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Forum: Photographic Industry and Professionals
07-30-2023, 12:56 PM
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I always thought, that not allowing 3rd party support (or not having enough of that) is significant with respect to the long term versus the short term?
- in the short run, it boosts profitability per item, as well as overall profits, because existing users are often bullied into buying unnecessarily expensive lenses.
- in the long run, it reduces overall income (but not profitability per item), because disappointed users move away from Canon at a next convenient occasion, or because newcomers would avoid Canon in the first place. Then, Canon's market share would grow slower, or even shrink (depending on the industry's overall development).
Sony always have been just the other way round haven't they? they 'strategically' decided to skip short-term extra profits for their long-term system growth.
And with regards to lenses, Sony's strategy seemed to work out, see e.g. http://thenewcamera.com/2022-lens-sale-report-isnt-good-for-canon/ where Sony sells more of its own lenses, than Canon does. Despite of Tamron and Sigma and all the others.
Interesting side note: If you add Tamron's and Sigma's lens sales share on top of Sony's, it looks as if an average Sony user spends THREE TIMES as much for lenses, than an average Nikon or Canon users would do.
What could be the reason behind that? I suspect that Sony must have accumulated a high share of professionals or enthusiasts by now (i.e. those who typically use many lenses per camera body), whereas at Nikon and Canon, a high share of their customers might still be stuck at one-kit-lens-only kits?
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-07-2020, 11:26 AM
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'edri' was using the old "K mount" just as an interchangeable synonym for the old SLR era. Whereas AI would demand mirrorless, i.e. the full fine details from a main sensor read-out while using an EVF for agile shooting situations. That's all I think ;)
"Liveview" on the back screen doesn't count, that's only for stills work (tripod work) rather than for agile situations. For stills, nobody needs AI. And only idiots would use DSLRs' Liveview in a smartphone fashion (held far away from the body) for agile situations. Often, too-bright ambient light prohibits the use of Liveview anyway. And depending on age, people would require to wear varifocal glasses, or change glasses all the time, to switch between far subject distance and close back screen distance.
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Forum: Photographic Industry and Professionals
10-01-2020, 08:05 AM
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Monopoly effects, esp. monopoly prices, are the other major system spoiler. Even Fuji X, which have achieved a much broader and more consistent lens coverage than Pentax, in only a fraction of time, "suffer" a lot from such monopoly effects / monopoly prices. If they had full 3rd party support, with increased choice, and regulated price levels, then Fuji would command a major part of the camera world today.
Nikon Z may be running into similar problems (uncertain yet). Sony seems to demonstrate, how important openness can be for a system to thrive, which in turn attracts more 3rd party efforts. So that a win/win iteration loop starts to kick off between 1st and 3rd parties to lead them onto a mutual growth path. I'm surprised, that everyone else in the industry is so reluctant / too short-sighted to learn from success stories.
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Forum: Photographic Industry and Professionals
09-30-2020, 01:25 PM
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You are probably referring to Pentax lenses which are rebranded 3rd parties, e.g. Tamrons? Yes, that lens supply source is dried up for ever for Pentax.
However, e.g. Tamron is/was known to make exclusive lenses for camera makers. Probably, Tamron and Tokina have designed and made Pentax lenses exclusively for Pentax, where it would still be a trade secret today, which seemingly "genuine" Pentax lenses would be custom made-to-order designs by Tamron or Tokina, i.e. just made for Pentax alone on Pentax explicit request.
This lens supply source wouldn't HAVE to dry up, if Pentax pays them enough ;)
The problem though is, that the demand side for DSLR lenses will dry up foreseeably altogether, so that it wouldn't pay off any more for Pentax to purchase exclusive lens designs and the rights to patent those. Tamron, Tokina, etc. have all of their engineering under full steam for mirrorless designs. So they would ask for A LOT of money to divert some of their precious engineering time&resources back towards legacy stuff again, if they were asked by Pentax to do that?
So even if custom 3rd party help is still a possibility, I don't think there is a business case left (all external+internal costs versus all estimated revenues), to make that happen in the future?
