I have a K-5 and some nice glass for sale in the Pentax Forums Marketplace right now. The only reason I'm selling the Pentax kit is that I can't afford to own two systems and I want all of those MP's for 'landscape' that the D800E offers. Seriously, If you are only buying another APS-C and don't intend going to FF then the K-5 is easily the best option. The new K5II and K-5IIs will be very nice cameras and they will only lack a couple of features I would have liked (updated video codec, focus peaking & articulated screen).

It's strange that people keep judging upgrades by the number of pixels on the sensor when Nikon's top FF 'only' has 16mp. K-5 has a full stainless steel chassis with magnesium alloy shell, is fully weather proofed and has in-body shake reduction. You can get a brand new K-5 from B&H for around $800. That and a couple of DA primes and you're away.

I wouldn't let all the crazy threads on PF about how there's no Pentax FF sway you, as long as you don't intend to upgrade to FF. Anyone who really cared that much would shut the hell up and just go and buy one.

Cheers

donaldejose said:
Stay with Pentax or go to Nikon?

http://photorumors.com/2012/10/09/pentax-talks-full-frame-again/

I purchased a D800 primarily because it had 36mp. Thom's chart only goes to 21mp and states that a 21mp image will make a poor 24x36 inch print because it will print at 150 dpi. Yet, Thom also said you can get a good print at 180 dpi. I wanted to see how large I could print. Rather than pay for a full size print I cropped about one third of a 36mp image and printed it at 24x36 inches. It was outstanding to me and surely "good enough" to hang on your wall to impress your friends. That size will be like hanging posters around your house. Unless you have very large rooms poster size is about as large as you would want.

In my opinion when you want to print large more megapixels will always be helpful. Thus, expf11 should look at the D800 and the D600 and no others. These are the best for his "desire" as he currently understands it. The decision can be made now. There is no reason to wait for a D400 or a D7200. Both of those will be DX size sensors. He should get an FX sensor if he can afford it simply because he wants the best quality he can get to produce huge prints.

Now a side issue is whether or not you can produce a good poster size print with a 24mp D3200 (or D400?) DX sensor or with a 16mp D4 sensor? I have not tried it but I strongly suspect you can. Thom's chart was based upon mp number not upon sensor size. 24mp from a D3200 (or D400?) DX sensor still contains the same number of pixels as 24mp from a D600 FX sensor. Yet, no one would say they are actually equal. So if the perceived need is to have the best image files for later printing at huge sizes one should just buy either a 36mp D800 or a 24mp D600. It is that simple.

But then there is the problem of money. First, you don't need to start with expensive FX glass. You can start with very inexpensive old 35mm film AF glass as this thread demonstrates. http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=9682 So, you can put together a good starting FX kit for about $2,500. If the D800 and the D600 body are just not possible to fund at this time the best alternative will be to wait for the replacement for the D7000 (called the D7100 or D7200?) because it will surely have the AF motor to drive older motorless AF lenses and it will most likely have a 24mp sensor and it most likely will be priced about $1,200. It is that simple.

Stay with Pentax or go to Nikon? Consider all the options offered by the Nikon system. Pentax doesn't give you all these options and never will. Move to Nikon as soon as you can because it offers you so many more future options for growth that Pentax will never offer you. It is that simple.

Bottom line, I don't see a tough decision or a big conflict here.

This thread is an interesting discussion..... but, it has a "flavor" which I have in my mouth, that I am commenting on.....

The passion of photography can be overwhelming, and the desire for perfection, or as close as possible is not uncommon. If, has however, left out a few items worth exploring. And, the finances, relationship with others, ability to make sacrifices, all play into the final decision as to which camera to purchase.

One can move to a smaller apartment, eat out less, drive a smaller car, avoid spending anything on entertainment or addictive substances, and, by making enough sacrifices, purchase a D4 with some nice glass. Or if one prefers, a D800.

The concept of hanging large wall size a few feet by a few feet...prints, seems inconsistent with the idea of an APS-C sensor. And, the cost of the prints, my guess, to get a high quality print, mounted for the wall, will be much more than one might expect.

In the past some of us have sacrificed heavily to purchase the best we could, eating for less than $.50 a day, (OK, I am old) because we spent our money on the beloved, Nikon F.

As always, these is just an observation of the thread content and is of little actual value. But I think if one has a passion for seeing large prints, and wants to do what is necessary to get there, then full frame is the way to go, and now.

