Pentax K-3 III Monochrome: A DSLR Just for B&W Photo Lovers
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Pentax K has a flange distance of 45 mm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flange_focal_distance). This puts Pentax in a tricky position. Making a mirrorless camera is nearly pointless if they want to keep their current lenses. And they're already a niche player with barely any adoption.
Their options would be releasing a fat mirrorless camera, providing an adapter and creating a new lens mount, or adopting an existing lens mount. All of these kind of suck, and would risk losing market share. The easiest option seems to just keep going.
They could only shine in a niche market, like SIGMA is trying with their fp and sd camera (Foveon triple layer sensor)... and DSLR seems to be a safer market for Pentax with huge heritage and strong fan base. The demand for Optical viewfinder in EVF times is there, and will still probably be way higher in the next years when they'll be the only one to care as Nikon and Canon already told they won't release any lens or body anymore with the DSLR technology.
Same goes for Canon, but there lens compatability for older models is more limited. Added added benefit: The F4 works with G-versionen lenses, if memory works well, and those work great with the z-mount lenses using the adaptor. Additional added benefit: Fujifilm cameras work great with f-mount and an adapter as well.
Invest in lenses, not cameras.
Also worth reading this article and the comments[1]. Sounds like all * lenses are in-house Ricoh designs, and just a few select lenses have been partnerships with Tamron.
Do you have sources?
[0] https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/10-pentax-slr-lens-discu...
[1] https://fstoppers.com/originals/comments-suggest-newly-annou...
If they adopt an existing mount, they risk becoming less distinctive. They become an alternative body in some pre-existing lens ecosystem.
And since the flange distance is so large, a K mirrorless will be rather fat and compare unfavorably to the existing mirrorless market. It'll also suffer from all the downsides of a long flange distance, like the difficulty of making good wide angle lenses.
However you slice it, they're in a tricky position.
They also attempted a new mirrorless series ("Q") but I think it only got a little bit of traction even in Japan. Some bad decisions and wrong compromises there, though I did meet a woman who loved her pink one.
The Q didn't interest me because of its small sensor.
It is of course possible to make a fashion accessory that is also a tool, but then you have a Leica and I can't afford one!
Interestingly: amateurs use Leica 2x as much as professionals do, because the myth of the expensive camera making better pictures is still alive and well.
Half their ad was showing off how they make the bag for the thing.
Oh, wait...
There is a whole industry in unbricking stolen laptops, for instance.
They also released the M10 monochrom in 2020 and the M11 just this year. As long as there's people willing to pay 7k for a (B&W) camera, leica is going to make them
I, however, very much enjoy the "flawed" process of using a rangefinder. It makes me obsess less about each shot for some reason. Likewise, it is great to be able to share lenses between my non-Leica film camera and digital Leica. Plus, having access to lenses going all the way back to the 30s is also fun, despite them having serious flaws at times.
So, yes, I agree that Leica is "done", but has that not in many ways been the case since the professionals got proper SLRs into their hands in the 60/70s? I for one appreciate the "fools" that throw money at Leica so that I can pick up a second hand digital one ever half a decade or so to keep my fun going.
I’ve heard it said that Fujifilm is the Leica of the 1970s, today. I think I agree with that.
I love my X-Pro3. It’s 100% a choice I made for the joy of photography, not practicality. I considered Leica. I could afford it, but they just didn’t offer anything Fujifilm didn’t outside the brand itself.
I bought a Q2 just be for the Covid pandemic and I kind of expected to be disappointed, given the ratio of capabilities and price. But I wasn't. I actually like the output of the camera.
I looked a couple of years ago at the then-current fuji offerings and thought they seemed great, again, but still weren't the right thing for me because none of them had physically coupled focus rings.
Those don't autofocus, don't manually focus well unless you mod the camera with a split prism, and are optically not great unless you're into it for the swirly bokeh or such niche things.
Certainly there's niche appeal for it, but not mass appeal by any means.
You can use electronic focus confirmation with MF lenses.
For something like a oddball monochrome camera, being able to use it with assorted odds lenses would be a big selling point.
Their mirrorless cameras don't use these though and require an adapter at best.