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-11-2020, 07:03 AM
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Pixelshifts don't save as compatible DNGs. Not everything with a *.dng extension would be a compatible DNG. Only files which follow the published DNG metadata standards would be compatible DNGs, i.e. interpretable by DNG compliant software.
However, DNGs don't define, how several sub-images would relate to each other, with regards to full pixel shifts, half pixel shifts, or whatever else shifts. So DNG is unsuitable as a container for pixelshifts.
Should a Pentax camera still store pixelshifts in a DNG, then it is misusing the entire DNG concept. These DNGs wouldn't be camera agnostic any longer. It is safer to save pixelshifts as PEF files for now. Should DNG in a future revision define a standard to describe pixel shift relationships in metadata, only then you should consider converting the PEF pixelshifts to DNG pixelshifts.
If you let the camera create "wrong" (non-compliant) DNG already now, you might be stuck with them forever. Because I doubt, that Adobe's DNG converter will ever convert wrong, non-compliant Pentax DNGs to the latest compliant DNG revision, when time has come.
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-10-2020, 11:50 PM
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Yes, then there's no reason to avoid DNG.
Provided that you know already today, that you will never change to Adobe software for the rest of your life ;)
I'm like a person who likes too keep all options open. You can switch your archives from PEF to DNG any time later, but you can't switch back your archives back from DNG to PEF any time later. The DNG route is one-way. This is what I mean, when saying the DNG decision (even if happens to be perfectly fine today) might limit your options later in life.
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-09-2020, 02:44 PM
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Yes, using a very common, open standard file format (DNG) limits your options in the future as opposed to using a single manufacturer proprietary format. Not generally, but in this instance.
This is because how Adobe software deals with Adobe's own DNG files, and how much of a problem this is for some "power user" workflows.
The Problem is not the DNG format as such (I like that), but the problem is Adobe's softwares' behaviour. Adobe software treats manufacturer proprietary formats much better and more appropriate than their own DNG format.
It is a bit like a man, who treats other women much better and more appropriate than his own wife ;)
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-09-2020, 02:30 PM
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The fact that Pentax has been messed up DNGs via writing corrupt or wrong color profiles once upon a time, that was just a side note, an anecdote, that things like this can happen.
The more important reasons against DNG (which made me deciding against it when the decision was due) are unrelated to that. They apply also to correct DNG files, regardless of which camera model or which brand produced it. They apply also to the perfect DNG files which Adobe's own DNG converter produces.
I'd warn about switching to DNG, if ALL of the following would be true
- you use Adobe products to process your RAWs
-- or you can't exclude that possibility for the future
- and, you are a metadata "power user" and you also use free "power tools" apart from what Adobe's user interfaces offer
-- or you can't exclude that possibility for the future
Else, DNG is probably fine. Just be aware, switching over to DNG limits your options what you can do in the future with your raw photos.
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-09-2020, 11:14 AM
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P.S. But should anybody confirm (explicitly for the K-70), that for K-70-generated DNG files there are at least no obvious consistency or completeness problems which would jump into your eye immediately, then Selvadero should be reasonable safe for now.
However, I don't recommend DNG. For me it is the software-dependent metadata workflow penalties associated with DNGs (I'm using Photoshop and Adobe's picture browser and metadata editor "Bridge" that comes with Photoshop) (but I'm using also ExifTool and also my powerful text editor for mass processing mass changes to my metadata whenever required) (that's actually another main reason for .xmp+raw files rather than .dng).
Even if you don't bother with playing around with your own metadata today - what if your requirements changes in the future? If you want to tag all your past work with locations, subjects, themes, persons, animals, or any other stuff related to whatever your favourite subject area has been?
Then you may be at a mess with having decided for the "wrong" format too early.
Mind also that DNG is not a guarantee to skip software updates. Even though that was one motivation behind DNG, in reality it may be (actually it is the case) for some software, that the first thing it does is to check the camera model recorded in the RAW or DNG metadata, and if it doesn't know that, it refuses the file. Even if the new camera didn't implement any relevant changes to the produced RAW or DNG content itself. Make sure you know how your favourite software behaves regarding new camera models.
