they're "free" to most people since they already own a phone. You can't compete with free. Meanwhile the high-end products are getting more and more affordable - you can pick up a very nice used setup for $300 or so, and even new stuff is pretty cheap. The only P+S anyone I know bought recently was for elderly people who don't have smartphones, or people who want something small, light, and essentially disposable (quadrocopter stuff, places they wouldn't take delicate/expensive equipment, etc).

Nikon is also having a bad time with the J1 series, which again isn't surprising because it offers most users very little compared to the alternative. It strikes me as one of those cameras targeted at the Japanese housewife market like the Pentax Q. Physically small, tiny sensor, high price. It does have some unique features, but how often do you really need 13fps shooting? It's pretty much a slightly higher-end P+S and is suffering a similar fate, unlike its better-engineered brethren.
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