It also a great camera, with small sensor to give some additional reach over DX. And the sight of it with a 600 Novoflex attached to it is something to behold! Or a 300 mm with a 2x TC. Tripod mandatory!
You can get them off eBay for under 100$ each in almost-new condition, and they're super fun to play with..
There's an interesting world where Ricoh sells Pentax to Samsung or Apple or Google. Taking cutting edge computational photography from smartphones and applying it to a full-size camera with the sensors and optics to match could be really compelling. Pentax has good brand value and the optical expertise to make this credible to photographers, and there'd be growth potential in just taking market share from other players.
Like subject detection for focus tracking. Or trying to "understand" the scene and figure that since the subject moves, it's better to up the ISO and the shutter speed because the stabilizer won't help you. Or figure that some 300-year-old building won't start moving just as you take the picture, so it can do the reverse and take advantage of the stabilizer.
Kind of the same goes for Auto-Focus with subject and face recognition and such. Still, the result is, ideally, well exposed and focused picture.
Computational photography is everything the camera does between the RAW image data (which is itself already processed sensor data) and the JPEG it creates. Thisbis as well as old as the first DSLRs, and such far from all the post-processing e.g. smart phones do. And the latter so, well, I am not sure how much it has to do with photography when information coming from sources other than the RAW data is used. Or when a ton of filters, auto-pseudo-HDR and focus stacking is automatically applied.
Canon offers adapters for their mirrorless cameras, both EF-M and RF. https://www.canon.ca/en/products/Lenses/Mount-Adapters
Nikon has the f to z adapter: https://en.nikon.ca/nikon-products/product/lens-mount-adapte...
Sony has an A to E adapter https://electronics.sony.com/imaging/imaging-accessories/ima...
It’s always been tricky to bring to market. Deleting the Bayer filter saves money, it doesn’t cost money but the person who wants this is going to care about quality and since it is a niche product that points to it being expensive.
Practically most of us will want to shoot color snaps and vendor lock-in is a thing. I have some lust for the top of the link Nikon bodies but I have an investment in Sony lenses so if I get a new mirrorless body it is very likely to be a Sony.
Does the larger resolution mean out to a larger dimensions of an image file, or is it the term resolution being used in the context of “resolving” detail in an image?
It's a messy process
That's why shooting with raw files is so popular; these grab the data from the sensor before the debayering, since some post-processing operations work better if they're earlier in the processing pipeline.
But one thing they do which I love, is they offer exactly the same camera with either a color or a monochrome sensor. I don't think it's quite user-swappable, but every other piece of the device is completely identical.
The advantage of taking color photos and converting them to black and white in post is that you have full control over the resulting brightness of different colors during the monochrome conversion.
For example, in the photo of the deer here, you could make the deer pop more by turning down greens and turning red up.
Starting from a color photo just gives you so much more control over the relative values of different parts of the image. And with monochrome, obviously, value is everything.
The strong impression I get is that that photographers and engineers are the ones making important decisions, leading to outcomes like sensor-shift stabilisation (why put that in every single lens?!) and a proliferation of physical controls (try using a touch screen with gloves, or freezing fingers).
[* The Ricoh pin, ** KA lens aperture contacts on digital bodies]
There are valid engineering reasons for this.
Sensor shift is hard, especially for full-frame cameras. The sensor has to be moved very fast, which means it has to be light, which means it can't have a heat sink attached, which means it can easily overheat.
For telephoto lenses, the shift required in the sensor would be huge, up to a cm or so, whereas a tiny shift in a small lens can slew the image by more than that.
Really good point about heat, and one I didn't even consider because I don't care about video even slightly! I guess Pentax users are a small self-selecting market.
For a zoom something modern is a better idea, but old primes are still pretty great.
I got the Nikkor 10.5cm f4 sonar, a legendary old lens that shot the most famous photograph in the world. This was produced before Nikon was Nikon. It is fantastic still today. So while I used to shoot kit zooms, now I have a range of primes and am discovering what strengths the different lengths have. It's really extended my capability and fun. https://www.35mmc.com/24/03/2022/nikkor-t-10-5cm-f-4-review/
Which one you're talking about?
