Why I think Pentax is doomed

Nikon, Canon and to a much lesser extent, Sony look to dominate the DSLR
realm. Period. Olympus will shortly move completely away from DSLR's to
interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras like the E-P1, though they will
probably save the basic DSLR shape. Panasonic has already done this.
Pentax has no place. Aside from selling a handful of DSLR's to die-hard
and "in short supply"Pentax fans, they have no real place in the higher-
level camera realm. They don't impress very much. They have no niche
and they can't compete with C-N-S.

This, from "Luminous Landscape" kind of sums it up:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re...k7-hands.shtml

I have a confession to make. I found the Pentax K7 to be a competent
camera.

That's a confession?

Well, it is in a way because it goes toward explaining why I don't have a
lot to say about the K7's image quality or its overall appeal. It's a
competent camera and does a lot of things well and not too many poorly.
Image quality is fine, but not exceptional, and maybe a bit noisier than
some.

But therein lies its failing in my eyes. The camera isn't compelling for
any reason. In marketing terms it doesn't appear to offer a USP (Unique
Selling Proposition). Almost every aspect of the camera is competent, and
there are only a few failings. But it also doesn't really excel at
anything. It isn't the fastest, the sharpest, the highest resolution, the
smallest, the lightest, the fastest focusing, or have the fastest frames
rates.

In other words, the Pentax K7 is like a middle child who gets lost in the
shuffle in a large family, between the cute young ones and the mature and
smarter older ones, or the really attractive sibling that garners all of
the attention.

"Rich" wrote in message
...
Nikon, Canon and to a much lesser extent, Sony look to dominate the DSLR
realm. Period. Olympus will shortly move completely away from DSLR's to
interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras like the E-P1, though they will
probably save the basic DSLR shape. Panasonic has already done this.
Pentax has no place. Aside from selling a handful of DSLR's to die-hard
and "in short supply"Pentax fans, they have no real place in the higher-
level camera realm. They don't impress very much. They have no niche
and they can't compete with C-N-S.

This, from a Henry's shill...

"Rich" wrote in message
...
Nikon, Canon and to a much lesser extent, Sony look to dominate the DSLR
realm. Period. Olympus will shortly move completely away from DSLR's to
interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras like the E-P1, though they will
probably save the basic DSLR shape. Panasonic has already done this.
Pentax has no place. Aside from selling a handful of DSLR's to die-hard
and "in short supply"Pentax fans, they have no real place in the higher-
level camera realm. They don't impress very much. They have no niche
and they can't compete with C-N-S.

This, from "Luminous Landscape" kind of sums it up:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re...k7-hands.shtml


The lifting mirror and pentaprism/mirror is a relic of film days and should
not feature in modern cameras.
Mike

Mike GW8IJT wrote:



The lifting mirror and pentaprism/mirror is a relic of film days and
should not feature in modern cameras.
Mike

Can you get electronic viewfinders with reasonable resolution that are fast?

Pete

--
http://www.petezilla.co.uk

Rich wrote:
Nikon, Canon and to a much lesser extent, Sony look to dominate the DSLR
realm. Period. Olympus will shortly move completely away from DSLR's to
interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras like the E-P1, though they will
probably save the basic DSLR shape. Panasonic has already done this.
Pentax has no place. Aside from selling a handful of DSLR's to die-hard
and "in short supply"Pentax fans, they have no real place in the higher-
level camera realm. They don't impress very much. They have no niche
and they can't compete with C-N-S.

This, from "Luminous Landscape" kind of sums it up:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re...k7-hands.shtml

I have a confession to make. I found the Pentax K7 to be a competent
camera.

That's a confession?

Well, it is in a way because it goes toward explaining why I don't have a
lot to say about the K7's image quality or its overall appeal. It's a
competent camera and does a lot of things well and not too many poorly.
Image quality is fine, but not exceptional, and maybe a bit noisier than
some.

But therein lies its failing in my eyes. The camera isn't compelling for
any reason. In marketing terms it doesn't appear to offer a USP (Unique
Selling Proposition). Almost every aspect of the camera is competent, and
there are only a few failings. But it also doesn't really excel at
anything. It isn't the fastest, the sharpest, the highest resolution, the
smallest, the lightest, the fastest focusing, or have the fastest frames
rates.

For those with Pentax lenses and no desire to replace them, the Pentax
line is fine. Pentax can milk that for a while. But would you buy a
high end Pentax lens at this point? Aye, there's the rub.

