I have owned Pentax DSLRs since 2008 (K200D) and I know that many here have been invested in digital Pentax even longer. The main appeal to me, at the time, was: * Extensive Weather/Dust Sealing * Used standard AA rechargeable batteries * Pentax did not change the flange to focal plane distance or mount compatibility, so I could use any previous Pentax-compatible lenses, including m42 * In-body Image Stabilization (meaning those older manual focus lenses now "come with" IS)
I've since owned the K-x (first Sony Exmor sensor and a huge leap in image/noise quality). K-5, K-5ii, K-3, and current K-3ii. The O-GPS1 followed by the integrated AstroTracer was a brilliant innovation to leverage the sensor control inherent in the in-body image stabilization system. Autofocus has long been the weak link in the Pentax ecosystem, but also the least important to me (as my attitude has been that photographers achieved great things without it for a very long time). I have not kept up on Pentax news (as far as what they are possibly hinting at for the future) but there is one very significant development that has my attention: Adding a 2nd processor that is dedicated only to the autofocus. This allows deep learning algorithms to be applied to the autofocus system, such as Canon's amazing wildlife eye-detection AF. By all accounts, Sony introduced the concept, but Canon has surpassed it with their recent EOS R5 and now R6 models. If you are a bird photographer, this is an absolute gamechanger as you can no longer blame your camera's AF for OOF shots. See: https://www.techradar.com/news/24-hours-with-the-canon-eos-r5-a-wildlife-photographer-gives-his-verdict YouTube has a lot of videos on the R6, as well. I don't have the money to sink into changing systems, at this point. But I have never even considered it until this development. The use of AI/neural networks/deep learning is something that is going to have applications everywhere. Our software developer at work is currently training a system to recognize nail head in a board, which will help automate wall panel sheathing on our modular framing tables & sheathing bridges. It has also been used to train human-like chess bots by feeding them games of play at different chess player ratings. I have no idea if Ricoh/Pentax is working in this area, but if they are not they are missing a Big Boat. Respectfully, Darren Addy Kearney, Nebraska -- “The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness ” ― Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Earth from Above -- %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
