Sometimes silence speaks volumes. On March 14th, I sent Asahi Man (on DPReview Pentax SLR forum) a private message. Rather than repeat myself, I will tell you exactly what I told him...
Dear asahi man, You clearly are knowledgeable about the structure of things at the current Pentax company. I was wondering if you would either pass this idea along, or (alternately) let me know who I might pass it along to. Pentax has a huge advantage that they can exploit in their DSLRs due to the SR system. They use this in a very innovative way with the O-GPS1 for astrophotography. This would be another way to exploit that system. What I propose is a menu for the SR system that would contain: ON, OFF, DITHER. This new DITHER setting would shift the sensor slightly (only 1 or 2 pixels) from the previous exposure. This would allow a particular part of a scene that was exposed by a RED photosite to also be exposed by a GREEN photosite and then a BLUE photosite. In astrophotography, those nearly identical images could then be aligned and stacked in software (like Registax or DeepSkyStacker) and eliminate noise, bringing out detail. To see the TREMENDOUS benefit this small change would make for astrophotographers, watch the first 9 minutes and 55 seconds of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PZoCJBLAYEs The Canon user in the system refers to shifting the CAMERA slightly, but Pentax could do it automatically. Thus cameras mounted to motor driven telescopes or using small trackers (like these: http://www.astrosurf.com/comolli/strum56.htm ) would be able to do tremendous astrophotography with Pentax cameras. The best part about this idea is that I believe it could be implemented with only a firmware update! Thank you for considering looking at this and passing it along to someone at Pentax who understands the appeal of astrophotography (like the team or individual that came up with the O-GPS1). </end of message> I was a bit surprised to receive absolutely no reply from him. Then came this yesterday: http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2015/03/23/in-progress-ricoh-reveals-pixel-shifting-high-resolution-mode-coming-soon-t It appears that I have nailed it (or perhaps nearly so). It remains to be seen, but this is a HUGE leveraging of the sensor shift/shake reduction technology that Pentax owns and clearly understands. Frankly the fact that this upcoming camera is a full frame now becomes of secondary importance. The most important thing is to have ANY camera that can do THIS. Wowsers. -- Life is too short to put up with bad bokeh. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
