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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
11-20-2019, 01:55 AM
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Here's an Atlantikwal bunker off the coast of denmark. In this picture it reminds me of a whale.
 IMGP0140.jpg by Hans Vedder, on Flickr
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
11-20-2019, 07:00 AM
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K3 @18mm
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
10-21-2019, 06:21 PM
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There is a possible problem in wet environments with fully waterproof cases or bags -- and that is that sometimes they aren't, quite.
Here's an example from Antarctica. First day of the cruise, another passenger -- let's call him "Tom" -- pompously and publicly criticized me for not bringing a waterproof case during a rough tour on the Zodiac. He had his camera (a then-new Canon 7D) in a dry bag, from which it would emerge only once it was on dry land and, apparently, in better weather.
All my gear was in a Lowe-Pro AW bag, a splash-resistant but hardly waterproof backpack that sat on my feet in the bottom of the boat. We were getting splashed constantly by waves and rain. The outside of my bag was soaking wet, as was I. I kept the bag on my feet so it wouldn't be in the inch of seawater sloshing around inside the Zodiac.
Tom's bag lay in the bottom of the boat.
Bottom line: After we got back to the ship, Tom discovered his drybag had developed a pinhole leak. About half a cup of seawater had seeped in. His 7D, which had basted in the trapped water, was toast. My bag was wet to the touch inside as well, but the not being waterproof, the bag let water out as fast as it came in. All my gear needed was a wipedown.
I lost most desire for a drybag that day.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-06-2019, 08:23 AM
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As one who pre-ordered my K-3 6 years ago, this is the first I've heard of it. I would hope this kind of negative nonsense would be deleted until substantiated. People are presenting rumours as fact.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-06-2019, 08:18 AM
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@tper75296, although we should keep this thread on topic (Pentax continuous autofocus), I think it's worthwhile to address your comment.
It's surprising to hear of the "substantial plague of issues" concerning the K-3 mirror. You may have developed an overestimation of the extent of the K-3 mirror issue. From what has been reported (or not reported) here at Pentax Forums, the K-3 has proven to be a robust camera in general. Of course, your K-5 II is also good, and I'd bet that it serves you well.
- Craig
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-06-2019, 07:42 AM
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The K-30 and K-50 have had significant problems with the aperture block mechanism, and Ricoh should have done a lot more to support customers. There's no excuse.
But... the K-3 and K-3II have shown themselves to be supremely reliable. The mirror flop issue only occurred in very few cases, and was successfully dealt with in firmware updates. Neither model has been plagued by anything. They're rock solid :)
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-06-2019, 07:10 AM
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"Pentax AF is bad" comes partially from the K-5 and earlier cameras. The K-3 was a substantial improvement in accuracy and speed.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-05-2017, 05:11 PM
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No, computational photography as seen in phones is not likely to convince users of this forum to give up their cameras and nice glass, but it may convince a whole bunch of phone users that they don't need to upgrade to a costly and bulky ILC after all.
That's the continued risk of improving phones.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-05-2017, 04:14 PM
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Yes, basic CDAF is very simple but it's slow and it hunts a lot. Fast and accurate CDAF is voodoo magic.
Good CDAF depends on choosing a sensor, designing the read-out, and writing data handling algorithms that are much more like those used for video than for still photography because CDAF depends on fast frame rates and fast processing of the framestream. Given that Pentax explicitly picks higher DR over higher framerates for sensors and deprioritizes video in general, they are much less likely to be able to easily create fast CDAF.
