On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 10:14:07PM -0400, Mark Roberts scripsit: > John Francis wrote: > >I expect a mid-life kicker (a K-7n?) in perhaps eighteen months. But > >that's likely to sell for not a lot more than the K-7, which by then > >will probably be selling a bit cheaper that it is today. > > Nothing with an APS-C sensor is ever likely to sell for much over > $1000 by next year. Like it or not, the age of the "semi-pro" or > "advanced amateur" DSLR with an APS-C sensor is drawing to a close.
Why? Cost, battery life, lightness and compactness (of lenses as well as bodies), and, arguably, in-body shake reduction all argue for smaller sensors. Being able to do very precise things with depth of field, being able to make very large prints, not having to adapt mentally to altered fields of view, and what else argue for "full frame" sensors? (What's the minimum price for a printer able to do prints larger than 13x17, for that matter?) Most DSLR camera sales are APS-C; cost matters. The "advanced amateur" DSLRs with APS-C sensors don't generally lack pro-level utility due to the sensor; they lack it because either the company isn't after the pro market (Pentax, slightly different Olympus), or because the company wants to reserve the pro market for the inherently expensive full-frame bodies. (Canon, Nikon, Sony.) Sony's high end body prices are subsidized, it's not the natural price of components plus margin. That's not a game anybody can win, and most are going to have more sense than to try to play it. It's not clear just where the natural price is for a full frame body just now. It would be honestly strange if the historical trend throughout the film era toward smaller sizes of film and thus camera, on the one hand, and the digital constraint that smaller chips are cheaper to fab and not in a linear way, on the other hand, both wandered off whistling just at this moment in time. Or, for that matter, that the optimum chemical sensor size and the optimum digital sensor (price/performance/portability optimum) size turned out to be the same. Full-frame digital might turn out to be the eventual digital SLR default, but I don't think it's inherently obvious that this will be the case. -- Graydon -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