This is one of the most interesting discussions and we thank you expf11, for bringing it to NRF.

expf11 said:
Anyway, as for what I want to shoot:

Basically a variety of things:

-Nature/mountainous landscape

-Beach landscape

-Beach sunsets/pier sunsets

-Old, rusted, junkyard cars/trucks

-Insect macro

-Plant macro

-Small-object macro & close-ups

-Foggy night time abandoned 3am street shots (like, when its foggy in the middle of the night and you stand in the middle of a street and take a photo down the centerline of the road with the street lights glowing amber in the fog and they slowly melt into the fog as they converge off in the distance (this is one of my current favorite types of photography)

-Night time city-scapes/city sky-lines

-And probably a dozen other types of stuff I'm forgetting off the top of my head.

-Portrait photography

-Sports/action photography

This is exactly what I like to shoot but I've never taken the time to type it out like this. Thanks...I'm saving this in a text file for future use.

Baba Ganoush said:
"like, when its foggy in the middle of the night and you stand in the middle of a street and take a photo down the centerline of the road with the street lights glowing amber in the fog and they slowly melt into the fog as they converge off in the distance (this is one of my current favorite types of photography)"

The Bulwer-Lytton writing contest for 2012 is over already (www.bulwer-lytton.com) but you could try working this up and submitting it as an entry for 2013. Just kidding....

That's a varied list of photography interests you have. I'd say remember the words of that wise and famous photographer Abraham Lincoln: Some cameras are good at a lot of things and a lot of cameras are good at some things, but there aren't a lot of cameras that are good at everything. Like many others who post here (I suspect), I own a bunch of different kinds of cameras: Point & Shoot, interchangeable lens Micro-Four-Thirds, APS-C, and FF. Each camera has its strong/weak points and gets used accordingly. The only advice I offer you is to wait a month or two to see whether Nikon announces a new camera to replace either the d7000 or the d5100.

I hate the flavor of eggplant, therefore your post is invalid, Baba Ganoush.

Lol, just kidding.

Anyway, I agree with you about the some cameras are good at lots of stuff, lots are good at some stuff, and none are good at everything thing. That's why I'm being careful about what camera I switch to, because I want to get the one that is as good as possible at the specific things that I am most passionately interested in doing. So, given that my biggest interest in photography is making big, high quality prints, but I don't have the budget for full frame/medium format, the best I can do for now is try to get an APS-C that has as high an amount of megapixels as I can, as that will allow me to print just that much bigger per equal PPI-level than a camera with less megapixels, by comparison. That said, obviously that's not the ONLY thing I care about, obv it also needs to have good dynamic range, color depth, and an in-body motor (which basically means I have to wait for the d90/7,000/300 replacement(s) to come out, since the only 24mp canon or nikon right now in APS-C is the nikon 3200, and that has no in-body motor. Or, I could just compromise and get a 18mp canon 550d or 16mp nikon d7000, or 12mp nikon d90 or d300 or something. But, I think I'd rather wait to see what canon and nikon come out with for their mid-level/enthusiast/upper-entry APS-C cameras. Both of them have been totally tight-lipped as to what is going to be coming, like, not even a very vague, most rumor-y-est rumor of all rumors about how many megapixels the new batch of APS-C's sensors is gonna have for either canon or nikon (well, with Nikon at least we can guess that some of their other upcoming APS-C's might use the 24mp sensor that's in the d3200, but with Canon, it's truly a total mysteryas to what might be coming, since they've been doing all their APS-C stuff on that same old 18mp sensor for years and years now, so clearly they are about to unleash something totally new, which could have who knows how many megapixels. maybe 20. Maybe 30. Who knows. The one thing I do know is I want to wait to find out, if I don't have to wait too long. Which brings me back to trying to figure out when most people are expecting just the basic ANNOUNCEMENTS to come about for the new nikon APS-C lineups (which will probly coincide with Canon's equivalent announcements as well, roughly). And thus why I made this whole thread to begin with.

etc

TaoTeJared said:
You still haven't said what subjects you shoot.

Actually I did say, but, I think you missed my post where I answered your question about this. It is at the bottom of page 1.

TaoTeJared said:
And your math is off. The difference between 12mp and 24mp is only 25%. 25% wider, 25% longer on each side. Note that the D600 is double the resolution of the D70s with a 6mp sensor. That would be 50%.

You're right, my math was a bit off, but your math is off as well. We both got it wrong. I was closer to being correct though:

The correct answer is that the dimensions would be 41.4% larger

For example, to make it easier, let's pretend the dimensions of the sensor/photos were a perfect square, instead of a rectangle.

For a 12 megapixel camera, if it was a square shaped sensor, the sides of that square would be 3,464 pixels by 3,464 pixels

For a 24 megapixel camera, if it was a square shaped sensor, the sides of that square would be 4,899 pixels by 4,899 pixels.

4,899 is 41.4% longer than 3,464, so, the dimensions of the sides would be 41.4% longer on all 4 sides of the square.

Once you are dealing with rectangular aspect ratios, the length/width can vary by different amounts depending if you are comparing two different aspect ratios, but the overall size effect amounts to 41.4% average increase in side-dimensions.

