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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
11-13-2016, 09:54 PM
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Nothing heard and no hints. That said, and this is pure unadulterated speculation - a WAG (as in Wild A$$ Guess). Just trying to think out loud.
The K1 was just released, and both the crop sensor (K3 seems to indicate about an 18 month replacement cycle) and the 645 product lines have to be in the design and development pipeline. Also, there must be some forward thinking going on in terms of what the K1 replacement will offer. That tends to point to the crop sensor (K3II replacement) as the next release (in 2017) - which makes sense. The K70 was released in very short order with a fair amount of capability from the K1 - which will indicate that the crop replacement will need to outshine the K70 by a substantial capability margin. Pentax will need to take some risks on both the new 645 (at a 4 year cycle - so 2018?) and the K1 replacements - so to mitigate and reduce this risk on their premium product lines, they will use the crop replacement as the experimental platform for any new technology. The rumored new Nikon D7300 is though to be continuing with the current sensor technology. Going to a new sensor technology now, would get Pentax a step ahead, while affording Pentax the ability to always fall back to the technology in use, if things do not pan out. It's always good to have a risk-less Plan B for a backup.
So, what is the new technology that may be currently available? In terms of sensors its the new Sony IMX378 Stacked BSI CMOS sensor - or the Backside illumination technology. Sony used it in their newest release of the A7R mk II. All of the following speculation is just extrapolating off of the A7R mkII - which is dangerous, but the only data point really available. So, here is the dive into the swimming pool - hopefully with some water...- PDAF Auto Focus - Pentax could possibly use this to help continue to modernize their AF. How they may do this without lifting the mirror for the OVF is a problem with this approach.
- High Frame Rate - This could help Pentax with their continuous AF, and improve their video, especially with video AF while recording, and may afford them the ability to go to 4K video. Pentax could probably use this in their Pixel Shift to reduce the amount of time between exposures - gated by the amount of time required for the sensor movement.
- SME-HDR - I am going to wonder out loud, if Pentax is considering possibly combining their Pixel Shift with this new Spatially Multiplexed Exposure HDR approach. Pentax should also be able to improve their in camera HDR capability along with possibly doing something with the traditional bracketing.
What might this mean for some of the more traditional measurements. Using some currently available measures web sites to help here..The links above, provide measurements across both the A7R and the A7RmkII, which marks the transition to the BSI CMOS sensor.- ISO - Sony between the A7R and the A74mkII appears to have improved their DXO sport score (ISO) by 25% or that would be about 1/4 of a stop - up to ~ 3400 (full frame). The K5IIs is at 1208, so a 25% improvement would push it to about 1500 which would be very nice and make it the best APS-C score. The K3 was a step back from the K5 for Pentax. If they could step forward here, that would be tremendous. In the Sensor Noise Database, the chipouts do provide a numerical measurement of mean, standard deviation and median valuations. What is interesting here is that the A7R's histogram values were reasonably flat (level) across the exposure times (1, 30 and 300 seconds), while the new sensor had substantially increasing values - essentially doubling (from 1 sec to 300 sec). The BSI CMOS sensor's construction has the circuity under the photosites, while reducing the distance between them. I am going to guess heat, that thermal dissipation is a larger problem with the new sensor technology. Thermal transfer and dissipation will be an increased problem for the packaging engineers - which means the camera bodies are not going to get any thinner.
- Resolution - The A7RmkII went to 42MP, scaled to a crop sensor, that would put the size in the neighborhood of about 28MP - not that we need any more MP. Perhaps Sony would reduce the resolution (maintaining 24MP) to make the photosites larger, which may lower noise at higher ISO values. Having larger pixels should also help with dynamic range.
- Dynamic Range - Sony was able to keep the A74mkII DXO landscape score (DR) at 13.9 a small decrease from 14.1. Hopefully, Pentax could keep it in the 14 area - hopefully at the high end of 14.
I'll also guess that the replacement will have something like the K3 body with either the K1 or K70 articulating rear screen, built in GPS and WiFi, along with coming in the color of basic black - for $1100 to $1200 (the rumored price of the new Nikon D7300).
That's my guess for the K3II replacement. Having said all of that - what ever it comes in with, it will still be a stop behind the K1 just based on sensor real estate.
:cool:
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
11-11-2016, 06:45 AM
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Morning, I also shoot with the K5IIs primarily in low light and have considered upgrading. I came across this Sensor Noise DataBase a few months ago, that has been keeping pace with recent camera announcements, and the K5IIs performs at a really exceptional level. Now, to be fair - they measure and compare everything at ISO 3200 +5ev, across 1, 30 and 300 seconds all NR disabled, in order to set up an extreme situation to bring out the worst in the sensors. It also includes the K1, K3 and K5 - so you can compare apples to apples, for all of your options.Bottom line, and this is just a single point of comparison, however - you are going to really be unable to beat the K5IIs. The K1 lags behind some, and the K3 is even farther behind. The K5 blows the socks off the rest of the bodies. Some folks will point out that even with NR fully disabled, Pentax is still doing a bit of NR in the RAW in camera pre-processing. No matter, as there is nothing users can do about it, except live with the results. The K5 has pretty spectacular results across the board at 1, 30 and 300 seconds compared to all other sensor/bodies.
So - back to upgrading. There are a number of creature comforts that I would really enjoy, like - the articulated rear monitor, having GPS built in and available all the time, focus peaking along with Pixel Shift for some situations. But, I just don't feel the overwhelming urge to upgrade. Half of my lenses would support full frame. The one glaring need would be the 15-30 for wide angle - going out to 111 degrees wide - pretty much equaling the Sigma 8-16 in width and being faster (f2.8) to boot. I would need to spend $3,300 for the K1 and the wide angle lens. If I had the overwhelming urge to - I would upgrade. And by all accounts, the 15-30 is a spectacular lens. It has been in the back of my mind, but you would really need to go with the K1 and with the full frame lenses, in order to get the full benefit of the larger sensor and capture the additional 1+ stop of low light capability. The database reflects the full size of each sensor (with no lens dependencies) and the K1 was not able to surpass the K5 there. So, my urge to upgrade, just evaporates every time I think about it.
I have a pretty extensive set of crop wide angle lenses so the potential of the K3II replacement body does have some allure if it is discernibly better than the K5/K5II/K5IIs. So, for me - there is hope with the new unknown body. In my mind it is a cropped version of the K1 - with all the bells and whistles - with a new very low noise sensor probably out in mid 2017. How it would compare with the K1 and K5 - I don't have the foggiest idea. I did consider the K3 when I was thinking about the K5IIs, but under ISO 1600 - the K5 wins, and with this Sensor Noise DB it shows that the longer the exposure, the better the K5 sensor is.
Bottom line is that, I am happy with what I currently have and just go out and shoot.
:cool:
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