PLEASE pentax: sell a pro-level digital SLR!

After putting more than $3k in Pentax lenses and bodies, I am dying to see Pentax come out with a pro-level digital SLR. Yeah the *ist D is great but its no comparison to the digital Canon, Nikon, Fuji, kodak (and now Minolta) bodies out there for professionals. Please god of Pentax, cater to the pros or we're walking out the door!

Pentax makes K-mount cameras for enthusiasts, not pro's.

They have only made one proper professional camera in the K mount since the introduction of the K mount, and that was the LX, introduced in 1980.

They have now announced the D645, which will replace both the 645 and the 67 as their professional camera.

There will obviously be more advanced APS DSLRs than the D and DS, but they are most unlikely to be pro-spec cameras, at least in the foreseeable future.

George

I like my MZS and think its pretty damn good - almost a pro camera. I have stuck with Pentax because of the great lenses. They are definitely pro quality. They were planning on doing a full frame digital body based on the MZ-S and wonder if they will ever think about the pro market again.

You're right that Pentax lenses are up there with the best, and in terms of quality and design are hard to beat. Their design for me actually is better than some of the Nikon and Canon lenses, and the feel of the Pentax lenses surpasses even Contax and Leica.

The bodies are very nicely designed and manufactured, but are probably less reliable than the lenses. This might well be true of all marques, as the camera body is a more complex bit of kit.

The Pentax marque is, I think, aimed at a high quality enthusiast level, with some aspirations to pro use (otherwise why make 15mm lenses, shift lenses, mammoth telephoto lenses...) and I think they are aiming to have a decent urnover at that level. There's no point IMHO of trying to compete in the leica market, and even Leica seem to be finding that out the hard way. Equally, there's no satisfaction in manufacturing cheap and nasty cameras, it does little for the reputation! So somewhere in the middle is a good compromise, and my feeling is that Pentax sit there very comfortably.

Full frame pro spec DSLR? I think they were going to do that, and realised that the costings didn't fit their profile.

I have to agree that they have made plenty of pro-level cameras. Oddly enough, the top of my list is the old ME Super, which in spite of its weird metering, has repeatedly produced the best photos I've ever made. On digital, ist D / DS are great cameras, but I agree that they are not pro-level. Even the non-pro level Nikon D70 is more of a professional-grade camera than the ist D / DS (of course it costs slightly more too).

Bottom line, I think we should all worried about overall quality... let's hope that Pentax starts making something in Japan again and that they don't completely move all production to China like a lot of other industries have already done. As for pro-grade cameras, could any of us afford a pro-grade digital Pentax and still buy groceries anyway? :

A friend of mine called round today because he was unhappy with the quality he was getting from his Fuji S2 Pro and Nikon lenses, so we ran a whole battery of tests to see if we could fathom out the problem. I used the SMC Pentax-DA 18-55mm on my *istDS as a reference comparison for the tests.

The Nikkor lenses were a 50mm f1.8 and a 24-85mm zoom that cost around £300.

The results were interesting, and the outcome was that the Pentax produced crisper pictures than the more expensive Nikkors. With the Fuji/Nikkor combination there were also issues over focusing accuracy, but when we achieved like-for-like situations the pentax had a distict edge.

If this is so, and it's not just that I'm lucky to have a good Pentax lens and he is unlucky to have some under-par Nikkors, then what is the value in a "Pro" designation?

This is one reason I have never gone for leica - if you spend £1800 on a lens and get a poor one it's a disaster. If I haven't liked (occasionally) a Pentax lens I have been able to afford a different one. Pentax products are consistently of a professional standard, whether they are pitched as such or not.

Absolutely! That is an excellent point... Pentax makes incredible lenses for the comparitive money. I think another plus is that Tamron lenses match really well with Pentax equipment, while not so well with other brands. Plus, while I was complaining I forgot about how Pentax has the courtesy to make their newest cameras compatible with lenses older than most of us! That alone is why I chose the ist D in the first place; to buy a new camera and use my old high quality manual lenses on it. I have a good friend who is a Nikon man all the way who is still sick about that tidbit!

