Good bye Pentax! Forever?

You could always buy a Samsung GX-1S.....

And get £100 cash back, as advertised in the June issue of Digital Photo, quite tempting really.

8MP in which format. I get 20Mb - 30Mb TIFFS from my .PEF raw files.
DL focussing may be slow, I have no first hand experience of it. My D however, is lightning fast and they are still available, but you have to look hard. If not available new, they can still be acquired second hand. I just bought one today on Ebay with FA 100mm 1:2.8 Macro for £450. Pentax still repairs them, I had one repaired last year for £125. It had a serious fault, Pentax UK repaired it, and I had it back in a week. If you can't be without your camera for a week if/when it breaks, buy two or three.

Oh, and there's no need to count the pixels. The box and the manual and the Pentax website and every company that sells them can provide that info.

You haven't actually mentioned what it is that you are intending to buy. Making a comparison of Pentax offerings with the Canon (sorry for the swear word) 1DS MkII is hardly fair and you'll probably end up with a permanent stoop if you have to have one hung round your neck for very long.

I sold a 20D to a friend a while back and had the opportunity to try it out. The very first thing that struck me was its weight. Pentax DSLR's are much lighter than other makes and models that it is all too often compared with. The possible exception is the Canon 350D, but you need to be a midget (no disrespect intended) to hold one.

With it's battery grip, my *istD is perfect for me. It feels good, it's controls are sensibly placed within easy reach, its well balanced and it's affordable now. Even with 2 sets of batteries, one in the grip and one in the body, it weighs about the same as a 20D without grip.

With all that said, if you are going to be selling your images to a stock house or agency and they are demanding no less than 8MP, Pentax's current line-up will not do it. The D replacement will, when its released. 6.1Mp is enough fo me, as an amateur, and it seems it's enough for some of the professionals on this forum too.

Then again, maybe the 645D will suit your needs . . .

What a bargain.....well done, superb with the AF140C.
I'm relieved my original post (& GL's) regarding these two D's didn't get anybodies fingers burnt. I think eBay must have pulled the auction's first time round as the seller was new and these were two high value items.

Bargain yes Brian, but not until I've actually got it in my hot little hands. I've heard nothing from the seller yet and I've asked if I can collect. Fingers crossed it's not a scam . . .

When I have got the FA, and its OK, I'll put my SMC Pentax F 100mm 1:2.8 Macro on Ebay with a suitable reserve and very similar BIN price. Look out for it if interested.

Hi Peter,

I already have an FA100 f2.8 Macro, superb piece of glass even in my hands .

I've already bought a DSLR and yes, I haven't mentioned what it is. The quality is excellent at A3 and cost just over £1K for the body. For weight, Pentax wins hands down, for ease of use, Pentax wins again.

8mp is now the minimum standard unless it is for the web. As for the 645D, I'm looking at two second hand MFC from an ex-pro. He wants £150 for the both. However, MF demand will required billions of years experience in the trade which I don't have.

BTW does £150 sound too good to be true for MF


It was mentioned earlier about why don't I use the DSLR for B&W as well. I've got the enlarger equipement and still enjoy using it, so i'm sticking with film for B&W just for now. B&W is a hobby rather than semi-pro.

http://www.macworld.com/2006/05/reviews/pentaxistdl/index.php/?lsrc=mwrevrss
That settles it then....I'm gonna have to hang up the "Out of Business" sign.
Maybe I'll go join a cult.
I heard about this groups of crazed zealots based primarily outa' Japan called the "Pentaxians"....
I think they await a mothership to bring them new technology...which they'll use to take over the world....
Nah...
My business is doing just fine.
Just hand me another stone and tell Goliath to back the F**** off.

It's quite clear to me that either the reviewer never got his hands on the DL or couldn't operate the camera properly. I do know somebody with a DL and he's never complained about under exposure or artifacts and I've seen his work.

As I've said before, the DL is a fine camera and my only issue is with the amount of pixels. I understand that Pentax has joined partnership with anyother company, Samsung I think, so hoperfully this issue will be corrected in the future and the new 10mp camera due this october is a gigantic step in the right direction.