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-09-2020, 10:52 AM
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OK then thanks for quoting the problem post.
But yes, white balance is still lost / wrong / unusable :p it's just not the explicit white balance tag then, but the implicit white balance embedded in the color profile, which destroys the resulting white balance alltogether.
Actually, he points towards two problems.
1) The white balance problem (due to Pentax' bad color profile), but then
2) the Pentax bad color profile is also a problem in its own right, so that even manual white balance correction attempts don't rescue anything.
I wouldn't dare to trust Pentax-generated DNG files blindly, after reading about such issues? Not sure if Pentax budget situation allows them to afford much better programmers today, than they had during their best times (before they got sold to Hoya).
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-09-2020, 10:04 AM
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Why can't people read. I said and still say, DNGs contain white balance. I didn't say and never said, that the raw pixel bits within a DNG would contain white balance. Instead, the DNG contain white balance by other means. They do that in specific tags. They don't do that in pixel bits. Did I already say, that DNG contain white balance? :p
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-09-2020, 09:36 AM
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Irrelevant. Read again:
The white balance information is an information generated by the camera. If this valuable information is destroyed or lost, then Adobe's software (their auto white balance method), or probably any other software's, is hardly a replacement.
White balance of a scene is judged and determined by the camera. It is a precious part of a camera maker's "color science".
I thought these are basics, known since the beginnings of RAW files in the DSLR world ;)
The camera's white balance information is so important, that its importance has been even misused. I remember that Nikon tried to encrypt this information in their RAW file for an early entry level DSLR, probably to promote the use of their proprietary Nikon software. They quickly gave up on that for the successor models, due to the community shitstorm upon them. This shows, how important the camera's white balance information is :)
---------- Post added 09-08-20 at 18:48 ----------
Time and model don't matter here. My example was to demonstrate the qualification and professionalism of programmers, not necessarily only at Pentax, but possibly everywhere else as well. Generally shouldn't trust the quality of files blindly, and always check for known bugs in the internet. Possibly there are other bugs or flaws in Pentax-generated DNGs not known yet, because they don't jump into anyones face, so nobody discovered them yet. Who knows... there's always such a possibility. The smaller a brand's user base, the higher is the likelihood of bugs being undiscovered.
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-09-2020, 01:08 AM
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Better check it out. E.g. someone discovered a bug on the Pentax-generated DNG files, for the K20D, where the white balance was wrong, so this information was lost.
see PEF vs. DNG when shooting RAW?: Pentax SLR Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review
Better: shoot in PEF and let Adobe's converter do the conversion to DNG. They know the job.
That could be due to DNG having a larger JPEG preview file embedded. Also, the first little thumbnail image in DNGs is always uncompressed, to comply with TIFF/EP standards.
I avoid DNG due to Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop's stupidity. They don't allow saving metadata additions or changes back to a dedicated metadata "sidecar" file (*.xmp). Instead they only can write back to the original DNG files.
With PEF, they don't touch PEFs, and write everything to XMP files. Which is the only acceptable thing for my metadata workflow (and my incremental backup workflow).
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-27-2020, 11:10 PM
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Well, strictly speaking, the thread isn't about you, but about Ricoh :rolleyes: Your post contained 22 times the word "I" or "my".
Of course, in each brand specific forum, there may be guys among the top-10-posters which purchase & collect just everything ever issued, immediately. Or guys a bit like Ken Wheeler @Youtube, who likes to state with pride, that he owns hundreds of Nikon lenses. But actually never showcases a single photo ever ;) There's nothing wrong with collecting gear for the sake of enjoying collecting, of course. But only 1 out of 10.000 users are like that. This is far to few, to be of any relevance to a camera market or any camera/lens maker.
The more typical pattern (at least for "real" photographers, not collectors) is: the more experience you gain (i.e. the older you get), the less gear you actually use or need.
