Official Pentax Online Shop now accepting preorders for Pentax 645D. Those who are ready to pay 948 000 yen (US$10 087) for a D-FA645 55mm F2.8 lens kit or 848 000 yen (US$9 023) for body only will get their shiny 645D’s in the middle of May.
I know a lot of people who were waiting for this moment for more than the three long years (and I can remember there are some people who were holding their fingers crossed hoping for a digital 645 or 67 from the times when you could put a several dozens of digital photos on a 3,5″ floppy drive with your trustworthy Sony Mavica). I know that there were several gigabites of forum discussions posted on every single rumor emerged during these very long years. I know there thousands of 645D concept models were built in our dreams. And today Pentax put our waiting, our anticipation to an end. And I think I can name this day the first day of the new era:
The new era of not so cheap but much more affordable medium format than before. Meet the new 100% official Pentax 645D – a 40 Megapixels 44mm*33mm CCD medium format digital SLR.
If you haven’t read the full spec sheet already, do it now at the Pentax Japan website (and don’t forget about shiny new SDM lens). The specs are all awesome and the price tag starting from the $9400 is something revolutionary for such kind of cameras.
Of course, the official announcement wouldn’t stop the rumors. The first one, emerged on a day 1 of the new era says that Pentax 645D won’t be sold in the United States for some reason. Definitely, not the most solid one. Most likely the mix of envy and the poor joke.
Pentax K20D firmware update 1.01 is ready to download. It fixes the previously reported “hot pixel” bug when taking picture with 2 seconds self-timer mode. To download and install this update follow the instructions here.
Samsung Techwin didn’t posted any firmware updates for GX-20 DSLR (Samsung analogue for Pentax K20D) yet as well as didn’t confirmed the same bug.
According to Imaging Resource, Pentax has confirmed the “hot pixel” problem in Pentax K20D DSLR and assured that the firmware update to solve this issue is on the way:
Pentax USA has confirmed the issue, themselves noting that it only seems to occur when the 2-second self-timer is employed. They said that the engineering team was working on a firmware fix for the problem, and that a fix would be publicly available at some point in the future. No ETA was available for the fix yet, as the engineering team had apparently only just recently confirmed the problem and its cause.
DPReview forum user Pfan has contacted Pentax European Headquarter chief technician and reported that…
Since yesterday evening there is a firmware-fix ready and we implemented it on my K20D – IT WORKS !
This update will be implemented in the next firmware version – it will be available after quality testing phase in the near future.
So they worked fast and fixed it – it´s NOT a hardware question – and everybody can update the K20D´s via normal sd card update process.
DPReview forums user rArWebWorks has quoted the words of unnamed service manager at the Golden, Colorado service center, who said that there won’t be any further firmware upgrades for Pentax K10D DSLR.
Earlier, Pentax Europe product manager Wolfgang Baus has confirmed ‘no more firmware updates for K10D’ policy to the popular German Pentax community DigitalFotoNetz.
More in the news: OK1000 has reported Apple adds Pentax K200D and K20D RAW support to Aperture 2.0 and iPhoto ’08.
Chinese Engadget (quite trustworthy resource) has reported the rumors that Chinese manufacturer Patriot Aigo in cooperation with Carl Zeiss planning to roll out first China DSLR with Leica-M mount. What’s most interesting is that Engadget has illustrated this rumor with something looking just like Pentax MZ-D 2001 6Mp full-frame DSLR prototype with Patriot Aigo logo on it:
Here is how the MZ-D looks like:
Yes, the first image is undoubtedly poorly photoshopped MZ-D. But it’s nice to see that its memory still lives in people’s hearts.
The new Pentax entry level DSLR K200D got a lot of attention last month. Most of the popular consumer electronics and photo equipment reviewers have put their curious hands on it. And most of them have been pretty excited.
CNET has rated Pentax K200D 7.7 out of 10 which is “Very Good” in their classification:
Pentax’s K200D entry-level SLR gives a lot of bang for the buck and has better performance than last year’s model. Despite low noise and pleasingly detailed images, technically inaccurate colors keep it from capturing the gold medal for image quality.
AnandTech has tested Pentax K20D high ISO performance and resolution against Sony A350.
The K20D noise is well controlled through ISO 3200. Noise at ISO 6400 is comparable to the Sony A350 at ISO 3200
K20D is “traditionally” softer at the lower ISO settings but shows much cleaner images at ISO 1600 and 3200. Also, white balance could be set more accurately for better comparison.
LetsGoDigital’s Ilse Jurriën has interviewed Jon Carlson – Pentax Imaging USA product manager and the chief K20D evangelist – at PMA. He has told about Pentax and Samsung cooperation background, plans on future lenses and why the digital medium format development was suspended. But the most of attention was given to the Pentax flagship DSLR.
Thanks to the CMOS you have less energy consumption. The sensor of the Pentax K20D is capable of transferring the received information very quickly. What they did is decrease the picture to 1.6 Megapixels so it can be transferred from the buffer to the memory card speedily. This is how you reach 21 pictures per second… …Someone even told me that he uses Photoshop CS3 Extended and he attached 150 pictures sequentially as a QuickTime movie and it looks like a real movie recording.
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We are now showing three SLR lenses that will get introduced later, hopefully this year. We have a 17-70 mm one that is considered as a replacement for the 16-45 mm but offering an SDM engine. And we have the extreme light sensitive 55mm and the 60-250 mm.
According to Impress Watch Pentax has suspended the development the digital era version of its medium format camera – 645 Digital to concentrate on the APS-C digital SLR cameras development. Also, these rumors could be interpreted as the Pentax’s intention to roll out full frame DSLR in the future.
