Pete,

If you have a tripod with you then it might be possible to get excellent results by shooting an exposure metered from the sky near to the setting sun and, without moving the camera, shoot another metered from the foreground. Most photo editing software has provision for combining the sky from the first exposure with the foreground from the second.

"........"do I want to see every image moving?" I don't think so. Stills have a different allure to video,.."

Granted, but as merely consumers, will we get to choose?

The aesthetic consideration of still images is actually a very minority interest and the minority is getting even smaller. Arguably, the majority of still photographs are tiny slices from the middle of sequences which many viewers would like to see,...the many news and advertising images with which we are bombarded on a weekly, daily,hourly basis would translate only too easily into video segments.

Most new consumer technology happens because the several neccessary parts suddenly become available, as in the 'video phone', so when DSLR's or their successors are able to capture high quality video clips then I would think that will become the default format.

Simon,

Thank you for a really interesting post,..I had no idea that 'Red' had advanced so far. There are many really visionary projects in digital imaging now beginning to come to fruition. Most of the current crop of still cameras are still in the hands of the film camera makers who have, very largely, tried to keep to making what they know about. Because of this virtually all DSLR models are still in the transitional stage being 35mm SLR's with sensor in the film gate. Design has been very conservative thus far and it is tiresome to see makers resorting to 'electronic fleas' in an attempt to persuade consumers that these cameras are utilising the available technology.

Although looking into the future is a 'mug's game' we can now begin to see the ways that imaging will probably develop in the near decades. The really big question for us still photographers is; will still photography as we know it actually survive? Several important patents which as yet are still being translated into products mean that still images will become but incidental by-products of what we presently call 'video'.

Just as the 'visual telephone' was talked about for years but then suddenly appeared as a casual by-product of computer technology, so the Harry Potter newspaper with moving photos may be much nearer than people think. When a three second clip of high quality video is as cheap and easy to reproduce as a still illustration, how many images will remain as still photographs?

".......Seem like we have more of the "If only the camera designers would think out of the box then I'd start making decent images with their gear" kind of thinking. ...."

No,...I'm making quite good images with the cameras I am using now in 6x6cms and 4x5 inches...(well, good enough to have paid for my house with anyway...)

I would like to have a digital camera and have been very close to buying the K10 several times in the past few weeks. The problem for me is that as far as i'm concerned the K10 is the only game in town and I have not owned a 35mmSLR since rejecting the Canon EOS system in 1986......these are my most disliked camera type.

Because of this I not unnaturally am very interested in the arrival of real digital imaging systems other than rather crude 35mmSLR's with sensors and , as 'Popular Photography' magazine puts it; "lots to enjoy" in the way of mindless complexity.

The shutter dial with sensible speeds and aperture ring with half stop 'clicks' has always worked well for me.......

DSLR's are all the rage at the moment for consumers, but one should never judge a dog by the size of it's fleas.

Edit; I have been using a borrowed Nikon D70 which gives quite nice images, but the camera itself is a clumsy and poorly deigned 'plastic blob' which requires constant 'cockpit checks' to determine that the myriads of menus and 'settings' are all still the same and that it's me actually making the images!...and of course, it's an absolute pig on a tripod. Also, I'm only using about 4.5 mil pixels out of the full 6 mil due to the hated 35mm shape format which is largely useless for what I am currently working on.

At last some intelligent thinking 'out of the box'....

Hopefully this will now lead makers away from the 35mm SLR with sensor and over to real digital imaging systems.

Additionally, it will now be very interesting to see what Pentax cmes up with next as this anouncement effectively renders the K10D (and other DSLR's) obsolete only 3 months after launch.

As far as I can see this is just the 645IIn with a sensor and LCD,....I can tell you now that it WILL be very cost effective because other than a good price it has little to offer,.....just a poor mans 'Blad H2/ H3 (which is a 39 or 45 meg system) without even the limited adaptability.

Quite a lot of people have been pegging their hopes on this camera including me so a bit of a downer really..........

The only ray of sunshine is that it is going to be quickly made obsolete by systems already in the pipeline from other makers so there is the chance of picking one up at a bargain secondhand price before too long.