Full frame 11mp sensors will only ever come down in price, so before long Pentax won't be able to use that excuse any more.

What's the point in paying through the nose for a FA Limited 31mm (I wish), only to find it becomes a very overpriced standard lens on an *istD/S ?

Until I can use my Pentax glass as intended on a DSLR, I'm not going digital. So come on Pentax, give the users what they want, not what happens to be cheap to make.

I think you've hit on an important point there - give the users what they want. But what do the users want? The best quality at any price? The cheapest mega-zoom for 6 x 4 prints? Somewhere in the middle is the compromise, and although there will be some takers at both ends of the spectrum I suppose it's where the perfect trad-off between quality and price lies.

Somewhere ages ago on this forum I said I was waiting for a full size 10MP sensor from Pentax before I felt the quality level would be right. In the event, I am happy with my A3 prints from an APS sized 6.1MP sensor. OK, if there was higher resolution I would take it, but it would be a subtle difference for my applications and I can wait.

That only leaves the question of wide angles, and I need about a 12mm lens to make things perfect again. So I will probably be a taker for the new 12-24mm zoom.

I have also found that digital SLRs handle IMHO better with the lenses they are designed for. So the DA zooms are pretty good anyway. The only exception is that for studio use I like a constant f number, so there is a use for my A series manual focus zooms. The 35-70mm makes a fantastic portrait lens!

The new DSLRs are really fantastic to use, maybe you could borrow one to try out? It might be better than you think....

Howesbn said:

"Full frame 11mp sensors will only ever come down in price, so before long Pentax won't be able to use that excuse any more.

What's the point in paying through the nose for a FA Limited 31mm (I wish), only to find it becomes a very overpriced standard lens on an *istD/S ?

Until I can use my Pentax glass as intended on a DSLR, I'm not going digital. So come on Pentax, give the users what they want, not what happens to be cheap to make."

What an illogical trio of statements!

First, WHEN & IF sensors of that size do come down to a price most people can afford, then it would be reasonable for Pentax to produce a full-frame SLR. Until then, your contemptuous use of the phrase "that excuse" is ridiculous. It's FACT, not an excuse, that large sensors are currently too expensive to put into cameras that people can afford.

Second, what on earth is the point of your second paragraph? Yes, on a DSLR the 31mm has an angle of view similar to a 50mm on a 35mm body. So what? You can see by the second-hand prices that most sensible photographers are delighted that there is such a splendid lens available to be a standard lens on a DSLR. Nikon and Canon have nothing that comes close.

Third, why on earth do you want to use your lenses "as intended"? What does this statement actually mean? The fact is, good lenses work well on digital, so why hold back? It makes no sense whatsoever.

JR says " digital SLRs handle IMHO better with the lenses they are designed for". I don't know what he means by this since digital lenses handle exactly the same way FA lenses handle. He may mean that the latest zooms are very good. They are, but I think that owes more to advances in zoom lens design than to anything specifically digital.

Finally, one of the main things buyers want is affordable cameras. And that rules out full-frame, at least for a year or two. My personal bet is that it will never happen. Why? Because APS is good enough.

Over the last two or three years there have been loads of posts from film diehards coming up with one reason or another to hate digital. Eventually they take the leap, and find that it isn't so bad after all.

George

There's a fair bit we agree on there, George.

Just to explain more clearly what I meant, if I may I will use an analogy. If we take the M series of cameras, then my feeling is that in terms of the ergonomics, they match perfectly with the smaller and lighter M series lenses. This is not to say that other lenses are no good with these cameras, just that from a design standpoint I feel M bodies and M lenses gel together particularly well.

