photo.net interview with Pentax USA president Ned Bunnell

[r.t. dowling]

<p>I'm surprised that the photo.net elves haven't ventured over here and mentioned it yet!</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photographer-interviews/ned-bunnell/</p>

<p>Very interesting and thorough interview.</p>

[michael_elenko]

<p>Kudos to Photo.Net and Hannah Thiem for such a wonderful read. Good questions, and insightful answers. I would relish a day-long photohike with Ned.</p>

<p>ME</p>

[les_lammers]

<p>I just left Santa a request. :-)</p>

[miserere_mei]

<p>Les, Leica proved that you can fit a FF sensor in a film body. Pentax should be able to fit an APS-C sensor in the LX body, retaining the optical VF, without too much effort. They <em>can</em> do it...the question is, do they <em>want</em> to do it?</p>

[laur1]

<p>They seem to plan to focus on the 645D now that they've released the K-7 and Kx.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>We recently announced that now that we’ve solidified our small frame sensor strategy, we’re restarting development of the 645D and the target is releasing it sometime in 2010. As we get more firm dates, we’ll let everyone know.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>His current favorite Pentax camera/lens combo:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>My current favorite lens and camera combination (at the time of this interview) is the K7D with the FA 31 Limited lens. This is without a doubt probably one of the nicest prime lenses out there.</p>

</blockquote>

[personalphotos]

<p>Very good interview, he certainly seems to be much more approachable than most at the top. There was a lot about market research and customer feedback that I skimmed, not enough about the future.</p>

<p>Congrats to PN and Ned for putting this together an enjoyable read.</p>

<p>I'm really disappointed that they are going back to the 645D. This is a camera for the elite few with buckets of money to spend. Given the world economies and the very slow rates of recovery, I don't see this putting much $$ in the Pentax bank account. Plus it has to be an expensive undertaking. All the lens redevelopment that has to be done. Finally this was earlier announced as 200 for Japan only. So why would the rest of us care?</p>

<p>To me what it really means is we'll be waiting a long time for a 24x36 (commonly called full frame) camera. With money going toward the 645 and his comments about their position in APS-c. I suspect 24x36 isn't even on the horizon. Unless I missed it, he wasn't asked nore did he comment on that camera size. As many serious Pentax shooters (Pro and semi pro) advance in their shooting and businesses, we'll see them leaving to buy other brands. Mostly searching for those faster bodies, brighter VF's and lower noise images that 24x36 can provide.</p>

<p>I'm perfectly happy with the Pentax AF system as it is now and have no real trouble with it. I can see a sports shooter wanting faster. But the holy grail and the yardstick for most shooters and reviewers is High ISO shooting. We lag behind the pack and because the K-7 is no better than the K20D in this regard, I didn't buy one. I'm sure many others chose to keep their K20D's for the same reason. IMO APS-c is probably not going to get much better than it is now at high ISO's and 24x36 is the next step.</p>

[14mm 2.8l]

<p>Peter, In this era I think fewer Pentaxians will leave and completely cash out of Pentax. Instead they'll add another brand to their tools kit. Also in past 10 months both Canon and Nikon lenses have gone up some 25% so switching will cost ya much more now. Having added both Canon and Nikon full frames I'll still keep the K20D for image stabilized macro with my 50mm SMC-A and Vivitar Series 1 105mm 2.5. My wifey gave the anniversary present K20D back to me after she Fell in Love with my D700 and 14-24mm 2.8 so K20D is mine again to roll off the remaining two years of warranty. I can see getting rid of all my other Pentax and Pentax mount lenses now cause owning three brands is pretty crazy and it would be real nice to re-coup some coins. The Shake Reduced macro capture K20D offers is handy to me. To replace it with Canon is: 100mm 2.8 IS at $1050 or Nikon 105mm 2.8 VR $899.</p>

<p>645D on off on again ect... I think its time Pentax makes it available so they can move onward. Its surprising what $10,000 can buy me gear wise so I doubt it'll be a big seller, but Pentax should make it. Someone will buy it. Far fewer people than seem to chitchat about it , I'll guess. The better used 645 lens prices are up almost 50% from what I've noticed the past 4 months. I follow the prices cause I can adapt them , 645 & 6x7 to Eos mount.</p>

<p>I gave up on Pentax offering full frame k mount. I used to be so anxious in wanting it, hanging on every Ogl or Benjikan thread saying its coming soon, & now I actually don't care. Its no longer important to me. I really wanted it from Pentax from 2005 thru early 2008 but at same time I studied canon system prices from 5D 's launch till now and made my 1st choice from what actually existed. I've satisfied that full frame itch elsewhere and I assume my other dual brand full frame lenses will last for years & keep me buying full frame camera replacements elsewhere, in Canikon mounts. At least the nikon lenses should last for years at no cost to me as they come bundled with 5 year nikon factory warranties ;^)</p>