Who is setting an 8MP minimum standard? There are only a few DSLRs that deliver this, and image noise is sometimes a problem. Normally I would expect the file size to be the determining factor, and of course we can very effectively adjust the file size of our 6.1MP Pentaxes (or Nikons, or Fujis...)

I routinely supply A3 sized pictures at 300dpi and they look fine, certainly more than good enough to go to print.

Agencies, printers etc

Are you sure about this?

You can only do this with a 6mp camera by creating pixels that weren't orginally there

Hi Simon

As you would have to with an 8mp sensor. That works out at 16,920,000 pixels, more than twice that of the 8mp sensor. So your argument would be that you cannot possibly get a decent print above A4 (at 300dpi) even with an 8mp sensor, because if you did, you'd be adding information not there at the original shot.

The above print would mean interpolating by 2.115 times with an 8mp, and by 2.729 times with a 6.2mp sensor. In the scheme of things, that's not a great deal.

I'm sure I've probably got something wrong there.. but what the hey.

Cheers
Liam

Well the test would be, can you sell your images successfully into the market with the equipment you have. If you can, there isn't a problem...

Some interesting issues come out of this thread. Yes, if you want to make a A3 print at 300ppi then you have to have soft ware that invents some pixels. PS7 and especially CS2 do this rather well and the results can be very good indeed, with an A3 file being maybe a 45-50MB TIFF.

There are a good many 6.1MP DSLRs around, but I think fewer 8MP ones, and noise has been pretty universally cited as the downside of these extra pixels. Equally well, some reviewers have remarked that there is little and sometimes no improvement in "image quality" with the extra theoretical resolution. This may be for all sorts of reasons, probably beyond this thread for now.

I haven't yet seen anyone specifying a minimum requirement in terms of camera MP, only in terms of file size, resolution in ppi and image size. If these are all OK and the picture fits the bill aesthetically and technically then I don't see much of a problem.

I can't comment much on all the 'techy' stuff of digital capture relating to sensor size, numbers of pixels, software capabilities etc... but do reckon that far too many people nowadays are pre-occupied with what the camera computers can do, along with the back-up software for post processing.
It seems to me that the modern thing is to try and find a camera that takes away all the skills you should learn in photography, that would enable you to take great pictures with any camera, whatever it's format or film/sensor size and controls available.
No camera ever made at whatever the cost or tehnical capabilities will make someone take good pictures if they simply haven't learnt how regarding understanding composition, the relationship between aperture/shutter speed, DOF, type of lens choice, lighting etc... and many other factors that go towards making a good photograph.
Simply having more pixels makes little difference and anyone (magazine editors included) who reckons that an image produced on a digital camera with less than 8.2 megapixels is not worth publishing is a fool.
The only real difference, as mentioned earlier, is lens quality and a crap lens will not perform any better whatever the body it is attached to and of course a good lens does not have to be on an expensive body to work well.
I use a *istds for digital and LX's for film with the same lenses and the quality both digitally and with film is great and I apply exactly the same picture taking principles whatever body or lenses I use.
Myself, I feel that many people who have embarked upon learning serious photography with a DSLR, never having used a film SLR, would benefit greatly from a period of getting used to a film SLR first and learning techniques that many now rely on the camera/sofware to sort out for them either before and during shooting, or afterwards.
It's the same with autofocus. It's fine when it works well the way you want, but is really no substitute for honing your skills at manual focussing, which can be achieved virtually as fast and provides much better control, especially for some subjects IMHO.
Of course I am speaking purely as an amateur and if you want to go Pro and simply cannot sell your images unless they are taken on a camera with 8.2 mega pixels or more, then I suppose you have little choice.
For anyone wanting to delve even deeper into the 'more megapixels is better' fallacy then they may wish to go to this link. Far too much for me to take in as I get confused too easily and frankly just concentrate on taking the best pictures I can whatever I am using. That's what it's really all about - not the equipment you have.


http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/counting1.shtml

Philip

Good points indeed. It's the photographer that counts.