Strategically they are in a weak position. They don't control their
sensor fab. This does not matter much to Nikon - they are much larger
and they get what they need from Sony (and would command the attention
of any other fab. Pentax have to pick and choose and with a lower
volume to offer do not have a strong buyer position. Further, Sony can
deny them access to the Sony FF chips as well (at the risk of anti-trust
but that would take 5 years or more to sort out). They can run to Kodak
and others for fab but remain relatively weak as buyers.

Peter Chant wrote:
Mike GW8IJT wrote:


The lifting mirror and pentaprism/mirror is a relic of film days and
should not feature in modern cameras.
Mike

Can you get electronic viewfinders with reasonable resolution that are fast?

C'mon Pete ... troll feeding is for the birds...

On Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:08:50 -0700 (PDT), Rich wrote:

On Oct 8, 1:57*pm, Peter Chant wrote:
Mike GW8IJT wrote:

The lifting mirror and pentaprism/mirror is a relic of film days and
should not feature in modern cameras.
Mike

Can you get electronic viewfinders with reasonable resolution that are fast?

Pete

Right now, only Panasonic's G1, GH1 came claim that. The GF1 add-on
viewfinder is reasonably fast, but does not have the 1.2 meg
resolution of the G1's.

Something that they fail to mention is that there is no viewfinder lag once
you use a shutter speed faster than about 1/30s, because that's faster than
your eye can perceive this "lag" (determined by selected shutter-speed
alone, it is a shutter-speed preview, it is not a "lag"). They also fail to
mention that you can't focus any more accurately in an optical viewfinder
than you can in a digital one. You cannot zoom into the central region of
your optical viewfinder to find out if the part you want in focus is
actually in focus. With most any digital viewfinder you can. Getting
precise focus in any digital viewfinder is infinitely easier than using an
optical one. The number of pixels in that digital viewfinder are fairly
irrelevant after about 300k of them. With a digital viewfinder, not only do
you get real-time shutter-speed preview, bright DOF preview, real-time
histograms and under/over-exposure overlays of your subject areas,
user-selectable composition and masking grids, gained-up luminance in
low-light conditions to make framing and focusing easy where an optical
viewfinder would be worthless long ago, but you also get to enjoy the
digital enlargement from the center of your sensor's FOV to determine
precise focusing. Optical viewfinders lost the high-ground over a decade
ago. Catch up!

"samual robbins" wrote in message
[]
The number of pixels in that digital viewfinder are fairly irrelevant
after about 300k of them.

The typical "300K pixel" viewfinder is actually 100K RGB triplets,
allowing a 360 x 270 RGB pixel image. Try setting your display to 360 x
270 pixels. Nothing like as good as an optical finder, is it?

David

On Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:36:34 GMT, "David J Taylor"
wrote:

"samual robbins" wrote in message
[]
The number of pixels in that digital viewfinder are fairly irrelevant
after about 300k of them.

The typical "300K pixel" viewfinder is actually 100K RGB triplets,
allowing a 360 x 270 RGB pixel image. Try setting your display to 360 x
270 pixels. Nothing like as good as an optical finder, is it?

David

If you can zoom into your sensor's recording of details so that each pixel
in the viewfinder is equivalent to one RGGB photosite region, then it
matters not. You cannot focus any more sharply than the size of your
photosites on your sensor. This is what happens when you zoom in digitally
in your digital viewfinder using the common manual-focus-assist features.
I'd like to see you find edge-detail down to a 2 pixel difference in your
optical viewfinder and determine if it is in focus or not. I can do just
that, with every subject I photograph, if so desired.

Then again, you all pride yourselves on your auto-focusing mechanisms. You
forget that contrast detection focusing, (while slower in the past, no
longer true) is much more accurate than phase detection focusing. Manual
focusing is rarely needed these days. I use it though, macro-photography is
a forte' of mine. You need to know what part of your main subject is in
focus so the DOF can embrace the whole subject. Sharply focusing 1/3rd to
2/5ths into the depth of your subject to obtain that. With an optical
viewfinder you'll be lucky if you can guess which 2/3rds of your main
subject is actually in focus. (Been there, did that, sold the useless
optical-viewfinder crap.)