<p>K-7 is too small for me, & K-x isn't on my radar and also its too small also. So pentax makes it easy for me to pass on current 2009 camera offers and my K20D works just fine for me. I'll be hardpressed to sell the K20D, as its so nice to use with my two old macro lenses.</p>

[les_lammers]

<p>Peter,<br>

What is the fascination with FF? Personally, I don't see where it makes a difference and if Pentax does bring the 645 to the rest of the work there should be a lot of interest. The present MF digital is very expensive. I just don't see why Pentax would want to go head to head with Canikon with FF. I imagine 90% of present Pentax users have little interest in FF. It would appeal to folks that want to make very big prints.<br>

Mis,<br>

I know Pentax can do it and I already asked Santa. However, I am not going to sit in his lap and whisper in his ear. Well...not until after Thanksgiving. ;-)</p>

<p> </p>

[laur1]

<p>Lindy, the K-7 may be smaller, but the grip is better shaped and IMO you can hold it better than the K10D/K20D. In case holding it is your issue with it being smaller.<br>

APS sensors will only reach a limit when the FF ones will also reach it, which didn't happen yet. Pentax should just resist the urge of bumping up the MP count as they did from K10D to K20D. The 12.4 sensor in the new Kx is a step in the right direction. I am curious if it will outperform the Samsung sensor in the noise department.</p>

[14mm 2.8l]

<p>Grip on K-7 doesn't appeal to me. But for someone who wants a K-7 and they find its a bit too small its certainly a solution. I've only bought one grip in dslr era, the one for D700 as it adds frame rate too. Still most the time it remains in the box as I like the basic size of D700 without it. I really don't like Canon Dslr grips and can't see ever buying one as they are insanely bulky and add no frame rate.</p>

<p>I think pentax has a winner, K-7 specs real nice. So even if some leave the mount more will arrive. I think if Pentax was offering full frame K Mount, it would generate far more interest than 645D will. And by "Interest" I mean people who'd pay to play.</p>

[a few images]

<p>Yay.. Another year until my 645D.. Starting to wonder why I'm waiting so long.</p>

[michael_kuhne]

<p>I agree with Lindy and Peter, that a FF model would find ineterest for more customers. It has the potential of IQ close to that of medium format film, from reports I have seen. Yet it has none of the functional limitations of MF. As FF matures to offer the best technology now out there, and even better, but gravitating downward to smaller and less expensive models, I think that interest will increase. I believe Pentax is wise to wait in regard to FF at this point, and put a digital MF in place, for the small niche of parties who want it. Since there is that niche, they should make money from it. I presume they've done the market research. Then when the time may ripen for a FF model, it will be less expensive, like around $1,800 in the form of a smaller but well-built body, and present with the top IQ now only available in the $6,000-$8,000 range. With the development of new sensor technology, we could see some significant improvements down the road.</p>

[miserere_mei]

<p>Tom, my friend, are you <em>really</em> going to purchase a 645D? If I had $10k lying around right now, I'd spend it on a Leica M9 and a couple of Voigtlander lenses to go with it :-)</p>

[laur1]

<p>Lindy, I was not talking about the extension grip - I was talking about the regular grip on the right hand side of the body. It's deeper than on the K10D, or at least, it feels that way to me, and that makes me hold the camera better. I never bought an extension grip either as it would increase the camera size and would prevent me from carrying it around in my small bag.</p>

[14mm 2.8l]

<p>Oh, I didn't know about an "extension grip". I'll look into it, Thanks Laurentiu</p>

<p>As far as Tom dropping $10,000 on a 645D body and kit lens combo, after the spending spree I went on in 2008 its rather simple to wipe out this ammount on imaging gear. Personally I'd rather get more than two items but thats the neat thing about photography. So many ways to get your shot. Used 645 and 6x7 glass can be affordable still so thats one way to beat the medium format system prices.</p>

<p>I'm being taunted by this. Its stuck at issue and didn't get bumped up 10% like other items did as it just got released recently. I was worried it might but it didn't go up another $250. So I could erase 1/4 of the admission price with one purchase. Fair Warning its a canon item:</p>

<p>;^)</p>

<p><a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=cart_accessories&A=details&Q=&sku=606803&is=USA">http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=cart_accessories&A=details&Q=&sku=606803&is=USA</a></p>

[personalphotos]