BTW, modular design is the last thing you want for fast, real-time CDAF. All the code for sensor operations, frame-stream processing, AF estimation, and lens motor control need to be very tightly coupled to eliminate latency and to choreograph everything with respect to everything else. Modular may be less costly to write, easier to debug, and easier to reuse but it is much slower.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-05-2017, 11:31 AM
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There has been such a camera actually. It was announced, not in 2011 but on February 2, 2012. Its name was Pentax K-01.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-05-2017, 01:26 AM
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Well, that's interesting. I was recently in Japan and I was stunned by how many Ricoh Theta I saw in the streets. Now, what is the Theta experience?: Press one button and with seamless pairing with mobile phone post direct on social media, browse the picture with one or two fingers, zoom in zoom out, change the viewpoint. Ricoh Theta does what Canon, Nikon, Sony and Fuji don't. You can't have the Ricoh Theta experience with a D850, although D850 costs 10 times more than the Theta. There is recent post about image quality pixel peeping of the K1 vs D850... tiny difference mostly irrelevant for real life shooting, especially given the cost of a D850 system upgrade.That made me realize that Ricoh understands better the market than pentax forum users hanging on traditional DSLR and now I understand much better why Ricoh purchased Pentax and why it takes forever to release a couple more lenses for the K1. Basically, the trend isn't into increasing image quality, the trend is about providing more fun to take pictures, Ricoh does it well with the Theta, that is something that can't be done with either a DSLR or a phone. Based on growing Ricoh Theta, I guess most criticism is missplaced here with regards to Pentax lagging behind in the DSLR/mirrorless arena. For example, there is a lot of criticism of Ricoh not making a mirrorless system... I would say that a mirrorless camera brings nearly nothing more than what a DSLR can do, a 360 camera brings a lot more fun for the money.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-04-2017, 01:32 PM
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Without interviewing a good sample of camera buyers, it is hard to know for sure. However it seems reasonable that different products and different marketing strategies will be more attractive to first time buyers than experienced buyers and camera manufacturers are no longer directing their efforts to gain business from first time buyers. Everything coming out is geared to upgrading existing bodies or getting a DSLR owner to buy mirrorless. Looking at the history of digital ILC sales, they hit 12 million units in 2010, peaked at 20 million in 2012 and appear to have bottomed out in 2016 at 11.6 million. That's a strong indication that a very high percentage of consumers who would like to own an ILC have already bought one.
Based on January to August 2017 results, there is a significant uptick in mirrorless sales this year compared to the slow decline that occurred from almost 4 million in 2012 to 3.16 million in 2016. Anecdotally, my 25 year old daughter did what you suggest is happening, after putting together a photo book of iPhone pictures from her 4 months of travelling around Europe in 2016, she wanted to get a better camera for just taking photographs. She tried out my DSLR for a trip to the Rockies and came back wanting something smaller, but had no interest in even high end Panasonic P&S cameras and after looking at APS-C Sony cameras, decided to buy an Olympus E-M5. However, on a global scale, the CIPA numbers still suggest my daughter is an outlier, not part of a macro trend and in my daughter's social circles, she is unique in recently buying a standalone camera. Unless current technology is displaced by something that requires radically different manufacturing processes, camera manufacturers that have "right-sized" their operations can continue to build cameras at the same cost. Where the opportunities for obtaining the ROI required by shareholders lie is in offering "better" products for a higher price, which provides better margins to cover fixed costs even when sales volumes drop. I think it is inevitable that future camera buyers will have fewer options with higher average prices, but not to a degree that it is no longer viable to offer anything but very expensive equipment targeted to professional photographers and accumulators of luxury goods. On a global scale, a market with annual sales of 10 million units with good margins, using mature technology, is always going to see some action.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-04-2017, 12:05 PM
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The rise of computational photography is going to further widen the gulf between different types of photographers (and photography). Those that just want a pretty picture to show their friends will be thrilled by all the clever processing that Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. can throw at the tiny noisy pixels of a smartphone image. And those that want an authentic photograph of the truth will be horrified.
Apple, Samsung, and L16 all use variants of automagically merging multiple frames into a composite. Nothing stops the smartphone makers from adding a few more cameras to create a 15mm, 30mm, 60mm 120mm, & 240mm-equivalent set of cameras on the back of a phone and using a mix of optical, digital, and computational techniques can almost equal the performance of most P/S and low-end ILCs. It won't even cost that much (Apple pays only about $30 per camera module so adding a few more doesn't have to cost much.)
That evolution in computational photography will offer huge benefits to many candid, consumer, travel, online journalist, and street photographers. And some artists and pros might embrace it just for the challenge or to prove that it's not the $10,000 in gear that make great images. Physics guarantees that a 300mm f/2.8 lens will always be huge. But human aesthetic and pragmatic considerations imply that maybe a 40/5.6 lens on a 1/3" sensor can replace the 300/2.8 on an FF sensor for 99.9% of imaging scenarios.
Yet it certainly won't address the needs and desires of photographers that shoot in high volume (poor ergonomics), low-light (too noisy), have unusual subject matter (confuses the computational algorithms), make big-prints (limited resolution), or like vintage equipment. The niche of purists, professionals, artists, and technical/nature/astro photographers will still want (and buy) large sensor cameras with bright (large) lenses.
(And film photographers will continue to scoff at both the smartphone and D-ILC photographers.)