Even professionals: typically they start out their career with enormous varieties of lenses and lighting gear for their studio or wedding venues, to be able cover any situation nuances which are remotely imaginable. But after many years of gaining experience, they realize that they actually never used that, and get rid of a lot of their stuff. There are many stories like that around.
Also for hobbyists, I get the impression that with age, people tend to cut down on gear (and size and weight, i.e. bags get smaller).
It doesn't help a camera/lens maker, if such are their main community.
Cynically speaking, Sony were so successful partly, because they managed to acquire all the naive beginners (or naive pros just starting out their career), who are still very nerdy, excited about technology, and who still believe they need all the latest inventions, specs, features, lens varieties, and maximum image quality which engineers can deliver. At any costs.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-25-2020, 02:39 PM
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@Robbiec, but mind that many among us (typical for forum members) are already kind of an "elite", e.g. by knowing who Henry Cartier-Bresson was, and aiming for such photographic moments (even though I wouldn't deem a K-1 as suitable for this, much to eye catching and too loud. Better would be a GR or even a smartphone for inconspicuous agility).
But the average family daddy in his 40s is probably sold to simple-to-use cameras, e.g. with an eye AF for candid kids & dog photos with guaranteed success, even when not looking through a viewfinder or at a back screen, and also benefiting from the weight/size benefits for family trips. Which ranks probably higher to most average dads, than the ability to shoot in tornadoes.
Whenever a site like dpreview has an article about a family camera recommendation, by now it is almost certain that there will be only contemporary mirrorless cameras recommended (such as an A6400 or the likes from other brands).
We who admire Henry Cartier-Bresson and his way of photographing are a small minority. True street photographers are generally a very small minority, and it gets harder harder and harder over time (e.g. for EU citizens it is not allowed any more to photograph strangers in the EU without their prior explicit consent, as part of new data protection legislation).
So I don't think that it will be easy for Pentax to target the best agers from that angle. The highly computational simplicity of smartphone photography has spoiled the masses, and they expect the same from real cameras as well by now.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-25-2020, 12:14 PM
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But this is actually part of a problem which Ricoh suffers from. Most remaining Pentaxians are probably comparable to you, i.e. somewhat elderly guys (quote "since m42 and film K bodies"), and who have collected everything by now for the specific preferences they settled on over decades, so that they indeed don't need/want/buy any further new stuff for the remaining e.g. 30 years of their life.
However, for a camera maker to thrive, such user base is probably the worst case, financially. Camera/lens makers need a user base which is actively buying new things, e.g. at an age at the beginning or in the heights of their gear acquisition syndrome, where they experiment with plenty of different gear for different subject areas, where their final hobby preferences are not even settled yet. Such would be the guys who actually generate relevant cash flow for a camera maker. Not the many older "another 30 years to go without new equipment" guys.
This runs into a hen-and-egg problem. If a big part of the user community is saturated and reluctant to buy new stuff, then Ricoh is shy of risking budget for further development activities, but then some more of the remaining economically "valuable" (i.e. G.A.S. aged) users get unhappy and switch to some other brand, with offers a high innovation buzz by 1st and 3rd party developments. This closes the vicious circle, and over time the remaining community becomes gradually "worse" for Ricoh (from the purchasing behavior point of view).
Eventually, this also makes it impossible to find someone else to take over Pentax cameras, or to let them join into alliances (L mount). Because such alliances are no charities to help the challenged, they want to gain access to plenty of interesting/valuable customers (which are younger G.A.S. hobbyists with still wide open wallets, or professionals), to sell more of their own stuff.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-21-2019, 11:01 AM
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The mount success problem is not so much the mount's technicalities, but the lack of customers' interest for K cameras altogether, or for buying additional lenses if they already have a K camera. The problem is not with the mount itself, but the problem is rather more behind the mount.
So yes, enhancing any technical detail of the K mount, or even introducing a new mount, wouldn't solve any problem. It would only create new problems.
