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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
03-23-2020, 08:07 AM
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@StiffLegged and @Serkevan have already covered most of the counter-arguments. A few more/ more comments include:
EVFs & motion sickness: A large percentage (about 20% are very sensitive and up to 75% have some sensitivity) of people can't tolerate the lag in an EVF. Lag creates eyestrain, headaches, and nausea for them -- they aren't going to like using an uncomfortable camera! This problem also plagues augmented reality and virtual reality systems which is why this seemingly awesome technology isn't spreading as fast as pundits had hoped. The threshold for problems seems to be about 10 milliseconds of lag which seems to suggest that frame rates of 100 FPS might solve the problem. But there's a catch with photography. That 10 msec maximum lag constraint must include the exposure time as well as the frame-rate lag! Thus to avoid discomfort for all users, a MILC must run at 200 FPS and never use a shutter speed slower than 1/200 second.
The cheaper MILC fallacy: MILCs may have lower mechanical part costs but they have higher electrical part costs in the high-frame-rate EVF screen and high-frame-rate/low-latency sensor-processor-graphics pipeline. Roughly speaking, a MILC requires at least 2X to 4X the CPU, RAM, and display subsystem performance. Moreover, the mechanical parts simply don't cost very much thanks to modern mass production. That's how Canon can produce an entire DSLR with kit lens and sell it for an MSRP of $400. It looks like the cheapest APS-C MILC (the 5-year-old Sony a5100) is about $50 more despite not having all these mechanical parts!
VF DR: MILC's WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) is a double-edge sword. The limited DR of the EVF display and sensor limits what the photographer can see of the highlight and shadow details. EVF DR must be less that sensor DR (14 EV) but is probably down around 8 to 10 EV due to running the sensor in video mode, processing issues, and display DR limits. In contrast, with my K-1's OVF and a typical scene in my home office, I can simultaneous see the details in BOTH the bulb of a CFL light and the shadowed black front of a portable AC despite these being 18 EV apart in light levels! In EVF mode, the entire area around the bulb is either blown-out or the entire front of the AC is featureless black. It's a personal preference, but I like the WYSIWIT (What You See Is What Is There) of the OVF versus the WYSIWYG of an EVF.
Battery life: MILCs drain batteries continuously (especially in EVF mode) to run the sensor at high frame-rates, process the image, and run the high-frame-rate display. You can't put the camera to your eye, play around with compositions, play around with the zoom, take time to inspect the framing, track the subject, or wait for the subject to do something photo-worthy without draining the battery continuously. In contrast, you can do a lot of the zoom/framing/composition work on a DSLR with the camera off, and a DSLR uses very little power for AF, metering, and waiting while using the OVF.
Hot sensors: A side effect of continuous high frame-rates is higher sensor temperatures which doubles the dark current for each 8°C. It's not a problem for most shooting in either good light (fast shutter times have low dark current) or modest-contrast scenes (where dark current noise in the shadows does not matter). But if the shutter speed slows and the photographer wants the highest possible DR for shadow recovery, they will start to notice that a MILC thats been on for a while gets a noisier shot than a MILC that's been off for a while. In contrast, the sensor is off in a DSLR in OVF mode except during the shot.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
08-10-2018, 10:01 AM
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These savage Q fans are known as Q-ligans. And a more dangerous lot you will not find anywhere in all cameradom.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-05-2018, 04:20 PM
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Yes, it is amazing that the sensor in my iPhone is probably on par with the one in the my old K10D.
And yet, the poor ergonomics of the iPhone, lack of dedicated physical controls, lack of a viewfinder, and lack of interchangeable lenses put it at a serious disadvantage to the K10D. The K10D (or any ILC, especially a larger ILC) also signals something about the user that the iPhone does not. I doubt that many smartphone users have been asked "are you a photographer?" And I doubt that many clients would be pleased if they hired a photographer who showed up with a smartphone (even if said smartphone crushes pro digital cameras of some years ago and is more the adequate for producing good photographs for quite a range of "pro" purposes).
The economic forces are not against us to the extent that some admittedly small percentage of people have a more serious interest in photography. The number of people who can afford an ILC is ever growing.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-05-2018, 08:17 AM
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Yes, the 1980s were special. "Big cameras" became a status symbol. And most of the people that bought them were casual photographers who had been fine with pocket-110s before the 1980s and are fine with pocket-smartphones now. It's a bit like bowling which was huge in the 1960s or maybe drones today.
Those days aren't coming back.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-05-2018, 07:00 AM
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Kodak's 1892 slogan was "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest." For over the last 100 years, I'd wager that "democratic" cameras have always out-sold technocratic ones. And yet, technocratic cameras have never "lost" to the democratic masses. That gnostic knowledge that so repels the masses, is exactly what attracts a minority of enthusiasts, artists, and professionals. Saying smartphones have won against ILCs is like saying flat walking paths have won against mountain climbing. Yes, the raw numbers incontrovertibly say the masses have spoken and the easy paths have won. And yet the masses have failed to stop a minority who prefer the harder option for some combination of the technical challenge, social status, and the rewards of the view.
