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Friday, January 27, 2012

Rumour or Not: Additional Information about the K-01 and the New 40mm XS Pancake Lens and System

See what Photo Rumors reports, I guess that they have a source to the insider information.

Quoted and my own remarks, one by one as follows:-
  • The camera is designed by a famous designer
Well, are those designer chairs or whatsoever always looking nice? :-o
  • The new 40mm f/2.8 pancake lens is less than 1 centimeter thick and my understanding is that it will work only with the new K-01 body
It seems that the back focus register distance of the new XS lens(es) has been shorten despite that they might still use the K-mount, just like what Canon did years ago for the creation of EF-S lenses based on the original EF mount. Btw, if the new 40/2.8 Pancake is 1 cm thick, a quick comparison to the existing DA40/2.8 Limited of which the thickness is in 1.5 cm reveals that the back focus distance could be decreased by 5mm, only, which means that the new back focus distance of the "new" lens system in K-mount variant is in about 40 mm (roughly), which is not really short anyway when compared to other existing mirrorless systems on the market, but yet shorter than the original EF mount's, say for example, which should be able to adapt most of the old SLR lenses of different 135 systems.
  • The Pentax K-01 and the 40mm lens are covered with some kind of rubber-like material for better grip
Not much meaningful and important for this point, frankly.
  • The K-01 will have an external mic output for video recording
The K-7/K-5 had that. The most important things instead about video recording IMO should be that if AF (or at least the ability to re-focusing) will be available during video recording, and/or, the ability for manual Av/Tv/ISO adjustments for video recording, which the "latest" Pentax K-5 body lacks both or even the Pentax Q still lacks the former.