Photokina 2014 and Pentax FF — to boldly go where no camera has gone before
Cologne, 15th September 2014
A day before the official opening of the Fotokina, Nikon organised a PR event. Mr Kimura, president of Nikon, addressed the assembly.
“We at Nikon believe that any company below our radars willing to challenge our DSLR range in any crucial feature will shift the stability of reality and will cause the rapture in the space-time continuum", mr Kimura was adamant. “In a similar fashion as to what happened with the GR and Coolpix A, but even more severely, that damned FF camera from Pentax may destroy the reality as we should know it, as our contacts warn us".
It is true that the buzz about the possible FF from Pentax has created ripples in the photography community since the beginning of digital imaging era. Many have been expecting it to come already, and it seems the amount of anticipation is growing, month after month, year after year. Many expect Pentax FF to change the landscape of the entire industry.
However, can this be, in fact, a design that has a reversed causality to one we usually think it is? In other words, can it really be that many users across the planet are eagerly expecting FF from Pentax because the expectations about its remarkable features come from the future?
“Nikon is afraid that Pentax has managed to obtain a technology from the 25th century to advance its market position in the early 21st century. There is no other explanation for many things now happening to Nikon”, their president remains firm. “Or shall I put it in other words: Pentax is altering, or erasing the history and the photography as we would know it".
The plot thickens
The explanation we've got from Ricoh Imaging about their Pentax plans doesn't sound anything like Nikon's fantastical scenario. In fact, what Ricoh has done with newest improvements in their FF camera development has no ground in film-like science fiction spectacle, but in extremely hard work behind the curtains.
"Yes, we are indeed working on an FF camera, and more specifically, on an A-mount camera that rumours were talking about. It's a totally flawed approach according to tech experts and long time users, and no one in their own mind would think of it as serious. However, we at Pentax believe that is exactly why we're going to do it!".
"We want to surprise our fans and are doing our best. An unorthodox K-01 project was only the beginning, as we have even sillier ideas in our cupboard too!"
So why is the future A-mount camera so threatening? Mr Kawauchi of Ricoh Imaging proceeds to explain.
A mockup of the future FF camera from Pentax. It will have a Heisenberg’s uncertainty formula engraved on the top plate made from solid chromium.
“As noted by Albert Einstein, Richard Tolman, our doorman Itako Tamagouchi and others, special relativity implies that superluminal, or faster-than-light particles, like tachyons, could be used to communicate backwards in time. And it is exactly what engineers at Ricoh Imaging have done for their next generation of the AF system for the A-mount camera.”
“Our FF offering must come with something new and unprecedented. Something others do not have. We already told our FF camera will be like no other. We thought this was just the right card!”, mr Kawauchi added.
The camera will sport the Heisenberg Compensator (HC). HC was a necessary component of the next AF system developed at Ricoh Imaging. The compensator works around the problems caused by the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, allowing the focusing sensors to compensate for their inability to determine both the position and momentum of the target to the same degree of quantum accuracy.
Tachion eddy enabled, HC enabled.
HC ensures that the tachyon eddy fired by the camera remained coherent during readouts, confirm positive lock on subject's future position before it has actually occurred, and no data is lost when clearing the camera's AF buffer from the parallel processing of the immense amount of photon energy readouts to determine the level of their energy, and by their energy their colour, before they even hit the sensor.
When the photons hit the sensor, the energy levels are then compared, and any adjustment is then done on the fly to deliver the superb colour and detail accuracy to the image.
Of course, a careful student of physics would already note that the AF system operating in such a way will receive the lock signal back from the subject before the AF sends the tachyon jet in the first place.
In other words, the image is taken before it even happens.
“We believe this will finally solve the perception problem about the Pentax AF system”, mr Kitazawa asserted smilingly.
Possibilities are endless
However, that is still not the best part of it all: when the user decides to switch off the Heisenberg Compensator, in addition to a series of images that are taken in a continuous burst mode in precise normal causality, user can also capture a burst of images that *could have been possible* to happen in that same time, but didn't.
"We definitely wish to expand the functionality of this feature through firmware upgrades. Just imagine what is possible: in a similar fashion to our SR-induced AA-simulator, user-selectable HC level will enable users various degrees of reality-demosaicing probability effects," mr Kawauchi asserted.
This is Schroedinger's cat. It's outside-the-box, sure, and now we know. Photographed 3 months 2 days 13 hours in the future with a Pentax FF.
"That is why we warn everyone about Pentax future cameras — they will totally alter the reality as we should know it. Because in our reality, the only way for users to enjoy FF photography is to buy our ever stripped down and cheapened FF DSLRs. But because Ricoh Imaging has already advanced so far, our plans are now being questioned by millions of users. That is not the future we have planned for ourselves", Nikon's president concluded.
"As a counter measure, it's time for Nikon to start building a time machine, go back in time to prevent Pentax producing world’s first SLR”.
(Found around the PF
