Pentax low competition Nikon D40x revealed

Seems like a lot of the other players are moving along. Latest new cam is the Nikon D40x upgrade from 6 to 10 megapixels. They also get the d3x and Canon is like always chugging out new models.

http://stock-photo.blogspot.com/

What is up with Penatx? Apart from the medium format to come, what about the low level and pro level?

What's up??
You mean apart from creating a pro level camera at a consumer price?!
Oh, and the 645D, and a lineup of serious lenses...

Might be worth reading these if you haven't already...
https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4002
https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3998

Matt

The D40X is a direct reaction to the EOS400D which has probably been outselling the Nikon - purely because the target audience for these things is the person who goes into Jessops and buys the one with the most pixels per pound.

This is bad news for the K100D, AP award winner or not. The man in the street doesn't know 6MP is fine for his needs - big brands and lots of pixels will sell it to most first time buyers.

Let's face it...

D40x was a surprise
E-410 and E-510 were surprises...

Who knows what Pentax might reveal....

I guess a 10MP camera to bridge between K100 and K10

But I hope for a 12-14 MP K1, even more refined than the K10, with dual card slots

Discussions regarding the number of pixels are very interesting but it seems to me that unless you want to dramatically enlarge a small area of a scene, 10 or even 6MP, in APS-C format is perfectly adequate for most people.

We know the final image quality is not all about the number of pixels but that is nevertheless a huge selling point.

Mr. Carver Mead of Foveon (he knows a thing or two about silicon chips) believes that a sensor with around 20MP per square inch will deliver the maximum possible resolution. That equates roughly to 14MP for APS-C and a massive 30MP for full-frame (35mm).

The obvious advantages for full-frame are: 35mm lenses will deliver the AOV for which they are designed (bear in mind that only truly exceptional lenses have no apparent drop-off toward the edges) and less enlargement is required to display or print at any given size - just think of the file sizes though, data storage these days might be cheap but flippin' heck!
Full-frame cameras would also be slightly bigger and heavier than their APS-C counterparts (I say slightly because MZ series cameras aren't exactly unwieldy are they?).

So I conclude that while a 30MP full-frame DSLR sounds attractive and may one day be common place (never say never in this crazy techno world), I think a 14MP 'K1D' is much more likely for the foreseeable future but whether it'll perform significantly better than the K10D, remains to be seen!

For the moment, I think Pentax satisfy the target market adequately with the K100D/K110D and K10D and there's no need for any intermediate models - but knowing how they produced *ist DS/DL variants, I wouldn't put it past them!

Now I'm not saying that pixel numbers equals resolution, but just so you know, the current 10Mp compacts, with sensors approx. 7.2mmx5.3mm, have a pixel density of around 260,000/mm2.

That is 162,500,000 pixels per square inch.

I think there's still a long way to go before the APS-sized sensor is maxed-out.

Dan

He's not saying that 20MP/square inch is the maximum that you can have, he's saying that there is no advantage to having more than that.
The respective characteristics of silicon based CCD/CMOS sensors and the wavelength of visible light, results in a maximum resolution at around 20MP/square inch - if you had more than that, you simply wouldn't be able to see the difference.

Quite how that relates to the sensors in compacts, I don't know but it does make you wonder why DSLRs don't have the same pixel density.
It surely can't be a cost issue because the sensors are so readily available for compacts - can't a DSLR simply have two or more compact sized sensors?

However, let's say you had four 10MP compact sensors arranged in a 2x2 grid. You'd have a 40MP camera but each quarter of the image would only consist of 10MP......so would there be an advantage

Which is why I started with "Now I'm not saying that pixel numbers equals resolution..."

Just did a bit more maths, and came up with approx 4.25Mp as a maximum for compact sized sensors, judging by Mr. Mead's figures. Perhaps he's got a point.

I'm guessing that there are a few limitations at the moment regarding pixel count in DSLRs.

First would be noise - the compact's sensors are undoubtedly noisier than APS or 'full frame' sensors. So an advantage of a lower pixel density is lower noise.

Cost would escalate quite rapidly I would think, once bigger chips are being made with higher pixel densities.

Processing power must be a limitation at the moment - if you were getting images 4 times the size, it stands to reason that the processor would take 4 times as long to process the file, and 4 times longer to write it to the card.


Not sure I understand the question... My istD has a 6Mp sensor, but each quarter of that is 1.5Mp. It's what tends to happen when you divide something by 4. You'd probably have a bit of a job to get a seemless join between 4 sensors though...

Dan

yeah, not quite sure what I was getting at either - hence the 'confused' emoticon.

You're quite right to point out the noise and processing issues of high density sensors but they'll no doubt eventually be overcome.

It has been generally recognised for some time that a compact with around 4MP delivers similar results (at least for standard 6x4 prints) as a 35mm film compact and your's and Mr. Mead's calculations would support that.

You can of course be just as creative with a digital compact as with a DSLR but the nature of SLR photography demands, at least from the real enthusiast, that the extremes of what can be achieved are sought.

What seems impossible today, may very well be commonplace tomorrow!

The problem with cramming a lot of pixels onto a chip is noise. As I understand it you start to get leakage from adjoining pixels, from (I think) quantum effects. Oh and reading all that information off the chip in a timely manner. OK, the 2 problems are.....

There was a discussion at DP review about these problems a while back http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=14849741

You and I know that, but the target buyer of these cameras will go on "more pixels = better". I've recently seen 2 friends use this exact argument to buy 400Ds. I can't see the man in Jessops getting into discussions about noise and pixel densities...

How very, depressingly, true.

Some could, and quite happily too.

John,

Agreed, there one bloke at my local "J" who's really hot on all aspects of photography. He suggested I buy a pentax when I got my first SLR back in '96.

What I actually meant to imply was that the average first-time purchaser of a DSLR was unlikely to ask too many probing questions and may be won over by the more-pixels-are-better argument. I know that a few years ago, I would have been!

D3X hey. Its a pity they never announced that one to the rest of us.