{"id":358,"date":"2012-02-02T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/?p=358"},"modified":"2012-02-02T09:01:18","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T14:01:18","slug":"pentax-k-01-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/pentax-k-01-announced\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentax K-01 Announced – My Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The new Pentax K-01<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today, Pentax announced their large sensor entry into the mirrorless camera market.\u00a0 The camera has a 16 MP APS-C sized sensor, and that should be great. I’m sure image quality in this camera will be excellent.\u00a0 Where Pentax both succeeded and failed was with making the camera use the K-mount.\u00a0 The K-mount is the Pentax SLR mount, and it’s use in a mirrorless body is highly suspect.\u00a0 On the bright side, it allows instant compatibility with the whole range of Pentax lenses.\u00a0\u00a0 This means the system is already large and varied.\u00a0 Of course, the whole point of a mirrorless body is to reduce the size of the system, so in this case, you have the exact same lens size as with Pentax DSLRs.\u00a0 And, because the registration distance for the lens mount is made for SLRs, you gain no advantage in body size over an APS-C Pentax DSLR.\u00a0 Additionally, you lose the ability to adapt small manual focus lenses, such as Leica M or M39 screw mount lenses, and even a good number of adaptable SLR lenses like Canon FD.\u00a0 This is one of the reasons I love Micro 4\/3 (and Sony’s NEX has the same ability).\u00a0 I can adapt nearly any manual focus lens for any camera ever made.\u00a0 It’s allowed the use of some excellent lenses for very little money.<\/p>\n

DPReview has the press release<\/a> and some comparison images with the Pentax K-5 DSLR.\u00a0 The K-01 is nearly the exact same size, but with a worse grip and no viewfinder.\u00a0 Plus, because it uses contrast detect autofocus, the lens AF will be slower than on their DSLRs.\u00a0 Now, contrast detect autofocus has made amazing strides.\u00a0 Panasonic and Olympus cameras using it have achieved focus speeds faster than any DSLR on the planet, at least in single shot focus.\u00a0 However, using lenses designed for phase detect AF with a body designed for contrast-detect has always meant slower autofocus.\u00a0 You can use regular 4\/3 lenses on Micro 4\/3 bodies with autofocus via an adapter.\u00a0 However, focus speed is significantly slower than on a DSLR and much slower than a native mirrorless lens.<\/p>\n

The aesthetics are not to my taste generally, though there is something to the boxy minimalist design.\u00a0 I don’t like it on first blush, but it’s something I could see growing on me.\u00a0 I’m sure this will be very dependent on the person…they’ll either love it or hate it.\u00a0 Still, even if I loved the industrial design, it can’t make me overlook its flaws.<\/p>\n

This whole thing makes me wonder what Pentax engineers are thinking.\u00a0 First they release the Pentax Q, an interchangeable lens camera that uses a small compact camera sensor, thereby offering little to no advantage over a point and shoot.\u00a0 Now they release a mirrorless camera that has NONE of the advantages of other mirrorless cameras (great EVF, fast CDAF, compact size, small lenses), yet has significant disadvantages when compared against the similarly sized K-5 DSLR (no viewfinder, slower focus, worse handling due to non-existent grip).<\/p>\n

One area where Pentax does know what they’re doing, though, is in compact lens design.\u00a0 The new 40mm f\/2.8 is a marvel of engineering, being barely larger than a body cap.\u00a0 Still, it’s not too much smaller than the existing Pentax 40mm f\/2.8 pancake, which you can easily plop on a K-5.\u00a0 It remains to be seen whether the new 40mm can be used on their DSLRs.\u00a0 It shares the same mount, but it appears the lens protrudes into the body a fair amount, which may interfere with a mirror. I will still watch this camera to see how it tests in real life, but from where I sit now, it looks like a failure to me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Pentax announced their large sensor entry into the mirrorless camera market.\u00a0 The camera has a 16 MP APS-C sized sensor, and that should be great. I’m sure image quality in this camera will be excellent.\u00a0 Where Pentax both succeeded and failed was with making the camera use the K-mount.\u00a0 The K-mount is the Pentax […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5,21],"tags":[13,37,9,36],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-opinion","tag-csc","tag-k-01","tag-mirrorless","tag-pentax"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28RGq-5M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}