<p>May I ask where this $10,000 price came from? Aren't the current crop of MF cameras far more expensive than this? Unless I've completely lost touch. A Hassie 3DII is $27,000 USD. So does anyone think Pentax can build an equally featured camera that will grab the MF Pro shooters interest for that much less? Considering that the 645 NII was one of the best MF cameras in it's day. I doubt they would build a cut rate body. My guess? $19,999 -$22,999.00, probably the latter.</p>

<p>Anyway to answer the question above. I am perfectly happy with my K20D's and will use them for some time to come. In fact I like my K10D as well. It's a superior sensor for close up and macro shooting. Better at ISO 100 than the CMOS is.<br /> These cameras give me fine enlargements. The biggest I've done is a 30x40 which looked fine and I'm sure it could have been bigger.<br /> I don't use the common term and call it a 24x36. Full Frame is 8"x10" in my mind. Mediun format is the 4x5, 6x7 etc. So how can 2.4x3.6 be full frame. I digress.</p>

<p>24x36 for me means better high ISO handling. It is really the ideal format. A 22+/- Mp sensor will have a lower noise floor and similar or better resolution than a 14 Mp APS-c camera. Going to a bigger sensor and bigger shutter introduces other issues like shutter travel and lower top shutter speeds and sync speeds. So 24x36 offers the best of all IMO.</p>

<p>All I'm hearing about the K-7 is that the higher ISO's are slightly worse than the K-7. My own test shots (albeit limited) with the K-7 tell me it's either equal or marginally worse. They added a lot to the new body and improved almost every aspect of it, Video, better chassis, better GUI, better AF, better Fps etc. So if they can introduce such a great new model but the sensor isn't really any better than the previous model, have we hit the APS-c glass ceiling?</p>

<p>For me it's a work thing. When the venue or church is dark, I'm in some trouble. I feel I can get the best out of the K20D in low light and will shoot at 3200 if I need to. With some software help the images are decent. But I know they can't be enlarged much or cropped much. But this little voice is always telling me that the newer 24x36 cameras I have tested can do a better job at 3200 and even higher. So as Lindy suggested, I've been considering a second body/brand for this work. Maybe a Canon with a fast wide prime and a fast wide to mid length tele. I've been holding off on this and really don't want to but I just may have to at some point.</p>

<p>At ISO's lower than 800, I could care less. I'll put the the K20D up against anybody's stuff and frankly think the Pentax way is slightly better. A better metering system (I'll take slight underexposure over blown highlights any day) and a warmer, more accurate rendition of colours. But that's just my opinion.</p>

[laur1]

<p>I thought the only reason a FF sensor is better at high ISO is because FF sensors have larger pixels. In this case, an APS sensor should be able to match the performance of a FF one, as long as it keeps the same pixel density. A 10MP APS should be able to perform as well as a 24MP FF in terms of noise (surface ratio of FF to APS is 2.34:1). Am I missing something here?<br>

Besides the sensor properties, another factor is the quality of the NR algorithm - I don't thing the Pentax in-camera NR is as good as that of the competition - this is something that will improve in time.</p>

[personalphotos]

<p>That is my understanding as well but I'm no electrical engineer or computer scientist etc who understands this technology at this level. The only thing I can say is a 24 x 36 at 24Mp should be roughly equaled by a 14.6 Mp APS-c in terms of noise. That's the theory as I understand it. APS-c <em>should</em> be able to match the 24x36. There must be some other factor involved in this calculation that I'm not aware of.</p>

<p>But in practice, that's not true. The newer 24x36 higher end cameras are better at High ISO's.</p>

 

[laur1]

<p>I think a 14.6 MP APS will automatically be somewhat worse due to having smaller pixels than the FF sensor (assuming same sensor technology). Newer FF cameras may be better because the companies that make them put their best efforts behind them - I'm not convinced it's due to some advantage inherent in the FF format. The only thing that FF will always have over APS is higher resolution and use of lenses at their original focal length. I'm fine with smaller resolution (10MP) and I prefer the boost on my tele lenses to having wider angles available (the 10mm - 15mm equiv. is good enough for me on APS), so APS doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the tendency to try to catch up to FF sensors in terms of resolution. I hated that the K20D bumped resolution to 14.6MP - sure, it comes in handy some times, but I would have preferred a dramatic improvement in high ISO performance to those extra pixels.</p>

[miserere_mei]

<p>FF, or 24x36mm in Zack-speak :-) has better high ISO performance than APS-C simply because the sensor is 2.25 times larger (assuming a 1.5x crop factor). It doesn't matter that much what the size of the pixels are when one sensor has so much more surface area. In practical terms, this means that the FF sensor will have 2.25x more photons to work with than the APS-C sensor for a given set of shooting parameters (ISO, shutter speed and aperture).</p>