Also, introducing a brand new "me too" mirrorless mount & system wouldn't work out for Pentax. See how even Nikon seems to struggle preventing their Z from becoming a market failure, despite good bugdets for development, marketing, and lots of sales discounts. Then, for Pentax where everything would be even much more difficult (fractional budget, fractional user base, fractional mirrorless interest among the remaining Pentax DSLR users), mirrorless would have to be a downright business desaster from the very beginning.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-13-2019, 07:13 AM
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Sure, and this is a particular risk now for Pentax' own future lenses development.
In the past years 3rd party lens makers did a lot of unique and interesting stuff, from optical quality unseen before (sharpness, wide open, up to the corners, bokeh quality, ...) as well other benefits (optical qualities packaged into compactness unseen before).
People which want to participate in the last years' interesting developments in the 3rd party lens world, tend to have left Pentax, and moved on to where they feel themselves served.
The ones remaining tend to be the ones which are just happy with their 10+ years old stuff, they have already everything which is "good enough" for their requirements.
But problem is just that: these oldies removed themselves from the market. From a business perspective (i.e. from Pentax' perspective) they are non-existent, dead customers. They just don't purchase anything any more.
Which is the other problem. The old Pentaxians are not only unattractive for 3rd party lens makers, but actually they are unattractive for Pentax themselves. For the very same reasons. Obviously Pentax can't just bail out from K lens making completely, like 3rd parties already did, but I wouldn't count on seeing much in-house lens development investments in the future. No company invests money which doesn't return to them in the end.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-12-2019, 07:46 AM
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Yes. Because being seen as an unattractive platform with no third party support is a real problem. It becomes a vicious circle. Lens makers perceive Pentax as an unattractive platform and turn away. Because of this, the market perceives Pentax as an unattractive platform, stays away, which makes its market share shrink even further. This in turn makes lens makers perceive Pentax as even more unattractive than ever - the vicious circle is closed, with no escape route.
The problem of no 3rd party support seems to strike elsewhere, as well? I get the impression that Nikon has difficulties to make their Z a real success in the market. I'm sure this is due to Z being a lonesome-island system with no 3rd party support, and an uncertain future regarding any 3rd party support to be expectable ever.
Also, the L mount alliance doesn't take off in the market. This is probably because its contributors are a closed club of three, which offer only highly-priced / overpriced stuff, and keep attractive 3rd party competition out. With no outlook of this ever changing. This renders the L mount alliance unattractive in the market as well, at this moment.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-12-2019, 03:10 PM
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True. Yes, the last AF lens maker (Sigma) has left Pentax 5 years ago. But one would have thought, that providing "dumb" i.e. just-mechanical mount variants is such a little extra effort for a MF lens maker, that they could afford to throw in a Pentax batch then and when. That even that starts to cease, is alarming.
The root problem is that Pentax seems almost dead with regards to overall lens sales, at least according to Amazon.com DSLR lens sales ranking. It is pretty devastating to see, that Pentax' best-selling lens (which was/is the cheap DA 50mm 1.8, for ~$120) is down at rank #531 nowadays! This is nearly as dead as dead can be. It seems that the dooming gains speed now, sadly. Assuming that lens sales is an overall brand health indicator.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
07-28-2019, 03:27 AM
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A revolutionary DSLR will not happen any more, with no maker.
It is the other way round, that segment seems to fade. Even for Nikon there are rumors out, that they are going to terminate some of their DSLR lines, allegedly both low-end tier, as well as their top-tier D500.
Both due to a declining demand, as well due to the imposibility to launch anything "revolutionary" in the DSLR world today. Nikon is heading towards mirrorless, where the music plays and the revolutions happen today.
For Pentax (Ricoh), they probably have similar considerations, because they must face similar market changing trends, and the same DSLR technology limits, as all the others do. With the additional burden of a lower product development budget at Ricoh.
Let's expect some innovative anniversary body colors then.
Maybe plus some more "innovative" RAW pre-cooking by throwing more effort into the Accelerator, i.e. Pentax RAWs become even less RAW and more computational in the future.
