Pentax Mirror-less mysteries

You have to admire Pentax, they are small enough to come up with some hair brained ideas, some great and others daft, but something you would never ever see from Nikon or Canon.  The Pentax Q is one of those great ideas (the price tag less so), however I am not sure how this new K-01 will go.  

On paper it looks promising – a mirrorless camera with an APS-C sensor that takes the legendary and plentiful Pentax K mount lenses.  But there-in lies the problem.  K mount lenses have a sensor (or film plane) to lens mount distance of about 45mm to get around a traditional SLR mirror box.  To put that into perspective, this is 6mm GREATER than the entire depth of a Sony NEX-5!  So even without looking at the dimensions, you know this mirrorless camera is gonna be big.  In fact the K-01 is 20mm taller and 20mm deeper than a NEX-5, and almost twice the weight, and this really defeats the whole purpose of a mirrorless camera. 

The only way around this would be to use a body mounted optic to shorten the effective sensor to lens mount distance, but this would result in all sorts of potential optical issues to overcome.

The really interesting point though is the joint release of a new 40mm f2.8 pancake lens.  This lens is truly the smallest I have ever seen – it protrudes less than 1cm in front of the camera.  A quick look at the profile of the lens suggests that the optics have been moved back into the cavity in the mirrorless body where the mirror box on an SLR would normally be, thus creating the tiny size (and likely inability to be used on any other Pentax SLR).  This does make the total depth of the camera a manageable 61mm, which compared the 72mm of my NEX-3 with the Leica to NEX adapter and the compact Voigtlander 35mm f1.4 Nokton attached, doesn’t seem so bad.  However the NEX-3 with the Sony 16mm f2.8 attached is tiny at just 54mm deep.

The other issue is that just as the 16mm Sony lens is a bit too wide to be used as a standard lens, the 40mm Pentax lens is a bit too long; and this limits its street shooter appeal.

Sony NEX-3 with Leica 50mm Summicron M

Kodak Bankruptcy Implications

It is interesting that the company perhaps the most closely associated with photography in the 20^th Century, Kodak, is now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Not that no-one could see it coming, but it was still a bit of a shock when it finally did.  

For me the biggest question is what will happen to it’s digital sensor division.  Kodak sensors are used in most medium format digital cameras, and famously in the Leica M9.  Kodak have announced that they are wanting to sell off their digital imaging patents for around $2 billion to fund their emergency restructuring loan from Citibank.  I highly doubt that they will get anywhere near the money they are looking for as most of the world have managed to figure out how to produce this technology with minimal infringement on Kodak’s patents.

So what will happen to the M9?  No idea, but hopefully it will give Leica an opportunity to put in a decent sensor, like the Sony sensor in the Nikon full frame digital cameras.

Lewisham, London UK - Sony NEX-3 with Voigtlander 35mm f1.4 Nokton

The Zeiss Werra

Recently I went the Camera Show at its new location at Don Valley and Eglinton in Toronto and saw a very unusual camera I’d never seen before called a Zeiss Werra.  It is a little interchangeable lens rangefinder with a leaf shutter and an in camera aperture.  All the lenses are Carl Zeiss, and only 3 were available – a 35mm f2.8 Flektogon, a 50mm f2.8 Tessar and a 100mm f4 Cardinar; all of which are supposed to be excellent.  I was offered 2 bodies (1 working the other for parts), all 3 lenses, a close up attachment (similar to a Leica Sooky-M) and some other accessories for $400.  The pricing was probably the top end of the value, but the whole set was there.

My idea was to use these Zeiss lenses on the NEX; but as the camera is rare, no adapters are available.  The other issue is that the aperture is built into the camera, so a camera would have to be dissected and converted into an adapter.  Fortunately this package came with a parts camera, but in the end I decided that the hassle was probably not worth it.

Kingston, ON - Sony NEX-3 with Voigtlander 35mm f1.4 Nokton

X Factor

Have you noticed that almost every Mirrorless camera launched recently has an ‘X’ in it’s name?  Strange but true.  Leica started the trend with the X1 (ie first mirror-less camera with an ‘X’ in the name); then came the X100 from Fuji who then added the X10 and XPro-1 recently.   Sony released their NEX series about 18 months ago, followed by the unusual Ricoh GXR.  Canon just named their fixed lens mirrorless compact the G1X, which looks almost exactly the same as the also just announced Panasonic GX1.

I call it all a bit exxy, pardon the pun; but at least Nikon and Olympus haven’t fallen into the X trap yet, though I am sure it won’t be long.

Kingston, ON - Sony NEX 3 with Voigtlander 35mm f1.4 Nokton

Leica brochure

While at the Dixons Heathrow airport store, I saw and M9 and a 50mm Summicron is a case.  They had some Leica brochures, so I decided to take one to read.  Apart from the M9, Leica really doesn’t have much that I am interested in.  Compact and four thirds cameras aren’t my box and dice, and after this all that is left is the X1, which is completely outclassed by the Fuji X100.  In fact the X100 is what the X1 should have been.

The M9 is really starting to show its age to, with the only key selling feature being that it is a full frame camera that takes Leica’s fabulous M mount lenses.  The rest of the camera is totally out classed by the NEX, Xpro-1 and even some of the micro four thirds cameras. 

However, the brochure is a nice glossy piece.

Sony NEX 3 with Voigtlander 35mm f1.4 Nokton