So, it is not just 25%, rather its 41.4%, which I consider to be a fairly significant increase in size, personally.

TaoTeJared said:

To illustrate by your standards you have set, a D800 will not do what you want...

blah blah blah "at 300dpi" blah blah blah

Okay, once again you clearly didn't actually READ my post, and thus you are now disagreeing with something that I DIDN'T ACTUALLY SAY.

If you go back to page 1 and look at the post I made regarding PPI, the WHOLE POINT of my post, and the article I cited on that topic, was that I would be printing at 175PPI, NOT 300PPI, because I realize that 300PPI is overkill and not necessary. That was the whole point of that whole entire post. But, unfortunately you completely misunderstood this and apparently you thought I was intending to print at 300PPI, when this is the exact opposite of what I said...

Sigh... it frustrates me so bad when people misread my posts, and then make these types of explanation posts without realizing that their explanation is totally wrong because the thing they think they are responding to me about is actually totally the opposite of what I ACTUALLY said... sigh...

So anyway, my point is, since I would NOT be printing at 300PPI, but rather, at 150-175PPI, since that article shows that you can't even see a difference between 175PPI and 300PPI with the naked eye, I would obv just print at no higher than 175PPI, that way I'd be able to print much larger than if my minimum PPI standards were set to 300PPI (which, for the trillionth time, they AREN'T!!!).

So, since I would be printing at 175PPI, the actual dimension conversion comparisons for me that you were trying to break down in your post would ACTUALLY be:

12mp Nikon d300/d90: sensor size: 4,288 x 2,848 at 175PPI = 24.50 inches by 16.27 inches

24mp Nikon d3200: sensor size: 6,016 x 4,000 at 175PPI = 34.38 inches by 22.86 inches

So, the size difference from getting a 24mp camera instead of a 12mp camera is significant, in that for what I'd be printing at, it would be the difference between 24.5"/16.3" vs 34.4"/22.9". That might not sound like that big of a deal in numbers written out like that, but, I've actually measured the paintings I have hanging on my wall, and have compared basically that exact size difference between two paintings I have, and there is a very big difference between those two sizes, one really does look considerably bigger than the other. So, no matter how many times you want to keep telling me that "whether I have 12mp, 18mp, 24mp, 36mp, it won't end up mattering in reality", I have to say I completely disagree with you, and that it DOES matter to me, for the reasons I have just illustrated. Obviously this clashes with your "megapixels never matter" mantra/lifestyle that you hold so dearly or whatever, and thus you simply refuse to admit that there are actually some scenarios in which it does matter, but, just because you have a weird stigma about ever admitting that megapixels can actually matter, doesn't make it true.

"like, when its foggy in the middle of the night and you stand in the middle of a street and take a photo down the centerline of the road with the street lights glowing amber in the fog and they slowly melt into the fog as they converge off in the distance (this is one of my current favorite types of photography)"

The Bulwer-Lytton writing contest for 2012 is over already (www.bulwer-lytton.com) but you could try working this up and submitting it as an entry for 2013. Just kidding....

That's a varied list of photography interests you have. I'd say remember the words of that wise and famous photographer Abraham Lincoln: Some cameras are good at a lot of things and a lot of cameras are good at some things, but there aren't a lot of cameras that are good at everything. Like many others who post here (I suspect), I own a bunch of different kinds of cameras: Point & Shoot, interchangeable lens Micro-Four-Thirds, APS-C, and FF. Each camera has its strong/weak points and gets used accordingly. The only advice I offer you is to wait a month or two to see whether Nikon announces a new camera to replace either the d7000 or the d5100.

You still haven't said what subjects you shoot. It does make a difference. Leaves vs architecture vs animals vs people - it all makes a difference on how big you can make a print. (Edit: Posted as I was)

Fact is, sensor size is not the only determining factor printing large images. I'm not sure who pounded that garbly goop into your head, but it is incomplete and lacking information. Lenses you are using, the Iso, exposure, subject, tripod vs handheld, paper, ink, Jpeg or Raw, home printing vs Quick print shops (kinkos) vs professional services all make a difference. If any one of those things are off, it would be easy to incorrectly blame the camera.

Perfect Resize, Alien Skin's "Blow Up" and I think Topaz has one too, are all programs that can take a even 10mp image and create enormous prints (larger than your 4'x6') with little noticeable detail lost and is something you should look into. I have seen these programs used on 10mp images and blown up to wrap semi truck trailers. The software is also a hell of alot cheaper than a camera. I don't know of anyone who doesn't use one of those for large prints.

And your math is off. The difference between 12mp and 24mp is only 25%. 25% wider, 25% longer on each side. Note that the D600 is double the resolution of the D70s with a 6mp sensor. That would be 50%.