But that woudn't be real innovation, it is merely cheating, and it defeats the original purpose and original benefits of shooting RAW. Other makers don't do that for a good reason.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-25-2019, 12:36 PM
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Agree, that 1% is a bit to harsh. The sensitive, effective AF areas are a bit more than 5 times as big as the viewfinder square, in each dimension: at least 5x5 = 25x, but the odd T and L shapes take away a bit from the sensitive AF area again, so let't settle on: between 10x and 20x mismatch between viewfinder indicated size and actual (effective) AF area size.
Whereas for Nikon, it is a pretty close match. And they don't have these odd polygonal shapes, but are straight rectangular (or cross).
I assume, that Pentax has to cheat via AF area size to maintain AF sensitivity claims, so that it doesn't fall behind Nikon in that respect too much. Wheras Nikon can do AF sensors which are sensitive naturally, so that Nikon can keep them as small as indicated in the viewfinder, and still have -3 EV or whatever.
The Problem is though, that the Pentax cheat approach causes AF to fail on threedimensional smaller targets not only in darker situations, but all light situations suffer from that, as a collateral damage.
This was for the K-5, newer models may be better or worse (if to catch up with the sensitivity claims further raised by Nikon).
But for two dimensional stuff (landscapes) (everything at infinity), the actual size of the sensitive area is irrelevant anyway ;) Actually for landscape, you don't need AF alltogether.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-25-2019, 12:06 PM
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I think it is naive to expect such an overblown test setup as beholder suggests?
Especially since most real life AF challenges can't be simulated using robotic test setups anyway.
A good photographer who had a lot of cameras in his hand for testing can make a good judgment nevertheless.
Let's remind ourselves on the K-1 AF deficiencies as identified by the two best and most diligent testers / tests that I'm aware of.
Probably they could and would be confirmed by an over-engineered test setup, yes, but that effort is actually not required, to come to meaningful conclusions about the K-1 AF, such as the following:
Pentax K-1 Review: Digital Photography Review
"don't seem to make that great of a difference in terms of performance as the K-1's autofocus system behaves in much the same manner as the K3 II. Even in the most basic, single point AF shooting modes, the results are far from what we would expect from a modern DSLR focusing system. The autofocus tends to hesitate, even in AF-S mode with the center point - meaning it's not as consistently fast as most Canon and Nikon DSLRs.
This hesitant behavior is more noticeable in AF-C mode, with focus falling behind the subject then having to jump to catch up. Subject tracking - where the camera shifts the AF point automatically to follow your in initial subject if it moves away from the initial AF point - has a very poor hit rate and seems to default back to infinity once focus is lost.
In addition to these limitations the focus points aren't illuminated in the viewfinder until you lock focus, at which point they glow red. This was a bit frustrating when attempting to focus in low lighting conditions. After all, if you don't know where the focus point is before you even initiate focus, how do you place your point over your subject properly?"
"single point continuous autofocus [...] even that failed about half of the time"
"Continuous AF with a single point really struggled to maintain focus on an approaching or receding subject - something DSLR AF systems tend to do really well."
"In addition to those issues the subject tracking mode seemed to have a great deal of trouble with even the slightest amount of movement."
"the subject tracking failed nearly 85% of the time with limited attempts to reacquire the subject after losing focus."
"The final point of frustration came when we reviewed the K-1's images"
"acquisition speeds in dark and low contrast shooting scenarios can be sluggish"
"AF-S too slow to keep up with the movement of the subjects, or to nail the decisive moment as soon as it happened"
"AF points do not illuminate until focus is confirmed. This is incredibly problematic"
"low light AF sensitivity [...] the Nikon [D750] did so significantly quicker and more reliably, which meant the difference between a focused and missed shot."
"[The D750] is a class leader in terms of low light AF speed and performance. Even a Canon 6D focused more quickly and confidently [than the K-1] in and around -2 to -3 EV (in AF-S)."
Taking on the DSLR Giants: Fstoppers Reviews the Pentax K-1 Camera | Fstoppers
"Autofocus - This is far and away the weakest part of the system. Unfortunately, the system is just not of the level we expect in 2016."