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-04-2017, 08:33 AM
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I've not seen any reviews of the L16 yet so I'm withholding judgement. But put that camera aside and think about what Apple and others are doing with dual cameras - modules with different focal lengths and different sensors, and algorithms to blend them together. And look at the iPhone X Face ID. It's basically creating a 3-D mesh of a person's face and then overlaying graphics over it in real time. This article shows how it's miniaturized the Microsoft Kinect from 10 years ago into a tiny module at the top of the phone:
iPhone X basically has a Kinect on the front to enable Face ID | TechCrunch
Yes, I know that physics is physics, I'm an engineer by schooling. But these new techniques are applying sampling and data manipulation in new and interesting ways. We are at the very beginning of what some are calling computational photography. Apple, Google, and others probably have camera development teams that rival Canon and Nikon but are looking at traditional photography challenges from an entirely different perspective. I'm sure there are hundreds of engineers and developers working on the telephoto problem because if one company solves it first they'll have a competitive advantage.
Even once-staid Microsoft is innovating:
Image Composite Editor - Microsoft Research
I'm excited about where it will take us. And these innovations will probably end up in phones first long before they end up in traditional cameras.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-03-2017, 08:48 PM
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CIPA reports from 1999 to August 2017.
In the history of camera manufacturing there is an inverse relationship between size of the market and average cost per unit. In 1999 the average value per unit for digital still cameras was 44,790 Yen (slightly lower in North America, above this average everywhere else) for just over 5 million units. The digital camera market peaked in 2010 with an average value of 13,529 Yen for over 121 million units. The ILC market peaked in 2012 with an average value of 37,365 Yen for 20 million ILC's and by 2016 the average value was 44,760 Yen for less than 12 million units. For YTD August 2017, the average value for ILC's is 49,022 Yen. The entry level market is increasingly being overwhelmed by higher value products, but the total number of cameras being purchased has been dropping. 2017 results indicate that 2016 was rock bottom, which also indicates that what market there is, is driven by repeat purchases of higher value products than what was purchased previously. I can't think of any way to spin that into enough new entrants to the camera market to make a noticeable difference to sales results and it looks like that portion of the business has been increasingly more insignificant since the ILC peak in 2012. After all, ILC shipments dropped 15% in 2013 and now sit at 60% of what they were in 2012.
The camera market in emerging economies (what CIPA started out calling Other and eventually split into Asia less Japan and the other Others, consisting of a variety of smaller camera markets) has only lagged Europe and North America by a year or so and represented a growing percentage of the global total from 5% in 1999 to 28.2% in 2009. That percentage has gone up and down since 2009 and after dropping to 26.8% in 2015 it has picked up to 28.7% in 2016 and 30.2% YTD. With the total digital camera market down 80% since 2010, having Asia and Others doing slightly less worse doesn't provide many opportunities for growth.
Standalone cameras are no longer a mass market product in any way, shape or form; any analysis based on selling cameras like jeans or cell phones, or even relative to the camera market of 5-10 years ago, isn't going to be particularly enlightening.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-03-2017, 07:02 PM
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A large volume of those DSLR owners over the last 5-10 years have been soccer moms and dads that bought an entry level Canon or Nikon DSLR with one or two kit zooms. They stand on the sidelines and shoot in P-mode, Green mode, or if they're lucky and someone that knows a little bit about camera, the little Running Human mode.
If the phone evolves to incorporate a decent zoom function for youth sports, that high volume end of the DSLR market will evaporate overnight.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-03-2017, 12:18 PM
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Maybe. I question how much good it will to find a DVD of images twenty or thirty years from now. A shoe box with prints in it is more likely to be able to inspire interest and be readable.
Personally, I try to do a scrapbook with photos and stories for family each year.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-03-2017, 11:59 AM
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Exactly.
The ILC market would be a small fraction of its already diminished size if hobbyist photographers only replaced their equipment when it either quit working or there was new technology that truly enhanced their photographs. There are new buyers who want to take up photography as a hobby and there are emerging global markets where increased disposable income is generating new buyers for photographic equipment, but those people are too few to make a big difference in year to year industry trends. All the marketing and R&D efforts aimed at new buyers won't move the needle enough to justify the expense. Basically, to stay in the photographic equipment manufacturing business requires appealing to the kind of people who would check out PentaxForums if they wanted to get more out of their Pentax equipment.
As for Ricoh's lack of activity since the beginning of this year, don't forget that the photocopier business is stagnant and Ricoh replaced its CEO because it was becoming obvious that the company was about to hit a brick wall. In those kind of conditions, the bar for getting internal capital to launch new products that aren't essential to the company's core business is set much higher than it was in 2016.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
03-05-2018, 05:58 AM
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But is that true?