To illustrate by your standards you have set, a D800 will not do what you want. But the rest of us know, that even your current camera will will easily make a poster print.

Native Print sizes:
D70s 6mp = 3008 x 2000 /300dpi = 10.03" x 6.67"
D300 12mp = 4288 x 2848 /300dpi = 14.3" x 9.5"
D7000 16mp = 4928 x 3264 /300dpi = 16.43" x 10.88"
D600 24mp = 6016 x 4016 /300dpi = 20.06" x 13.39"
D800 36mp = 7360 x 4912 /300dpi = 24.54" x 16.38"

Like I said, I have seen 10mp images resized to 15' x 20' that looked great and used for advertising and their high standards. A lot of work went into it, but it can be done.

Of course you can always stitch images as well - But you haven't said what you shoot so I'm not sure if that would work for you or not.

I could put more but check out Thom's info on printing. I have have it bookmarked and he goes through more details that are factors in printing and to keep in mind.
http://www.bythom.com/printsizes.htm

Point being, 12mp, 16mp, 24mp will all do what you want. The camera you choose isn't going to matter. Really what it comes down to is how much you want to spend.

I ignored the last paragraph since it had nothing to do with information that was helpful to the discussion. I'm bowing out from this thread.

Anyway, as for what I want to shoot:

Basically a variety of things:

-Nature/mountainous landscape

-Beach landscape

-Beach sunsets/pier sunsets

-Old, rusted, junkyard cars/trucks

-Insect macro

-Plant macro

-Small-object macro & close-ups

-Foggy night time abandoned 3am street shots (like, when its foggy in the middle of the night and you stand in the middle of a street and take a photo down the centerline of the road with the street lights glowing amber in the fog and they slowly melt into the fog as they converge off in the distance (this is one of my current favorite types of photography)

-Night time city-scapes/city sky-lines

-And probably a dozen other types of stuff I'm forgetting off the top of my head.

The only stuff I don't really have much interest in doing is:

-Portrait photography

-Sports/action photography

-Bird photography

TaoTeJared:

Okay, yes, maybe 4 foot by 6 foot is unrealistically big and would need a medium format 50mp camera to be able to print that large at an acceptable PPI quality.

You are missing my point though: my point, is that whatever the largest size is that I can realistically print at with a 24mp camera, whatever that max size might be, let's say for the sake of the argument, oh, I dunno let's say 2 feet by 3 feet (I'm not saying this is actually the exact max size, I'm just trying to make a point here), whatever the max realistic size is that I can do on a 24mp camera, is going to be 50% wider and 50% longer than the max size I could equivalently do on a 12mp camera. Thus, it IS important to have more megapixels, since the bigger the max print I can make, the better.

Like, for example let's say the biggest I can make with a 12mp camera is 16 inches by 24 inches.

Well, okay, then at the same PPI level it would mean the biggest I could print that same photo if I'd used a 24mp camera instead would be 24 inches by 36 inches.

Being able to print 24x36 instead of 16x24 is a big difference to me, and would make me like twice as happy.

Do you see what I'm saying? Like, no matter how you try to break it down, of like "well, even with 24mp you couldn't do giant sized 4 foot by 6 foot, you'd need EVEN MORE megapixels to print that big" it's like, okay, yes, maybe so, but, my point is that regardless of what the actual max size I can realistically print at with a 24mp camera is, the max size that a 12mp can print at is gonna be just that much EVEN SMALLER than the 24mp camera can do, per equal PPI level.

This is the point I was trying to make... this is why I am saying that although for whatever reason, it's considered uncool/unfashionable these days to admit that there actually are some people for whom having more megapixels REALLY IS A GOOD THING, you have to be able to admit, that for those with a very specific purpose in mind, that being, to be able to print as big as possible at a good PPI level, more megapixels actually DOES MATTER. For everyone else it might not matter. For everyone else you may very well be able to say a blanket statement like "Frankly, I don't think anyone really needs more than 10 megapixels, anything over that is overkill at this point." But, for people like me that have the very specific printing goal in mind that I've described, you simply can no longer make that statement and have it be true, it does not apply in this specific case. In this specific case, more megapixels actually matters. Ugh, why can't you guys just admit it. Just be like "Okay, expf11, you are right, in this EXTREMELY WEIRD, rare, unusual, messed up scenario of wanting to print large, high quality prints to hang on your wall, then yes, okay, it is true that picking a camera that has more megapixels may actually be important, for once, unlike any other photography scenario other than that, in which it never matters, other than this very specific scenario." It's okay, nothing bad will happen if you admit it. The coolness police isn't gonna like drive up to your houses and be like "Sir, we've just got a call from a neighbor saying that you've been admitting that in one extremely rare/weird scenario of large-printing, megapixels actually DO matter. Thus, you have violated the Coolness Treaty of 2008, in which all photographers signed a formal agreement that they would officially deem it uncool to ever admit that more megapixels could ever be a good thing in any scenario ever no matter what." Lol, don't worry, that won't happen. I know you guys think it will, but for real, it won't,the cops aren't gonna arrest you for a breach of coolness for admitting this. Just close your eyes, and let the words flow from your fingertips and write "Okay fine, in this ultra specific weird scenario.... sigh... I can't believe I'm admitting this... but... YOU'RE RIGHT!". lol