Drew,..thanks for the link which is quite amusing.

The urinal thing IS quite amazing and every time I see it occuring it reminds me of one of my late uncles who was a brilliant practical joker. Most of his great schemes worked because of his excellent faking and constructional skills such as his realistic looking 'new' bicycle pump which powdered away when touched etc...not to mention his fake car 'petrol' tank filled with water for the sugar cube 'fuel tablets'......

When I was in my mid teens my uncle aquired an early, and outsized, sex-toy made of rubber which he painted and modified to look extremely life-like and also 'bored out'. This amazing appendage was about as thick as a coke can and about a foot in length with a firm but bendy texture. My uncle, who was a strange, nerdy looking man with NHS type specs covering big glazed looking eyes, would march into the 'gents' and get the 'appendage' into place while apparently unbuttoning. Then, he would spray the urinal liberally and generally slap the thing about on the porcelain while whistling tunlessly through his teeth. At the end of the display there would be the 'shaking off of the drips' procedure which inevitably got fantastic reactions from the other users of the convenience and caused us huge mirth later.

It is perhaps a tribute to the era that he never got seriously propositioned.......

personally, i find it a bit 'sad' that there have to be such institutions a 'Pentaxians', let alone there being people who feel keen to proclaim this herd tendancy by means of red 'T' shirts......

To me this but one of the several penalties of these cameras being consumer durables.

Then again, it hardly bothers me as I have always used black tape to cover any bright items or legends on cameras, otherwise you always get some nutter who MUST come and stand in front of the camera to ask inane questions or bore you with why his brand is better etc, etc..ad nauseum...

The one thing I DON'T need is to be enthusiastically greeted by a keen K10 owner.....

Ben,

Is this a full redesigned sustem or just the embodiment of the 'mock-up' which looked to be simply the 645 with an LCD on the back.

If Pentax have actually designed an medium format digital system with interchangeable viewfinders and some 'out of the box' thinking then it could do really well as the pro market is crying out for a cost effective sytem to challenge 'Blad H3' and the non-existent Mamiya ZD.

If this IS just the 645 with sensor then it's ho-hum as usual.....

The 6 x 4.5 format is a pig to use for much pro work as the camera is awkward on tripod,..this is the biggest pro criticism of 'blad H3',..they should not have dumped the 'V' system for the 'plastic wonder'

Fortunately the 'Hy6' is coming, and after a couple of decades might be within my reach,...provided my long white beard does'nt get in the way of the viewfinder.....

George,

I stand by what I posted,...however, if you absolutely MUST take everything completely out of context in order to make SOME kind of counter argument then here we go;

"....
The technology hasn't been lost, but it has been improved upon. There is very little human input in modern manufacturing, which is why, for instance, the K10D sells for hugely less than the Z1-P, despite being much better made and much more sophisticated.

Did I say differently.....??

"......So it wouldn't be cost effective to make these old lenses in the old way. Over time, they will ALL be replaced, and it won't be a very long time...."

Did I say it was....??

"....
The reverse is true. Most of the new lenses are at the wide end, and some are quite complex (12-24, 16-45).."

OK,..I should have included the word 'prime'....ther have been a few fancy zooms but serious prime lenses,..especially in wide-angles have NOT appeared in D only configs....as far as I can tell, only Leica/oly/panny have even got a f1.4 'standard' lens, and that only appeared last week at PMA.

"....The market leader in 6x7 was Pentax..."

You have simply ignored the context yet again,....I'm not disputing or even disscussing anything to do with medium format camera systems,...we can go onto that later if you wish but until we do keep to the subject please...Canon IS the undisputed market leader in DSLR's up to and including FF....just look at the numbers.

"......And another maker has announced plans to build an SLR with an even bigger sensor - Pentax and the 645D. That's Pentax's big sensor camera..."

Full-frame George, we're talking full frame at the moment so try to keep to the context,..yet again!!

".....Actually it has happened. For the same angle of view, lenses on an APS-C are much smaller than lenses on a 24x36 camera..."

Well the FF /35mm frame is twice the size of the APS sensore,...are these wonder lenses half the size of previous lenses George?.......I thought not!