The medium-format marketplace is often an problematic niche of the digital-camera industry. Prices are high, commercial operation contingency have intemperate budgets, and optics and sensor record is opposite from the SLR realm.Heck, majority people hadnt listened of the code names involved. Until now: This time the Pentax that voiced the entrance in to the marketplace with a product called the 645D.Pentaxs arriving 645D medium-format digital camera.(Credit:Pentax)Its not going to rewrite the manners of photography. It"ll be accessible usually in Japan, at slightest for starters when it ships in May, it needs the own lenses, and it costs 850,000 yen--about $9,200. But there are sufficient engaging developments here that the value noting.Medium-format cameras have been niche apparatus for years, renowned from SLRs customarily by their incomparable of a movie frame. Now that digital sensors are in and movie is out, though, the analogous costs of medium-format cameras have surged, given creation a large sensor is a lot some-more costly than creation a not as big one. Pentaxs indication uses a 40-megapixel Kodak sensor measuring 44x33mm, incomparable than a "full-frame" SLR that uses the 36x24mm await distance of 35mm movie and a lot incomparable than the sensors in mainstream digital SLRs. To go a bit over the press release, I suggest celebration of the mass Luminous Landscapes talk with Pentaxs Yasuyuki Maekawa about the 645D. It triggered a series of thoughts about middle format and Pentaxs effort.• Pentax doesnt have a full-frame SLR line it has to be concerned about cannibalizing. Nikon and Canon are going after medium-format photographers--often the sorts who fire intemperate spreads for conform magazines and rich houses for pattern magazines--leading with their full-frame models such as the 24-megapixel Nikon D3X and 21-megapixel Canon 1Ds Mark III. Pentax usually has smaller-sensor SLRs, and they"re not terribly expected to contest with medium-format models or clamp versa. The 645D could put Pentax in a new, higher-prestige class.• Pentax has a lot of experience with mass-market cameras. It has great experience with metering, autofocus, ergonomics, durability, shutters, picture processing, and alternative elementary but necessary and by no equates to elementary camera technology. This could assistance heed the products from alternative medium-format offerings. The 645D wouldnt suggest live perspective by the LCD, something I could see a little medium-format photographers appreciating, but dont order it out for destiny models.• The association pronounced it cumulative reduce member prices by promissory note on higher section conveyance volumes. This is a bit of a gamble, generally given the hilly story of medium-format cameras in the digital era, but if it pays off it could meant a just cycle of partially low prices and partially high shipments for Pentax that pressures alternative medium-format companies.• Pentax is pitching the medium-format indication essentially at landscape photographers. This is a not as big cut of the medium-format world, but a some-more picturesque one for Pentax to penetrate. Its 645D has continue sealing thats useful, but some-more significantly, Pentax would have a tough time credible conform photographers to offload tens of thousands of dollars" value of Hasselblad, Mamiya, and Phase One medium-format equipment.• Pentax plans some-more medium-format models in the future. This is something of a no-brainer, but it does telegram a little joining to the marketplace thats acquire given Pentaxs on-again, off-again plans for the 645D. I do consternation if they"re aiming for higher-end models or lower-price models.• The 645D has an integrated sensor and camera body. This differs from old-school medium-format cameras, that had detachable movie backs, and from the stream Mamiya-Phase One proceed with detachable digital backs. But the identical to Hasselblads newer integrated approach. From a commercial operation perspective, the integrated pattern equates to a camera builder doesnt lose commercial operation to a digital-back builder similar to Phase One. Pentax fit the proceed formed on record matters--durability and positioning the sensor with precision, though.• Its intelligent to begin in Japan usually for right away and to await to comparison film-based 645 customers, given Pentaxs enterprise to keep inside of the existent await and interest to the progressing medium-format customers. It additionally creates it simpler for the association to acknowledgement feat with such restrained ambitions.• Pentax gives an above-board publicity to Adobes Digital Negative (DNG) format for recording tender images taken from the sensor but in-camera processing, a shift triggered by await for application that Pentax longed for progressing with DNG. This record format creates hold up simpler for Pentax, given it doesnt have to work as tough on persuading any series of program companies to await the tender format.• Its good that Pentax is bringing complicated comforts such as dust-removing sensor jolt to the medium-format realm, but digital brings alternative complications on top of annoying flecks of dust. One big one is lenses; film-era lenses need updating for digital cameras. One issue is that picture sensors dont similar to light that doesnt transport perpendicularly to the lens, a non-issue with film, and an additional is that sensors simulate light behind out, creation ghosting and light a worse problem. Pentax voiced a new 55mm lens and in the talk pronounced the formulation a wide-angle model.Overall I"m speedy by Pentaxs move. Medium-format cameras can yield a lot of picture quality, even if often usually higher-end professionals and rich hobbyists make use of them. Pentax has the intensity to keep middle format alive in the 35mm SLR era--perhaps even to give consequential suppliers such as sensor makers a shot in the arm. I disbelief it will hole the prevalence of Canon and Nikon, but it binds the intensity to assistance a little photographers and give Pentax a little high-end cachet it now lacks.
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