Well you could always take my approach. Some say the D300 is too old. But you can grab one for $550 or so, start building your lens collection and when/if the D400 ever comes out, sell the D300 for $450 and consider it $100 learning investment. I love my D300 but I'm a birder so speed, af and build are awesome for a "cheap" camera. Just my humble opinion...

Huh?

R8R said:
Ok, a contest is in order:

donaldejose vs expf11

Longest post wins.

GO!

TaoTeJared said:
Now that was funny!

+1

Oh man, if the D7200 comes out before the D400 I pity the foo's moderating this forum.

expf11 - 4 foot by 6 foot printing is huge especially if you are hanging in your home. The viewing distance is I'm sure less than 10-15 feet. That would mean you would be looking at a medium format system with 60mp for that to look great with lots of detail. Depends on the subject, color or B&W and what is your personal degree of acceptable quality. Software like Perfect Resize 7 Pro and a few others would be needed for that type of close viewing prints.

I do completely understand the process and info needed to accomplish this type of printing. My point was that if you work with a good printing service, the pros there can help you to your goal. What ppi is needed for prints can greatly change depending on the systems that the printer utilizes. Most who plan on printing as large as you want already have the printer picked and have received their information on what is needed.

TaoTeJared said:
You haven't said at all what you really want to shoot, or like to shoot, or where you feel your camera is failing you. It is really hard to help if we don't know what you need help with.

You still haven't answered this. I understand what you "Want" to do, but not what you want to shoot. Depending what your subject is can make a huge difference in the needs of a system and the option you would look at for software and how it will print. Even various types of landscape photography changes what is needed.

I'm only suggesting that your focus on a couple of singular variables out of 1000s that all work in unison. It may be more prudent to choose a camera that reflects more than just a couple of variables.

R8R said:
Ok, a contest is in order:
donaldejose vs expf11
Longest post wins.
GO!

Now that was funny!

Long post contest, funny! I am often amazed at how people can say so little in a short post when there is so much to say on the subject. Then again, maybe I just think there is so much to say on the subject being discussed!

I apologize for my overly long posts. It's just I have this bad habit I've developed when I notice that people are misreading or misunderstanding my posts, that I start to make my post longer and longer and more repetitive to try to drill home my points so that I won't have to re-clarify any part of it that people misunderstand if I can avoid the misunderstandings beforehand by being extremely overly thorough with my post. But then, of course this tends to backfire, cuz the longer I make my post, the less carefully people read it, which makes the misunderstandings all the more severe, at which point I go even more overboard and make my posts even more thorough and repetitive which makes them read it even less carefully and so on and so forth in a vicious cycle until my posts become ridiculously long.

In this specific case, for example, one of the major misunderstandings that occurred just a few posts ago is that someone clearly misread my initial post, in that he didn't see the part where I mentioned, (numerous times too, for that matter) that my whole intention of switching to canon or nikon is that I would ONLY strictly buy FX lenses, even though I'd be using a DX body, that way when if I were to switch to a full frame body later on, I could actually use the lenses I had accumulated while I was on my old DX camera, due to being careful to never buy DX lenses and only buy FX lenses.

But, he didn't see that part of my post, even though I said it like 3 or 4 times just to try extra hard to make sure that people would notice that key point, and thus he accidentally thought my plan of switching systems would be pointless, because he thought I was gonna just get DX lenses once I switched over anyway, in which case there would be no point in switching anyway, since I'd need to get a whole new batch of FX lenses to go with my full frame camera if I upgraded to full frame later, in which case it wouldn't matter whether I was going from pentax to nikon FF or nikon to nikon FF if my lenses were DX anyway.

But, of course, this is NOT the case, since like I said, I would only be getting FX lenses, even for my DX camera. But, if nobody read me say that, then, that's how these super long, repetitive, frustrated posts happen in the first place, of me trying to make sure everyone gets what I'm saying so I don't have to keep re-clarifying these aspects of my posts that people missed or misunderstood.

Ok, a contest is in order:

donaldejose vs expf11

Longest post wins.

GO!

TaoTeJared said:
Ricoh bought Pentax and now it is stable again. They were making great strides until the world economy snapped and then they were in limbo and couldn't combat marketing just as Nikon and Canon made their new releases.

