Talking to Ned Bunnell at the PhotoPlus Expo

[miserere_mei]

<p>On Friday I took the loooong bus ride down to New York to attend the PhotoPlus Expo. There I had the good fortune of chatting to the main people at Pentax Imaging USA, including the Big Kahuna himself, Ned Bunnell. What a nice guy! He's very approachable and it felt like he was enjoying answering my questions, despite the fact that I'm sure he's had to answer them a million times in the past few weeks.</p>

<p>There were no bombshells dropped, but I did get a laugh when Ned said the K-5 was better than the Canon 7D and I asked him if I could quote him on that—he let out a big laugh and exclaimed <em>yes!</em></p>

<p>Also of note was the attendance of p-net Pentax regular Andrew Gilchrist. It was nice to meet another e-friend in person and spend a few hours discussing...cameras. Did we talk about anything else, Andrew? At one point I remember we asked each other what we did for a living; after a one sentence answer we stared at each other in silence and then said <em>bah, who cares, let's go back to talking Photography!</em> :-D</p>

<p>As for my chat with Ned and the other folks at the Pentax booth, you can read <a href="http://enticingthelight.com/2010/11/01/speaking-to-pentax-at-photoplus-expo-in-new-york/">the entire post here</a>. You may also find Andrew shooting the 645D. I have a photo of him shooting the Leica S2 with 70mm f/2.5 lens; I don't think he realised he was holding $27,500 worth of equipment in his hands. The best part was when he gave the camera back, turned to me and completely seriously said <em>that viewfinder was no better than the 645D's</em>.</p>

[mountainvisions]

<p>I believe the K-5 can be better than the 7D, why? Because Darwin Wiggett thought it sucked (IQ wise) head to head with Nikon (D300 I believe, yeah, not even the D300S) AND even the Rebel...so bad in fact he stopped comparison testing it against the 1D and starting testing it against the G series!!!</p>

<p>Now, before anyone gets all upset, he did think the 7D was a lot of camera in a little package. He even wanted to like it despite it's shortcomings but decided to stick with the Rebel for his backpacking landscapes. Oh, and he tested several 7D's to figure out if it was a single bad camera. This meshed with a lot of info I'd heard on the 7D, even Peter Zack mentioned this at some point when talking about Nikon gear.<br /><br />So I think if Canon decides to not hold back on the IQ for the 7DMII it will have a pretty nice camera. Perhaps put Sony's sensor or heck, even Samsungs 2 CMOS in.</p>

<p>Which leads me to my Pentax question, is the K-5 as good at low ISO per anyone at Pentax? I know Ian just posted it holds it's own, if not slightly surpasses it. I'm not in the market for a new camera, but if it's inferior I'll wait for the K-3, if it's superior/equal it will go on my watch list.</p>

<p>I wished I could have made it down, there were a few people I know personally and via the web that were headed there, but since you were only going Friday it didn't make a difference. Did you make the Friday after party? Anyway, I'm not much for looking at stuff I am not going to actually buy, and since we are headed down to the city next weekend, the bear and I had to find us some snow in Vermont this weekend.</p>

[miserere_mei]

<p>No after party for me, Justin. I got on a bus and endured 4.5 hours of uncomfortable seating and sloooow WiFi all the way to Boston. After walking around for 7 hours straight, my warm bed was the best party. As it will be right now! It's way past my bedtime....</p>

<p>PS: No idea if the K-5 is better than the K-7 below ISO 800 (or 400). There are people out there with both cameras so maybe they'll run some tests for you if you ask nicely.</p>

[mugundhan_varadanarayanan]

<p>Hi Miserere,<br>

Thanks! Great information<br>

Did you had any chance to ask Ned bunnell about whether they have any plans to release faster primes (faster than f2.4) in the range 24-30mm<br>

Interesting that Ned thinks that now they can compete with Nikon and Canon.<br>

I believe that DSLRs as released by Canon/nikon/ Pentax will cater to the serious photographers while the newbies gravitate towards NX-10/NEx type of cameras. This market is larger than the serious DSLR market, it will be nice if Pentax makes an appearance there</p>

<p>Mugundhan</p>

[mountainvisions]

<p>Oh, I forgot to ask you...did you ask about full frame?<br>

<br />I haven't seen a full frame thread on here in some time, though I still see them on other forums. As a matter of fact, quite a few forums have such demands pop up on a daily basis, so...When are we getting a full frame camera?!!!!<br>

<br />Finally, did you ask about the rumored end of the FA Limiteds?</p>

[miserere_mei]

<p>I could have spoken to Ned for 5 or 6 hours, but I would have had to chain him down :-D He was very gracious to give me the time he did during such a busy time so I could only talk about a few select topics with him. So no, I didn't ask about new lenses nor full frame.</p>

[ken_yee]

<p>can't believe you forgot to ask about new lenses (TC, long lenses, faster primes) and FF :-P<br>

Thanks for what you did ask though...and yes that bus sucks...even the newest Bolt buses are only slightly better.</p>

[miserere_mei]

<p>Ken, I took the Peter Pan bus—the Bolt Bus didn't have seats available for the return trip, but I'll try it next time. It's not so much the bus that's the problem, it's the 9 hours you have to spend in it!</p>

[mountainvisions]

<p>There is always Amtrak...though increduously expensive IMO.</p>

<p>I always laugh when they talk about high speed rail and such. If Amtrak can't have reasonable fares in the Northeast, the one place it IS profitable, why bother. I can definitely see why Congress and the Shrub Administration had so much contempt for it. </p>

<p>Nevertheless, from Saratoga it makes sense vs driving since if you count the wear and tear on the vehicle you are looking at about $150 round trip. Amtrak is bare break even for a single passenger (just about $150 RT including the necessary metro card once in the city), for 2 passengers absolutely no way, we can fly for less!</p>

<p> </p>

[dogbert]

<blockquote>

<p>I believe the K-5 can be better than the 7D, why? Because Darwin Wiggett thought it sucked (IQ wise) head to head with Nikon (D300 I believe, yeah, not even the D300S) AND even the Rebel...so bad in fact he stopped comparison testing it against the 1D and starting testing it against the G series!!!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Whoever this guy was, claiming that the 7D IQ sucks or is a backward step is just nonsense. You only have to drop into the Canon forum to know that many many long time respected posters have used the 7D and think it has the best IQ of any Canon APS-C camera yet. They have a long respected history and if Canon produced a turkey with the 7D they would have said so. My guess is that Darwin was comparing 100 per cent crops from the 18 MP 7D against 100 per cent crops from a 12 MP rebel. That is simply comparing apples with oranges.</p>

<p>I'm only saying this becasue it nis unfortunate if something that is plainly wrong gets repeated over the internet then newcomers may think there is some substance to it.</p>

<p> </p>

[songtsen]

<p>Geoff wrote: <br>

<em>"My guess is that Darwin was comparing 100 per cent crops from the 18 MP 7D against 100 per cent crops from a 12 MP rebel. That is simply comparing apples with oranges."</em></p>

<p><a href="http://darwinwiggett.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/the-canon-7d/">http://darwinwiggett.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/the-canon-7d/</a><br /> <em>"Because each camera has a different number of pixels on the sensor it is difficult to do a direct apples-to-apples comparison but below are the <strong>100% views</strong> of the 7d files compared to the Rebel and Mark III files." </em></p>

[dogbert]

<p>Exactly. He is looking at a 7D image that is 1.5 times bigger than the 12 MP rebel image. I rest my case that Wigget doesn't know what he is doing.</p>