There seem to be three problems with listening to the customer:
First, there is no "the customer" in photography. There's a spectrum of first-timers, photography-enthusiasts, gear-enthusiasts, brand-enthusiasts, status-symbol-enthusiasts, and pros. And then there's all the genres of photography: landscape, product, architecture, macro, wildlife (of various sizes, distances, and speeds), portrait, weddings, sports, drunken bicyclists, etc. All these different customers provide different feedback and demand different things. These demands sometimes conflict with each other and they always compete for R&D and manufacturing cost budget. Some customers are a lot harder to satisfy than others.
Second, the customer may simply be wrong. They may think a feature is really cool and really essential but not realize it comes with unintended negative consequences to performance, ergonomics, battery life, etc. Sometimes, even the noisy customer themselves would discover that they hate the camera they asked for.
Third, the volume of the voices of the complainers can be entirely divorced from the volume of sales even if the company does listen. One loud mouth is not the majority and talk is cheap. Even if the company does what the noisy customer demands, there is no guarantee that the noisy customer and others will buy. Haters gotta hate. That's especially true if the camera's price must increase to cover the R&D and manufacturing costs of the requested feature.
Sometimes listening to the customer can kill the business, too.
The challenge for the company, especially a smaller one like Pentax, is to decide which subset of customers to listen to and ignore the rest no matter how noisy they get.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
03-05-2018, 03:40 AM
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Wow, what a discouraging discussion after what was (I think) a positive thread title and opening post!
It has always been clear to me the KP wasn't a K3 sequel. Yes, it could fill that position for folks who were satisfied with the compromises it brings to the table, but the whole point of the KP was to release a camera with "Pentax bones." A camera that matched up well with the small lenses (smaller than the K3 line), like the DA limiteds, had good ergonomics, and excellent image quality (including high iso performance). Based on Forum noise, you might think that such a camera would do well, but it turns out that Pentaxians are actually just as enamored with specifications as anyone else and so the KP was too limiting in terms of frame rate and buffer size and a few other things.
At the same time, the KP reveals Pentax's plan -- to try to target spots in the market where they aren't taking on Pentax/Sony/Nikon directly. So for this camera, taking a camera like the D7500 and adding two cards and Pentax features and ergonomics to it is probably the way they would go. The hard part is that this camera needs upgraded focus tracking and probably better video specs and those are things that take quite a bit of investment and time to develop. It'll be ready when it's ready isn't the sort of comment that makes anyone happy, but Pentax doesn't traditionally push products out of the door before they are truly completed and it is better for them to take the time they need to get a product right, both from a performance and marketplace targeting standpoint, than to release a half-baked camera that flops from the beginning or, has recalls to fix problems they should have known about.
I view all of these announcements as positive. It is good to see movement on the camera front, even if it is slower than we would like.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
03-05-2018, 03:37 AM
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The K-7/5/3 series has been a kind of catch-all camera for enthusiasts until now. So the people who want a high speed camera for sports or birding have been directed to the K-3, and those who just want a high quality stills camera for their limited lenses have been directed there too. Both groups of customer were having certain compromises forced on them to accommodate the other. What interests me about the KP is that for every person who scorns it for not being a K-3, there’s another person who says it’s the best camera they’ve ever had. I think that’s the mark of a highly targeted product.
What I think is going on is that these are being split into two models. Eventually there will be a KP and a K?, with the latter looking more like a D500. So if I’m right, the KP is the successor to the K-3ii in a way, but just half of the successor.
I really think people are reading too much into the gaps between models. There was a time in 2012, when the K-5 had sold out about for a few months in Japan, and the only K-mount camera you could get was the K-r. Of course there was a K-5ii eventually. The K-3ii is at a similar stage to how the K-5 was at that time in terms of availability in Japan.
Ricoh has expanded the line-up of cameras by introducing models that don’t directly replace, but supplement current models (K-1 and KP). This is probably what is slowing down introduction of updates to established cameras like the K-3 and GR. I think it’s all going to make sense in a year or two.
I also think it’s quite possible that the Q has just been on hold and will be continued at some point. Retailers are still stocking the lenses, and I don’t think they would do that if the series was really done.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
03-14-2018, 06:58 AM
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Wow a lot of hullabullu about nothing on here. Pentax have a simple enough plan for their lens series. D(F)A zooms are covered at the top end with your standard range covering from 11 to 135 with f/2.8 in APS-C and 15 to 200 in FF again with f/2.8. They are reasonably expensive because f/2.8 glass costs money. So zooms covered (and they are the lens types the majority buy!)
Primes, you have 2 options, go Limited for the Pentax take on what it's engineers regard as an optic to create a pleasing image while staying true to their philosophy of smaller designs or take the DFA* line which do not have size or price constraints for high resolution bokeh :) while adding micro contrast that is sometimes lacking in the Sigma designs and AF lacking in the Zeiss stuff.