Minor tweaking is really all the K-5 needed and that was a major release. It's not the same sensor or the inside guts either.

No one really needs huge MPs. My D800 is obnoticus at 36 and outside of work, I don't enjoy taking it for family stuff because of the massive files. It just is not needed, nor adds anything. Consider 16mp is what the D4 is and what Pentax is sticking with. All the M4/3rds camera's and Fuji are sticking with 12-16 as well. So you can be sure, for the next 3-4 years camera makers believe 16mp is enough. Interestingly, the really high end compacts are staying with 10-12mp except Sony, but they always "cram" too much of the useless stuff into their products. After the last few weeks of a bunch of family stuff, I really am looking at a Fuji X-pro1 or the Oly OMD-M5 (swaying toward the Oly for the AF) because the systems are smaller and so are the files.

up-rezzing techniques: I read the article you linked and I never think that hard about it at all. Note that they say a 8mp = 16 x 24 print. In 10 years I have only printed that large maybe 10 times out of over 400,000 photos. Rarely is anything ever printed above 8x10. If the large printing is what you are looking to do, I would suggest finding a printer who includes basic photoshop for resizing before printing. I have seen many who offer the service very cheap or just include it in the price. Point being, unless you crop massively on your photos, (which you should use your feet more and get closer) leave the large printing to the professionals. If you print large files non-stop, then the D600 is what you should get. If it is less than 10/year - it doesn't really matter much.

In 5 years and only spending $2,000 in that time? That is not a lot really. Photography is not cheap for sure. If you just have "kit" glass now, you could look at it as starting over. But if you just replace your DX glass with Nikon DX kit glass and you move to FX, It's really not any different. Point being, move now, move later - probably doesn't matter much and it just comes to personal choice.

You haven't said at all what you really want to shoot, or like to shoot, or where you feel your camera is failing you. It is really hard to help if we don't know what you need help with.

As far as the switching to Nikon and then getting dx glass being no different as far as switching to FF than trying to upgrade from a whole different brand, since the lenses can't be carried over in either scenario, I am well aware of this.

However, if you read my entire first post in the thread, I was careful to mention, repeatedly, that if I switched to Canon or Nikon, I would strictly by FX lenses to use on my DX Canon or Nikon camera. That way I would be able to carry them over to my FF camera later on if I upgraded to FF later on. If I was just planning on getting DX lenses for my DX camera after switching to canon or nikon, then yea I agree it would be pretty pointless of a hassle to even bother, since then obviously I'd still have to get myself a whole new FX lens lineup to use on my FF if I got an FF later, but, like I said a bunch of times in my original post, that was not my intention, I wanted to get FX lenses for my DX camera.

And then, as for the part where you said the high-mp D800 felt way excessive to you and that you didn't see any circumstance in which people need more than 12-16mp, I would say I both agree and disagree:

For 99% of people, who only use their photos on the web, or on their ipad, or printing out small printer-paper sized prints to put in a photo album or to have small picture frame type of prints, then sure, obviously I would agree you don't need anywhere near 30+ megapixels for any of that stuff. Even 10 megapixels would be more than enough, for those formats.

HOWEVER... for people who fall into that tiny minority of people that actually intend on making very big, like 4 foot by 6 foot, high quality prints to have professionally framed and hang on the walls of their home the way people would hang paintings on their walls, for these rare people, it actually DOES matter how many megapixels their DSLR is.

Up-rezzing comes at a cost of sacrificing some image quality, and the more severely you up-rez, like, by a factor of 4, or 8 or something like that, the more and more severely it'll worsen the image quality when you do that.

Thus, in that rare (but important, to me) scenario of making large prints, it actually just plain really DOES matter to have more megapixels. It enables you to be able to print at a larger size without having to up-rezz as severely, or, print at a lower PPI level than you wanted to. So, in the end, it enables you to have a higher quality print per whatever print size. It's like, yes, obviously you CAN print a 4 foot by 6 foot print from a 12mp camera, but, if you print the same exact photo taken with a 24mp camera you would be able to either print it at 50% bigger width/length dimensions at the exact same quality level, or, print at at the same size, but with twice the image quality level. Either way, it's a good thing whether you choose to use the extra megapixels to go bigger than you could with the other cam, or, use it to go the same size as you would've with the other cam but at a higher PPI quality level.

And, as far as not needing to worry about the quality of my large prints unless I'm making large prints with great frequency, I strongly disagree.