The MAIN use of ANY viewfinder these days is for composition only. (Well,
in an electronic viewfinder it also gives you an accurate presentation of
exposure settings in real-time too, so that also blows to hell the
usefulness of all optical viewfinders.) A 360x270 display is plenty for
composition and exposure determination needs. Let's see you use your
viewfinder to compose a scene in light levels so low that you can't even
see your subject anymore. I accomplish that just fine in an electronic
viewfinder that ramps up the gain of the image and presents it at normal
light levels. Let's see you use your optical viewfinder to determine if you
are going to lose the intense colors of the sunset by exposing it at what
your meter suggests. I have no problems, seeing in real-time, when those
colors are going to be washed out and I must use a -2 to -3 EV compensation
before I even press the shutter. It's like standing at the fixer-tray in
your darkroom and looking at the final developed image before you've even
pressed the shutter. Something doesn't look quite right in the electronic
viewfinder's REAL-TIME preview of your final image? No problem, hit a
button to compensate and shoot.

Did we forget to mention that a digital viewfinder is a 100% accurate
representation of the FOV being recorded by the sensor? (The viewfinder
being a relay of the very same data as being seen by the sensor in
real-time.) So much for your accurate composition in the camera when you
can only see 95%-97% of it in most every optical viewfinder. That's like
buying a 16 megapixel camera but it only letting you see 12 megapixels of
what it's going to record. What a crippling waste -- financially,
artistically, and technically.

Your resolution argument is *such* an empty and pathetic one.

"samual robbins" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:36:34 GMT, "David J Taylor"
wrote:

"samual robbins" wrote in message
[]
The number of pixels in that digital viewfinder are fairly irrelevant
after about 300k of them.

The typical "300K pixel" viewfinder is actually 100K RGB triplets,
allowing a 360 x 270 RGB pixel image. Try setting your display to 360 x
270 pixels. Nothing like as good as an optical finder, is it?

David

If you can zoom into your sensor's recording of details so that each
pixel
in the viewfinder is equivalent to one RGGB photosite region, then it
matters not. You cannot focus any more sharply than the size of your
photosites on your sensor. This is what happens when you zoom in
digitally
in your digital viewfinder using the common manual-focus-assist
features.
I'd like to see you find edge-detail down to a 2 pixel difference in
your
optical viewfinder and determine if it is in focus or not. I can do just
that, with every subject I photograph, if so desired.

Then again, you all pride yourselves on your auto-focusing mechanisms.
You
forget that contrast detection focusing, (while slower in the past, no
longer true) is much more accurate than phase detection focusing. Manual
focusing is rarely needed these days. I use it though, macro-photography
is
a forte' of mine. You need to know what part of your main subject is in
focus so the DOF can embrace the whole subject. Sharply focusing 1/3rd
to
2/5ths into the depth of your subject to obtain that. With an optical
viewfinder you'll be lucky if you can guess which 2/3rds of your main
subject is actually in focus. (Been there, did that, sold the useless
optical-viewfinder crap.)

The MAIN use of ANY viewfinder these days is for composition only.
(Well,
in an electronic viewfinder it also gives you an accurate presentation
of
exposure settings in real-time too, so that also blows to hell the
usefulness of all optical viewfinders.) A 360x270 display is plenty for
composition and exposure determination needs. Let's see you use your
viewfinder to compose a scene in light levels so low that you can't even
see your subject anymore. I accomplish that just fine in an electronic
viewfinder that ramps up the gain of the image and presents it at normal
light levels. Let's see you use your optical viewfinder to determine if
you
are going to lose the intense colors of the sunset by exposing it at
what
your meter suggests. I have no problems, seeing in real-time, when those
colors are going to be washed out and I must use a -2 to -3 EV
compensation
before I even press the shutter. It's like standing at the fixer-tray in
your darkroom and looking at the final developed image before you've
even
pressed the shutter. Something doesn't look quite right in the
electronic
viewfinder's REAL-TIME preview of your final image? No problem, hit a
button to compensate and shoot.

Did we forget to mention that a digital viewfinder is a 100% accurate
representation of the FOV being recorded by the sensor? (The viewfinder
being a relay of the very same data as being seen by the sensor in
real-time.) So much for your accurate composition in the camera when you
can only see 95%-97% of it in most every optical viewfinder. That's like
buying a 16 megapixel camera but it only letting you see 12 megapixels
of
what it's going to record. What a crippling waste -- financially,
artistically, and technically.

Your resolution argument is *such* an empty and pathetic one.

My camera has both types of viewfinder, so I am quite aware of how well,
or otherwise, each type works. If /you/ are satisfied with a 360 x 270
pixel viewfinder image, that's great, but no reason why the rest of us
have to stick with that limitation.

Why such vitriol in your statements?

David