The digital (DA) lenses are also physically much smaller and lighter, partly because of the materials used, but also because they are designed to only cover the APS sized sensor and can therefore be either more compact or more adventurous in specification. On the *istDS that I use, the SMC Pentax-DA 18-55mm is perfect - light, compact and efficient. The SMC Pentax-FA 24-90mm works just as well, but is huge and heavy by comparison.

That's all that I meant!

John,

I take your point.

G

Ok so I looked up the prices in the US of full frame Pro DSLRs. $3k won't get you anywhere at all!
Canon 1Ds mark II, full frame costs $8k.
Nikon D2X, full frame costs $5k.

Full frame sensor DSLRs are expensive because the CCDs are so difficult to make. I doubt they'll come down in price much - how many can afford a camera at that price? There's not exactly a huge market. And anyway, the following generations of full frame will pack more pixels, more features, more power and will cost around the same price!

You can wait... and wait... and wait... but to be honest there are plenty of APS sized DSLRs that are being used for professional work (where the photographer gets their main source of income from using the camera).

And in actual fact, the body price is only part of it There's the image editing software (ie Photoshop), then the storage for all those images. I have the *ist-D and have already racked up 14Gb of photos and edits this year, and I am not a pro!

From my non-pro perspective, I have found that the *ist-D has upped my quality no-end. I had to change most of my lenses for better ones, and now when I look back at the Provia slides I took before the quality difference is huge. There's no way I'm going back to film, even to get a bet extra angle of view.

(Climbing off my soap box now! )
Matt

Matt, please, don't bring logic and facts into this!

Taking up your point about lenses; there are two downsides to using 35mm lenses on APS digital, and two compensating upsides. You know all this of course, but I'm repeating it anyway!

First is the obvious point that your nice wide 24mm lens becomes a less wide 36mm (in angle of view terms). So you need to invest in a new wide-angle.

But at the other end your bog-standard 200mm f4 is suddenly a 300mm f4. Good 300mm lenses cost a lot of money. And in between, your cheap 50mm is now a superb portrait lens at a fraction of the price people pay for fast 85mm lenses.

The second downside is that the smaller sensor size means that the picture has to be enlarged more, and this means that the lens has to be considerably sharper than it needs to be for 35mm. (Which incidentally, is why 35mm lenses tend to be much sharper than MF lenses).

But the second upside is that because the sensor ignores the outer part of the image circle, lenses which are good at the centre but poor at the edges (which is most of them!) are suddenly transformed. You've cropped away the nasty bits.

The main reason manufacturers are bringing out so-called digital lenses is because they can be made much smaller, lighter, and more cheaply than 35mm lenses, and, of course, to plug the gaps at the wide end.

There is also the alleged fact that some 35mm lenses can cause chromatic aberration on digital cameras. Obviously such problems will be magnified on a small sensor, but I have to say that I have observed no CA on the majority of my 20 or so Pentax lenses, and where I have seen it, it has been so minor as to be not worth changing lenses for.

On the other hand, a no-brand 300mm shows terrible CA, but, as it cost £9.00 and is now used as a doorstop, I'm not too worried.

Whether CA really is any worse with digital I don't know. I don't have a good loupe to examine my slides at high magnification.

So yes, if you have cheap lenses (did I hear someone mention Sigma?), a DSLR may call for a trip down to your friendly local Ebay for a new glass injection.

George

That was a flame and a half. No need to take every single word /quite/ so literally.

My point was that in the grand scheme of things, digital photography is still in its infancy. You only need to look at the early digital SLRs offering 2MP now sold as historical curiosities. Like memory and storage, the core components of digital cameras will, in the LONG term, come down in price. If full frame sensors weren't so expensive now, then they'd probably be the norm, but as APS sensors are cheaper, they may well become the VHS to full frame's Betamax; only time will tell. Personally, I'm just holding out for the full frame betamax so I can keep the field-of-view that is the very reason I bought a 28mm and that's all i was trying to say and it's all I will say.