The Most Famous Photos in the World and the Cameras that Captured them!
Is the pun intended or autocorrect from "Point and shot" ? I find it very poetic
EDIT: Shameless plug! https://www.instagram.com/35milwill/
(Before anyone thinks that maybe the experience of carrying the monochrome camera is different -- the reviewer points out that the Live View back screen does not articulate, and the optical viewfinder shows color in the way to would expect an optical viewfinder to.)
I'm no photography fiend, but I do have an entry level DSLR and I find the screen completely useless. Maybe useful at night but as soon as there is a bit of light it's good for nothing.
How can you actually use that screen? Buy a hood for it so it's in the shade when you're outdoors at noon?
That said you can absolutely buy hoods for them - though they are generally aimed at people using them for video.
Of course, touch screen, the advantage of digital viewfinders, and especially the autofocus of mirrorless would all bring their own joy. I worry about the change in grip size and all those other adjustments, not to mention having to invest in a whole new lens ecosystem, so for now, I'm stuck with what I've got.
I find it crazy that a B&W camera at that price can be profitable, but it's neat to see.
Pentax seems to be omitting the color filter on the sensor rather than just squashing the read out to greyscale so this sensor should be sharper than a similar color sensor.
Most people aren't limited by sharpness in sensor with a color filter, so the loss of the choice of mapping to greyscale is more limiting. That's the tradeoff GP comment is referencing.
Was the part I was keying in on. A filter will reject more light and in a sense captures less information. I 100% agree that most people are not limited in sharpness, but I wanted to share why someone might care about a sensor like this
When I used to be into photography I shot B&W film and did all my own processing and prints. Never scanned anything (of course, scanners didn't exist in those days, at least not in the consumer market).
I started with a K-1000 also, there's something wonderful about its simplicity. Even though the viewfinder is dim and the action is slow by today's standards, you are in total control of aperture, focus, and shutter speed.
I moved up to a slightly more automated Ricoh body that accepted all my Pentax lenses, but started lacking the time to spend on this hobby and eventually just stopped. The camera and lenses still work some 30+ years later, but are sitting on a shelf.
I never got into digital photography. I found it entirely unrewarding. I have maybe a dozen photos on my phone and they are just used as sort of visual notes of things I need for a short while.
From Google: "Diane Arbus is known for her unrelenting direct photographs of people who are considered social deviates. She also portrayed “normal” people in a manner that exposed the cracks in their public masks. Diane Arbus is best known for her stark, documentary style of photography."
And from the article: “Arbus captures a boy on the cusp of adolescence yet still playing with toys—but the object is a plastic grenade, an object of war,” said Hughes. “There’s something troubling about him playing solider—the ongoing war efforts were not lost on a little kid in Central Park.”
From PetaPixel: “I want to photograph what is evil,” Arbus told Model, who noted that “[Arbus] was determined to reveal what others had been taught to turn their backs on.” The scheme typical for her photography is a frontal portrait in square format. She was one of the pioneers of daylight flash use, which she used to isolate her subjects. What she first liked about it was how it alters light and reveals things you don’t normally see. She wanted to have stillness in her photograph, and that is why she always posed her subjects either on the street or in their homes. Arbus made the subjects look directly to the camera to “freeze” the picture. However, as we can see in many of her picture the effect was quite the opposite. Many of her pictures look spontaneous.
So, I guess to sum it all up in this photo... the context, the expression, the rigid pose, the fallen shoulder strap, the grenade... the questions you might have about who the child is, what's with the expression, where are his parents, is the grenade real?
90% of that is from the photographer and their interaction with the subject, and only a little of it is from the camera, the tool to capture that moment. It reminds me of the saying "a bad workman blames his/her tools", which is also kind of the inverse of "do your best with what you've got".
If you more like the above, have a search for "Roger Ballen", he takes it to another extreme...
but the medium itself, film photography, does matter. there's a difference, like oils vs. water colors.
the palette she has access to with film is just different. and to me there is emotion and unique artistry that exists just within that part of it.
but like I said, I'm open to being convinced otherwise. it's just the images in that blog post were so flat, I didn't see much there to persuade me this camera is capable of creating magic.