Those looking for an f/4 FF series will have to wait fairly patiently. Those waiting for fast super zooms will be better off investigating another system or search for a FA* 250-600 (one sold on the UK a couple of weeks ago for circa 5K GBP. Sigma or Zeiss fans? Investigate another system.
See nice and simple.
To go back on topic, a limited wider than the 31 would be cool say a 20/4 as would something in the 105 to 120 range with apertures of f/2.5 to f/3.2 for telephoto.
Usual caveats apply in that they probably won't test the best but subject isolation and 3D pop will be in abundance.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
03-13-2018, 11:15 AM
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There is two kind of welcome/unwelcome things about those thirdparty offers/lack of it. I would think that there is little what Ricoh could do to make it good for them both. Especially when Sigma shows no interest at the moment. Maybe when Pentax has finished popular lenses lineup, Sigma will evaluate their market possibility again to compete with Pentax. that is what they are doing now with Can/nik/Son... not complete, compete with offerings.
That is actually what Sony is trying to do with Canon and Nikon really agressivelly, compete, they want to take them out. It is not just to have one more option more.
That is something what lures people to M4/3 cameras too. Good quality, little smaller size, good enough image quality, weather resistant, you name it. But still it is not just one more option. it is money.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
03-13-2018, 11:06 AM
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Let me start by saying that I've never bought a Sigma lens in my life. However, I have bought all my lenses used up to now (since I don't make money from my photos and don't really aspire to), and that included one Rokinon, a CZJ, and some Contax Zeisses. So I may still fall into the category of "pretty cheap" people Norm is talking about.
I didn't even buy my Pentax to put a Pentax lens on. I don't think I even did any research into the lens lineup before buying my K-30, besides maybe a cursory glance to verify that the selection was decent. So why did I buy it? Because it was unbeatable value for money, a moderately priced body with actual useful features Nikon/Sony/Canon couldn't touch in that range. (I especially miss the weather sealing, now that I've discovered that my 5D won't even turn on at 32°F -- AKA an average winter evening here in New Jersey.)
People just getting into ILCs and trying to decide on their first system are not necessarily going to have any idea what lenses they like, or even what lenses are the best reasons to shoot each system. It's easier to compare specs on bodies, even to get a bunch in your hands and compare how well you get along with them, BEFORE buying, than to compare the output of lenses. I eventually did get three Limiteds -- the DA 21, the FA 43, and the FA 77 -- but they wouldn't even have been on my radar if I hadn't been attracted to Pentax in the first place by the body.
And for a concrete example of filling a hole in the Pentax lineup: I got the Rokinon 35/1.4 for indoors because I'd never be able to justify the cost of the FA 31 Limited... that, and a great deal on one came up sooner than a Sigma 30/1.4 EX. If Pentax had had a normal APS-C lens that fast at a similar price, I absolutely would have bought it in a heartbeat.
See above. Ergonomics, sensor performance, features, ruggedness, all for less -- those are why I chose Pentax, and the Limiteds were purely a bonus. I still don't particularly want any Sigma or Tamron lenses, but if I did, I'm sure it wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable an experience shooting them on a Nikon or Canon as on a Pentax.
I'm not sure why I spent so much time typing up all this -- maybe to try to answer the question "why are such people on the forum"? I don't pretend to be representative of the average new entrant to the Pentax system, and I'm sure some people reading this will consider my aperture block failure to be exactly the cosmic justice I deserved for buying cheap, and I'm sure some other people reading this are getting sick of reading so many first-person pronouns. But just consider it another data point of anecdotal evidence. I can't be the only young beginner amateur who went Pentax for value, can I?
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
03-13-2018, 09:58 AM
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That is pure business from Sigma side to not be on K-mount market with new lenses. they do have 35/1,4 art, and there could be reason, why it was first and last to come with K-mount.
But, as I recon there might not be need for sigma lenses for long. Ricoh has been doing good solutions with co-op with Tokina and Tamron. Now, they can already start building Limited line, which has been quite a bit staying at sidelights/forgotten. From almost none modern FF lens line up they have most of it covered in reasonable time IMO if you think about size of the company. Hopefully they will also make something new for 645 format too.
it took several yrs. to come up with K-1.
now let's see if they will continue with FF limiteds now, or aps-c. as said before, FA lim. could do a little D-FA lim. makeover. and there is room for new ones too :) I'm personally more interested of little limiteds than big chunk 1,4 glass.
:)
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