ILCs don't need to compete against smartphones today just as film ILCs never really competed against Kodak Instamatics twenty years ago. Except on the edges of their two very different markets, few consider them true substitutes for the other. Instead, ILCs actually compete more with climbing ropes, artists easels, golf clubs, guitars, and the accoutrements of dozens of other skill-based hobbies and associated professions.
The development costs of modern electronics may be high but they are both largely shared and self-regulating. Today's smartphone buyer is paying for a proverbial 99% of the R&D and capital expenses to make next generation sensors, chips, and chip factories. Companies like Pentax don't develop electronics so much as integrate them. And integration is not so expensive. Nor must it be done every day or even every year. We can all see the maturation of ILCs going on right now.
As for the culture of photography, there isn't one. There are many. Cultural change may elevate the selfie and yet astrophotographers will keep taking pictures of the stars, bird photographers will keep taking pictures of birds, etc. etc. Maybe photographers from India will create a new style of hyper-vibrant color photography and yet others will still be taking black-and-white images, sticking with realistic colors for documentary purposes, or even going for muted colors for artistic purposes. No one will win, no culture will dominate. If anything, the internet promotes the fragmentation of culture by enabling members of each cultural fragment to find each other and develop a cohesive community that is detached from the masses. No one is forced to follow every photographer or even follow the most popular photographers on any social media platform, Each individual can pick a culture and ignore the rest if they wish.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-04-2018, 06:23 PM
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The sales data I've been citing is all in the last year so it's long after decent digital mirrorless ILCs appeared.
The selfie is quite an interesting phenomenon but it is one of many and certainly does not dominate. Look at all the flagship ILCs that sell so well despite being so ill-suited for selfies. So it's not "all" about engagement and involvement. Even if a lot of people want selfie cameras and some makers cater to selfie-takers, a lot of other people don't want selfie cameras (and may even disdain cameras marketed for selfies).
It's like the Polaroid camera craze in the 1970s or the Fuji Instax camera craze in more recent years. Instax outsells mirrorless ILCs but no one seems to be clamoring for Pentax to jump on the Instax bandwagon.
This notion of "best" tech is utterly false because there's really a lot of alternative technologies to support a lot of alternative types of users.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-04-2018, 11:22 AM
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And yet it's the country with the second-oldest population on Earth that likes mirrorless so much. Even the "young" Asian countries who have no education on how to "see" prefer DSLRs to mirrorless.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-04-2018, 10:59 AM
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Actually, the EVF does NOT see what the sensor sees. The EVF shows a lagged, clipped, low-dynamic range, low-resolution, color-adjusted version of what the sensor outputs (which is not what the sensors sees). Worse, the sensor only outputs a lagged, clipped, low-DR version of the scene.
I've used both EVF and OVF. Both have advantages and both have disadvantages.
The sales figures show that only one country prefers mirrorless to DSLR and that's Japan. But then Japan is an odd-ball in that they are the only country that prefers compact cameras to interchangeable lens cameras.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-04-2018, 08:53 AM
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Exactly!
I'm amused how people stick to the old mirrorless design now that we have pentaprisms and mirrors to deliver a clear optical view of what the lens sees rather than a view degraded by the limitations of the EVF display, computer processing, and sensor.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-03-2018, 07:57 AM
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Ironically, Asia seems to want a "Western" lifestyle so us geezers are still holding sway! Thus, we'll probably see a lot of big-camera-with-big-lens chest candy on newly affluent consumers over there.
But the pictures that the various Asians take will certainly not be "Western" if the other visual arts in these various countries are anything to go by. That will be truly interesting to see.
Whether anyone "needs move over" will depend on all the local galleries and country-to-country pairings. Will German art buyers want Indonesian photographs? Maybe, maybe not. Will Indian art buyers want Chinese photographs? Maybe, maybe not.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-03-2018, 06:26 AM
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And meanwhile, the Asians are busily trying to make export products for the EU and US.
It's a global economy, no region is in control and there's lots people making lots of different products for lots of different other people.
The notion there's an "Asia" seems fundamentally wrong. Do the 1.4 billion potential photographers in China really want the same thing as the 1.3 billion potential photographers in India? And if you look at the sales figures, the tiny rapidly aging nation of Japan has the opposite sales pattern to the rest of Asia. Japan really loves compacts, then mirrorless, then DSLRs. Asia ranks it DSLR, then mirrorless, and then very few compacts.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-02-2018, 04:18 PM
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If Asia decides, then DSLRs will win.
If Japan decides, then both mirrorless and DSLRs will die because the Japanese actually still love their tiny built-in lens cameras 2:1 over interchangeables.
And Asia + Japan is only about half the market. The other half (Europe+Americas) which still prefers DSLRs almost 3:1.
There lots of money all around the world now and it's continuing to ask for all kinds of cameras.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-02-2018, 02:46 PM
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All this "mirrorless bandwagon" nonsense is fake news repeated so many times some have come to believe it..
In point of fact, it's DSLR cameras that are the more popular ones. The DSLR bandwagon is the bigger one.
Insisting that Pentax must make mirrorless cameras makes as much sense as insisting that Canon must make M4/3rds or medium format cameras. Why must a maker of one kind of camera make all kinds of cameras?
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