Pentax Reportedly Considering Micro 4/3 Style Camera

[Thardy]

No, 4/3s is not aimed at the pros. What may come down the road might definitely be.

Take a look at the last paragraph.

Digital PhotoPro 😎

 

[bmattock]

No, 4/3s is not aimed at the pros. What may come down the road might definitely be.

That would be most interesting, and it would address the problem you see with pros complaining about huge pro kit. I am sure it could be done, but the question is whether or not it will be.

I have no doubt that digital photographic technology will eventually branch off from traditional photography and take us in places we've never been.

There have been cries for that for years. People asking companies to stop thinking of the camera as having to look like and function like an SLR or a traditional film-based point-n-shoot.

However, when the camera makers have responded with 'out of the box' thinking, mostly they've been a drug on the market, very little sales.

Take Casio's Exilim cameras - the ones that looked kind of like ray guns. Remember those? Now they look like the basic bar of soap.

Pentax experimented with a ray-gun shaped Optio (MX4) that looked actually more like a video camera. Now all the Optios look like bars of soap.

Or Nikon's great twist-and-turn Coolpix series. Now they look like bars of soap.

Sony had a m4/3 style camera, sort of, in the DSC-R1. APS-C size sensor, bridge-camera styling, long zoom, LCD on top of the camera. Still a cult classic and not cheap, but discontinued. Now Sony point-and-shoot cameras look like bars of soap.

The camera phone is new - didn't exist in the film world. Due entirely to the technology. Most cell phones, they look like bars of soap. Skinny ones.

Bridge-style cameras are still big, and popular, as a sort of upscale point-and-shoot, typically offering longer focal-length zoom lenses and EVF. But they almost universally retain the dSLR 'hump' style design and look more-or-less like a shrunk-down SLR camera. Some of the latest long-zoom cameras with EVF look like - yeah - bars of soap.

But most of that is styling. If the camera behaves functionally in a different way than what came previously, then that's new. The small body / large sensor movement is becoming interesting, that's for sure. I see it aimed at the enthusiast market, with a limited appeal to happy snappers and pros. However, as you say, that could change, if the price comes way down (for happy snappers) or the quality goes way up (pros).

I'm not dissing m4/3. I like it. I'm intrigued and interested. I just see it as a limited niche. I will be interested to see if it changes direction.

 

[Ken Ford]

Bill, I think your user vs. enthusiast posit is accurate for the US market - but what about the Asian? IMO M4/3 will live or die based on acceptance in the Japanese home market, where there seems to me a lot more enthusiasm for serious cameras in the general populace.

 

[bmattock]

Bill, I think your user vs. enthusiast posit is accurate for the US market - but what about the Asian? IMO M4/3 will live or die based on acceptance in the Japanese home market, where there seems to me a lot more enthusiasm for serious cameras in the general populace.

I think you're right about the general enthusiast level of the typical camera buyer in Japan, just based on what I have heard. However, the global market is much bigger than the Japanese market.

It is not uncommon for Japan to manufacture camera models strictly for domestic sales. Not that they don't want to sell them outside Japan, they just apparently don't think there is much market for them outside Japan. The Fujifilm 'Klasse' film cameras are a case in point.

 

[aizan]

Easy. Example: Build an expensive complex model for professionals, a cheap model for amateurs, and watch professionals buy the amateur model instead. (The Leica M5/CL story.)

that makes more sense, losing sales of a more expensive camera to one that's less expensive.

and bmattock, chill out. i asked a question, you gave an answer, then i used that new information. mr. knowitall....

 

[NDAv]

I think, with further improvements to technology, the EVF/LCD viewfinder will eventually replace SLR viewfinder, or at least significantly reduce the market for SLR viewfinder cameras. EVF and LCD viewing are the way of the future. So I think m4/3 main competition are the dSLR systems. m4/3 has nothing to lose.

I guess m4/3 will destroy the advanced point-and-shoot market as well, just like the cheap lower-end dSLRs have been doing, but I think it is the cell phone and other multifunction device that will ultimately kill the dedicated point-and-shoot camera.

 

[bmattock]

I think, with further improvements to technology, the EVF/LCD viewfinder will eventually replace SLR viewfinder, or at least significantly reduce the market for SLR viewfinder cameras. EVF and LCD viewing are the way of the future. So I think m4/3 main competition are the dSLR systems. m4/3 has nothing to lose.

I guess m4/3 will destroy the advanced point-and-shoot market as well, just like the cheap lower-end dSLRs have been doing, but I think it is the cell phone and other multifunction device that will ultimately kill the dedicated point-and-shoot camera.

Those are good points. Best argument against my point of view I've read so far.

 

[charjohncarter]

I think, with further improvements to technology, the EVF/LCD viewfinder will eventually replace SLR viewfinder, or at least significantly reduce the market for SLR viewfinder cameras. EVF and LCD viewing are the way of the future. So I think m4/3 main competition are the dSLR systems. m4/3 has nothing to lose.

I guess m4/3 will destroy the advanced point-and-shoot market as well, just like the cheap lower-end dSLRs have been doing, but I think it is the cell phone and other multifunction device that will ultimately kill the dedicated point-and-shoot camera.

That is really thinking, thanks.

 

[John Camp]

I think the m4/3 systems, and similar systems using the APS-C, will be successful for the same reason the early Leicas were successful -- they're small, and they're "good enough." Pentax, in fact, with its line of pancake lenses, already has a great set of APS-C primes that are as good or better than any m4/3 lenses, and smaller. I think Pentax may be a *very* likely contender in this market.

I've traveled to the Middle East on many occasions over the past fifteen years, several times hauling a full Nikon film or digital system, to do archaeological photography, and once as a reporter to Iraq embedded with a US air assault (Blackhawk) battalion. Nothing I shot there, for scholarly magazines and popular archaeological magazines, in the case of the dig, or for an online news service, in the case of Iraq, couldn't have been shot with a m4/3. The quality is "good enough" for any newspaper and most magazines, short of the fashion mags, and any online outlet. And the fact is, for a traveling shooter, a Nikon system is a killer, when you've got to carry two cameras, a half-dozen lenses, a laptop, chargers, and big batteries. I suspect my G1 SYSTEM (with an E-P1 backup) weighs about as much as my Nikon f2.8 70-200 lens alone...

Back in the thirties and forties, people used Graphic cameras, but Leica elbowed them out not because the Leica quality was so much better, but because it was good enough, and small enough to be easily traveled with. Today's Nikon and Sony top-end cameras are essentially as heavy and have as much frontal area as the old Speed and Crown Graphics. And that's why, I think, the m4/3 systems will do well. All it needs is one guy like James Nachtwey to be seen shooting them, and they'll be everywhere: every pro PJ will have one.

I actually think that the FF cameras may be more likely the threatened species, used only for certain kinds of photography -- art, fashion and so on. What's the point in having 30mb file so you can upload a 6x9 jpg?

JC

 

[pvdhaar]

I actually think that the FF cameras may be more likely the threatened species, used only for certain kinds of photography -- art, fashion and so on. What's the point in having 30mb file so you can upload a 6x9 jpg?
JC

You didn't even mention the Hasselblad H system for fashion, art and studio work..