<p>The point about number of pixels <em>can</em> play a role in high-ISO performance, because the part of the pixel that detects light (the photosite) isn't 100% of the pixel's area, due to the circuitry present in each pixel. However, with each new generation of sensors this circuitry is made smaller so the photosite in each pixel becomes larger. That's why the photosites within each pixel of the K20D are the same size as those on the K10D, yet the K20D has more pixels because the circuitry takes up less space. This also means that the K20D has more light-detecting photosite area than the K10D (about 40% more), which on top of the sensor being a CMOS, improved the high-ISO of the K20D significantly over the K10D.</p>

<p>Honestly, I would prefer a K-7 with the K-x's Sony 12MP CMOS sensor. IMO Sony sensors have outperformed Samsung sensors in the past for low light shooting (think K100D vs K10D), and I suspect the K-x may be a better low-light shooter than the K-7 (again, think K100D vs K10D).</p>

 

[laur1]

<p>Mis, I still don't see why the number of photosites should improve things for FF. If the APS area on a FF sensor is covered by the same number/type of photosites as on the APS sensor, how can the FF sensor be any better?<br>

Interesting details about the K20D vs K10D photosites. Do you have some links on these? I've never seen these details on the sensors before.</p>

[miserere_mei]

<p>Laurentiu, the surface area of a FF sensor is 24 x 36 = 864 sq. mm. The surface area of a Pentax APS-C sensor is 15.6 x 23.4 = 365 sq. mm. If you expose both sensors to light for the same amount of time, the FF sensor will receive 2.36 times more photons. The more photons a sensor receives, the better the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) will be, and the better the image quality will be. At low ISOs (and good light), there is little difference because there are plenty of photons to make the S/N very high for both sensors. However, when shooting in low light, and boosting your signal through high-ISO electronic manipulation, getting 2.36 more photons <em>does</em> make a difference in IQ, which is why a FF sensor will always have an edge over an APS-C sensor.</p>

<p>Furthermore, a FF sensor with 34.5MP will have the same size pixels as the K20D and K-7. A FF sensor with less than 34.5MP (and no FF camera at the moment is close to this amount) will have larger pixels, making its high-ISO performance even better. But while individual pixel size (i.e., photosite size) is important for high-ISO performance, having a chip that is over twice the area is an even bigger factor!</p>

[miserere_mei]

<blockquote>

<p>Interesting details about the K20D vs K10D photosites. Do you have some links on these?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You can read <a href="http://pentaxdslrs.blogspot.com/2008/11/does-pentax-k20d-perform-better-with.html">this article</a> I wrote a while back on Yvon's <a href="http://pentaxdslrs.blogspot.com">PentaxDSLRs blog.</a> The information came from the Pentax Japan website.</p>

[laur1]

<p>Mis, I think your argument is incorrect. It's not the total number of photons that the sensor receives that matters, it's how much light falls on each photosite, which depends just on the photosite size. Have a look at this article: <a href="http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_noise.html">http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_noise.html</a> - it also suggests that another cause for noise are photosites that are too close together. A sensor is just a collection of photosites - a larger collection with same density will just collect more information about a larger image, but it won't collect better information at each photosite. I'm pretty sure that if you'd tape over a FF sensor to only reveal an APS area, the noise recorded by that masked sensor wouldn't change, event though the total number of photons received decreased.<br>

I've read your article and what it says is that with the K20D, Pentax kept the same photosite area, but managed to squeeze more photosites onto the chip - this means they lost an opportunity to build larger photosites and they also probably increased noise by squezing photosites closer together, but they may have balanced this with improving the photosite lenses and moving to a different sensor technology that appears to perform better in low light conditions - CMOS instead of CCD. In the end, this is comparing apples with oranges. The K20D may have managed to improve the IQ compared to the K10D while increasing the number of photosites, but this doesn't tell us anything about what can be achieved with an APS sensor because the goal was not to compete with FF but to compete with an older APS sensor.<br>

My point, which I would like to see disproved if it is false, is that, given the *same* photosite technology and density, an APS sensor can perform as well in terms of noise as a FF sensor. The reason we're not seeing this is because sensor technology differs between FF and APS, so in real life, we're also comparing apples with oranges when it comes to FF and APS - this doesn't mean however that there's some inherent disadvantage with APS. If anything, it should be at an advantage to FF, particularly when using a FF lens, because we're also using the sweet spot in terms of angle of incidence besides the sweet spot for resolution.</p>

[zamazal]

<p>Laurentiu, given the same technology and density the larger sensor has clear advantage. There are more pixels in the larger sensor so the noise is finer, something like finer grain on film. It makes no sense to compare single pixels when they don't cover the same *area* in the final image, you must compare whole images.</p>