"33 points [...] is a little on the low side for a full-frame DSLR"
AF-S: "the hesitation is a bit more worrisome in continuous mode. Moreover, as lighting gets worse, the hesitation gets longer, often to an unacceptable point. Good AF point sensitivity doesn't mean much if the speed isn't reasonable."
AF-C:
"This is where things got frustrating."
"Horse shows are a great autofocus test [...] not overly difficult test. Unfortunately, out of about 480 images, 350 were entirely out of focus, 90 missed enough to be throwaways, and about 40 were acceptable. There didn't seem to be much consistency"
"This is frustrating"
"I could predictably tell where the camera would lose autofocus"
"It's a shame"
"I couldn't trust the camera's continuous autofocus"
Some stuff for Google translate:
DSLR-Forum - Einzelnen Beitrag anzeigen - Wie deutlich sind die Unterschiede zwischen der K-1 und der K-1 II beim Fotografieren?
"Der AF der K-1 ist eigentlich nur grottig. Er ist deutlich langsamer als die gelben Marktbegleiter [his Nikon D4 and D850]. Und er ist mir bei Dämmerung und Nacht nicht treffsicher genug. D.h. kleine Lichtpunkte die ich als Fokusreferenz nehme oder bei Dämmerlicht (frühe goldene und späte blaue Stunde), also da wo die Landschaftsfotografie gerne stattfindet, ist sehr oft überhaupt kein AF möglich."
Don't know what the slang "grottig" translates to best, it is probably like "abysmal".
To pack all of this know-how and experience into some formalised testing would be a huge effort, but would still come to the same conclusions. So nobody bothers really.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-25-2019, 11:49 AM
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I wouldn't be obsessed too much with tracking, unless you photograph dogs running towards you, or cars or whatever else is approaching at a constant, easily predictable speed. All cameras are comparably pretty good at this easy task.
However, what makes Pentax AF often useless for any serious people photography is not related to tracking. But instead to two unrelated flaws:
1- huge AF areas, each covering a big portion of the motiv, sometimes (outside the center spot) in awkward big T or L shaped areas.
Mind that the tiny squares in the view finder are only about 1 to 10% of the true area size of the AF regions.
For the German test, where they used a two dimentional flat "wall" to approach the camera, this is very favourable for Pentax.
However in real life situation, e.g. heads of persons (or animals) being a bit further away, thus appearing small to the camera, huge AF areas tend to fail.
A Nikon D7200 would fare well, because its AF points are really only just AF points, rather than huge oddly shaped AF regions as in Pentax cameras.
2. Pentax is bad in detecting (and tracking) small, erratic, random movements, as typical for e.g portrait photography with shallow DOF.
It is a pity that the German test had only a very simplistic test setup, only simulating a flat wall coming perpendicularly towards you in absolute constant speed.
In a better setup simulating real life problems, let's expect that the K-3 would have failed a lot, confirming the bad reputation of Pentax AF implementations out in the market.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-26-2018, 05:36 PM
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But then, this should put all your "everyone hates Pentax there" conspiration theory to an end.
Because I'm pretty sure, that during the past eleven years, there were Pentax cameras which got a "highly recommended" from them ;)
---------- Post added 27-11-18 at 01:46 ----------
Interesting. Because when Kenspo was financially independent, spending his own money (rather than being bribed with free access to Pentax hardware), he had elected Nikon as the system best suitable for his type of Photography.
I'm not a stage photographer, but obviously there must be something special to Canon for that domain. My best guess: Canon sensors are said to be tolerant against clipping highlights, which would be something VERY useful for image quality at stage photography obvously. But I'm speculating. Dynamic range is relatively unimportant, because black stays black in the final image. You would never want to brighten up blacks to gray, for example.
The Canon autofocus is surely state of art, but the Nikon would be either. So this is probably a tie.
Does he use professional flash? Another good reason for having to leave Pentax, but probably a tie between Canon and Nikon.
So let it be image quality (of highlights) and sharpness (of best autofocus in this tricky stage situations) which drove him to Canon, and he may have been fallen in love with overall handling, controls, menus, color science, white balance reliability, or whatever?
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