The way I see it is this: the whole point of my photography hobby, the whole thing that makes it fun for me, is striving for that rare, one in 10,000 photos image that I manage to get just right, that I deem worthy of spending the money on making a really big, really high quality print of to frame and hang on my wall. Every time I go out and take photos, in my head I'm thinking "Oh man, this is fun, I wonder if this photo will be the one that comes out super great and becomes my next wall-hanger", the "will this one be the one?" aspect of it makes it that much more fun for me. However, if I knew that in that rare once or twice a year moment that I managed to get that amazing photo, that when I tried to have it printed huge and high quality to hang on my wall, that it was NOT gonna be high quality to the standards I wanted, because there just wasn't enough megapixels to print it as big as I would've wanted to, cuz you can only up-rezz so much before it noticeably detracts from the image quality, and can only print down to a minimum PPI level of somewhere around 150-175 PPI before that too wrecks image quality if you try to go too much below that PPI level, then, in the end, it just comes down to needing more megapixels, to where having 24mp really is just thaat much better than having 12, in this very rare, but very important (to me) specific printing scenario.

The way I see it, these printing moments are going to be far and few between, so, in those rare times that they finally happen, I want them to be GLORIOUS, not just "good" or "acceptable" because I got a camera with half as many megapixels as I could've if I had just waited a few more months before making the switch.

Don't get me wrong though, I fully understand that I am an extremely weird, unreasonable, rare, wtf-ish type of person in this regard, lol. But, hey, that's just the way I see it. Printing a really big, really high quality print of a photo that I PERSONALLY took myself with my camera, is like my ultimate wet dream. For others, their goal might be just to print album-sized photos to compile the best album of hundreds of photos to show a nice body of work to their friends and family. For others, it might be to have good photos to share on the web on facebook or on flickr or on their blog or what have you. Different people have different goals/interests of what they want to ultimately do with their photos. Mine is to every once in a blue moon get to make a huge, amazing quality print to hang on my wall of only the very best of the best of the best of the tens of thousands of photos I took that year, or few months long period. So, I want a camera with some horsepower! lol

When will the next Nikon DX be announced? Very soon, like within 6 months. It will be either the D7200 or the D400 or both. It will be either 16 or 24mp. Image quality will exceed the Pentex K-5, currently the top rated DX sized sensor (but just one point ahead of the D3200 on DxOMark).

Here is a question about dealing with large file sizes when shooting "family stuff" which will never be printed larger than 8x10. Why not shoot Small size and JPEG Basic to reduce the size of the files? And how does this work? The camera sensor is using the full sensor to record the image so it must be downsizing inside the camera before saving to your removable memory card. I have not tried to test this but suspect downsizing the image may tend to reduce noise also.

expf11 said:
That said, I can't help being a little worried about the longterm prospects of my brand. Whenever I've browsed the DPReview forums for the past year or two, all I ever see people saying about Pentax is "how much longer before they go out of business/suspend operations" etc.

Plus I also got concerned when they didn't even bring out actual new DSLR's this year, and just did minor tweaking to the K-5, but not a whole new camera to have either a K-R replacement or a K-5 replacement camera.

Ricoh bought Pentax and now it is stable again. They were making great strides until the world economy snapped and then they were in limbo and couldn't combat marketing just as Nikon and Canon made their new releases.

Minor tweaking is really all the K-5 needed and that was a major release. It's not the same sensor or the inside guts either.

No one really needs huge MPs. My D800 is obnoticus at 36 and outside of work, I don't enjoy taking it for family stuff because of the massive files. It just is not needed, nor adds anything. Consider 16mp is what the D4 is and what Pentax is sticking with. All the M4/3rds camera's and Fuji are sticking with 12-16 as well. So you can be sure, for the next 3-4 years camera makers believe 16mp is enough. Interestingly, the really high end compacts are staying with 10-12mp except Sony, but they always "cram" too much of the useless stuff into their products. After the last few weeks of a bunch of family stuff, I really am looking at a Fuji X-pro1 or the Oly OMD-M5 (swaying toward the Oly for the AF) because the systems are smaller and so are the files.

up-rezzing techniques: I read the article you linked and I never think that hard about it at all. Note that they say a 8mp = 16 x 24 print. In 10 years I have only printed that large maybe 10 times out of over 400,000 photos. Rarely is anything ever printed above 8x10. If the large printing is what you are looking to do, I would suggest finding a printer who includes basic photoshop for resizing before printing. I have seen many who offer the service very cheap or just include it in the price. Point being, unless you crop massively on your photos, (which you should use your feet more and get closer) leave the large printing to the professionals. If you print large files non-stop, then the D600 is what you should get. If it is less than 10/year - it doesn't really matter much.

In 5 years and only spending $2,000 in that time? That is not a lot really. Photography is not cheap for sure. If you just have "kit" glass now, you could look at it as starting over. But if you just replace your DX glass with Nikon DX kit glass and you move to FX, It's really not any different. Point being, move now, move later - probably doesn't matter much and it just comes to personal choice.

You haven't said at all what you really want to shoot, or like to shoot, or where you feel your camera is failing you. It is really hard to help if we don't know what you need help with.

msmoto said:
on PAD, I am continuously amazed by the posts...I think are D800, only to find out it was a good photographer with a D40.

No kidding!

One could argue that most people with digital cameras these days are held back by themselves, not the camera in their hand.

Some of my favorite pics I took with my wife's D40 and my D70s.

The promo photos that my band uses, actually both of my bands, were taken with the D70s and the D7000.

More often than not it's your ability to evaluate and harness the light that's holding you back, not the camera. Yes, certain cameras are better than others in low light (or almost no light) but if you supply the camera with enough GOOD light, the pictures can look amazing.

Photography is nothing without good light. You might have the best sensor ever made, and it can capture all available light, but what if the available light just has terrible character?

It's all about the right light. Note I said right, not necessarily plentiful.

Where you can't find the light you need, learn to make it.

Here's a D7000 pic, shot with a 35mm f/1.8G and one off-camera SB-700. Could this have been a much better image with the next generation of crop sensor cameras? I dunno. Maybe a little more dynamic range? Maybe sharper if I needed to print this as a 7' high tapestry? Is it good enough, right here and now?

Yea... I think maybe you have a point there.

I guess what it all comes down to then is I have to decide just how likely it really is that I will actually upgrade to full frame within the next like 5ish years or so. If it is a real possibility, then, obv I need to switch to Canon or Nikon from Pentax now while I still can, before I get in too lens-deep on my Pentax to be able to make the switch without wasting infinite money.

If, on the other hand, the chance that I'll realistically ever want to upgrade to FF is pretty low or non-existent, then maybe I guess I could just stick with Pentax.

That said, I can't help being a little worried about the longterm prospects of my brand. Whenever I've browsed the DPReview forums for the past year or two, all I ever see people saying about Pentax is "how much longer before they go out of business/suspend operations" etc.

Plus I also got concerned when they didn't even bring out actual new DSLR's this year, and just did minor tweaking to the K-5, but not a whole new camera to have either a K-R replacement or a K-5 replacement camera.

I guess what I'm worried about is like, what if I buy like $2,000 worth of pentax lenses for my Pentax dslr, and then they either go out of business, or maybe not go out of business but stop coming out with new good DSLR's anymore and switch to just only making point and shoots and interchangeable-lens tiny-sensor garbage like that Q-series thing or whatever it's called, and then I'm stuck with all this Pentax glass but am not able to upgrade my body to some awesome 40mp camera like 3 or 4 years from now let's say, when Canon and Nikon are coming out with hardcore APS-C cams like that down the road, and I'm just stuck with my old 12mp K-x all those years later, and my only upgrade option being a 16mp k-5 IV or whatever micro-revision they are on by then or something, you know?

Maybe it's an irrational fear, but even if its only like a 10% chance of that happening, that's already a big enough chance to make me feel ultra nervous and worried of how bad that would suck in the off chance that were to happen.

::rubs hands together nervously, lolz::

1. There is always a APS-C sensor camera around the corner. One is release about every 3 months for either Nikon or Canon. If full frame (FF/FX) is outside your price range, then don't worry if Pentax is going full frame or not. They skipped it and went medium format.

For Nikon: It seems that price is a deal breaker - and since you are starting over, It might make sense to buy a D7000 when a D7100 comes out as they will slash the prices. Then you can get lenses. Don't consider a D90 or D300 - too old.

I would consider sticking with Pentax. Pentax has a great system. I think Pentax actually listens to photographers better than other makers. Their lens line up has filled out and includes everything you could ever want. The K-5 II is what everyone here (or the most vocal) want in a D400 release. At $1,100 it is the same price of a D7000 and it was just released and will be about $300 cheaper than a D400. If you have no plans going pro, and you like Pentax, that would be a hell of a camera for sure. Their last version had better low iso than Nikon and Canon.

MP and full frame is marketing hype unless you are a pro or have $3,000-$5,000 to spend for glass etc. - and that is coming from someone who has a D800. I have printed poster sized photos from a 10mp sensor easily.

I guess what I was suggesting is that one can have very nice prints from only a few megapixels in the sensor. The megapixel thing is as much about merchandising as about quality.

Having said all this....there can be no doubt, the quality of the sensors and the megapixels is improving all the time. And, more MP seems to give a greater depth to the photo in tonal range, cold, etc. This is similar to the differences we see in the lens manufacturers. Very subtle, yet when we are using the "better" equipment it seems we get "better" photos.

And, this is for many of us about enjoying the process as you have described. So, more power to you.... go for it!

And, the original thread is about "when" Nikon will give us the next iteration of the various camera lines.... which will no doubt be best covered in the Main Blog...http://nikonrumors.com/