Leica's Record sales in 2023 is Exceptionally Good News for Pentax

Pentax's "workingman's Leica" strategy

By cjfeola in Columns on Jan 1, 2024

2023 was “the best year in Leica’s history,” Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, majority shareholder and chairman of the supervisory board of Leica Camera AG, told the French magazine Phototrend.

Those results are driven by the sale of more than 11,000 M11s and M11 Monochroms, said Kaufmann, plus an explosion in demand for film cameras. Leica is producing almost 5,000 M6 and MP 35mm cameras this year, up from just 500 in 2015; a number previously so low that the company considered disposing of the production equipment. And the compact Leica Q3 has taken off like a rocket, according to Leica officials.

All of this is great news for Ricoh Imaging, which has staked out a strategy that mirrors Leica’s, albeit at a much lower price point, and then some.

Consider:

  1. Both companies have flagship product lines that stubbornly cling to systems “outmoded” by mirrorless designs: Leica’s M Series still uses the coupled-rangefinders it perfected half a century ago, while Pentax stands fast with the Single Lens Reflexes (SLRs) that dethroned those rangefinder decades ago, led by, ironically, the Pentax Spotmatic.
  2. Both now offer unique black-and-white only models that sell for more than their color counterparts:
    • The Leica M11 Monochrom, the only black-and-white rangefinder
    • The Leica Q2 Monochrom, the only black-and-white fixed-lens compact
    • The Pentax K-3 III Monochrome, the only production black-and-white DSLR
  3. Both offer compacts that are so wildly popular that they are often on backorder: The Q3 for Leica, and the GRIII for Ricoh Imaging
  4. Both companies use special editions to drive sales: Leica’s Q series, for example, has offered James Bond and Reporter special editions, along with the Monochrom. Pentax takes it even further. Not only does the flagship K-3 III have special editions such as the Jet Black and the Monochrome, the latter has special editions of its own, such as the Monochrome Matte Black edition.
  5. Both companies have made public commitments to film. Lecia, as noted above, is selling M6s as fast as it can make them. Pentax hasn’t shipped any new film cameras yet, but it has been publicly promoting The Pentax Film Project and documenting the development of new film cameras. Pentax officials remain coy, but rumor has it that the company will ship a new compact 35mm film camera with a fixed lens in the first half of 2024.

Legacy Pentax Glass Lives On with Mirrorless

Classic Pentax K mount and Auto 110 lenses on other digital cameras

By cjfeola in Columns on Aug 7, 2023

The Pentax Auto 110 Super is my favorite camera of all time. Oh, I’ve had better cameras – had them at the same time, even. Surely the two Pentax LXs and the MX I carried daily as a photojournalist were better. But the camera I carried by choice was the Auto 110 Super loaded with Kodachrome 64, in its custom leather bag filled with jewel-like lenses.

Kodachrome is no more, alas, never mind Kodachrome 110. And no other film available in 110 ever seemed adequate. Which has always bothered me, given how good those lenses were-especially the 110 70mm F/2.8, which has long been rumored to be the inspiration for the Limited series of Pentax glass.

So when I happened to read that Micro Four Thirds sensors are almost exactly the same size as 110 film, I ordered a used MFT camera and an adapter immediately and started polishing up those 110 lenses.

I’d already been using the 110 lenses on my Q and Q7 with an adapter. I ended up mostly using the 70mm, where it acts as a crazy long 389mm telephoto. If you have a Q series camera, grab yourself an adapter and some of the 110 lenses – especially the 70mm.

On Micro Four Thirds the 70mm works the way it was designed; reason enough for me to have invested in the system. It’s good to have back one of my all-time favorite lenses.

Pentax 110 70mm, Olympus Pen-F, Kodachrome emulationPentax 110 70mm, Olympus Pen-F, Kodachrome emulation. I've always loved the way this lens renders color.

Pentax 110 70mm, Olympus Pen-F, Tri-X emulation

Pentax 110 70mm, Olympus Pen-F, Tri-X emulation

The K1000 that Survived Being Run Over by a Tank

An incident that made me "Pentax4Life"

By cjfeola in Columns on May 10, 2023

Mark had parked his K1000 on the tread of an M60A3 main battle tank and gone off to goof off, as was his want. This was a mistake. An M60A3 Patton tank weighs 52 tons and when parked is as stable as a building; it is, however, a lot more mobile than any building when it wants to be. And this tank wanted to move. Mark ran for his camera – foolishly – when the treads started rolling, but the K1000 zipped down the tread, over the front – and then under.

It took us a while to dig it out. The lens glass was fractured. Fortunately, it was a Pentax 50mm F/1.7, which came on every camera in those days. We had so many we couldn’t give them away. Literally. Mark put a new lens on, and finished up the shoot.

Surely any camera would have been crushed if a tank ran over it on a paved or even a dirt road. Fortunately for Mark and his K1000, we were US Army photojournalists in the mud and muck of Ft. Stewart, GA, also known as “20 square miles of the Okeefenokee Swamp avoided by anyone with sense.” How swampy was it? On another exercise I photographed a similar tank sunk to the turret in the muck. A second tank was sent to tow it out, and promptly sank next to it. So a tank wrecker was sent in – and sank. Cooler heads then prevailed and put a stop to things before an entire battalion was down there. They ended up waiting until spring ended and the mud dried up some to dig all those tanks out.

Lessons Learned from 3 Fast Prime Lenses: 35mm, 50mm, 85mm f/1.4

How these primes have made me a better photographer

By mhsp1948 in Columns on Aug 19, 2020

I love photography; it is a wonderful hobby and lots of fun. I like shooting landscapes, cityscapes, street photography, portraits, walkarounds, travel photography and close-ups on flowers. On occasion I shoot sports and wildlife with my 200mm, 300mm primes and my 150-450mm zoom on my Pentax KP, but this article is about the three fast prime lenses that made a difference in my photography. They have made me a better photographer causing me to use even better composition skills when shooting with my zoom lenses. I will tell you which is my favorite prime focal length towards the end of this article.

Three fast prime lenses are as follows: the Samyang 35mm f/1.4, the HD Pentax-D FA* 50mm f/1.4 and the Rokinon/Samyang 85mm f/1.4 and these meet the needs I have in the above-mentioned areas of photography.  When using a Pentax K-1 or K-1 Mark II in manual mode and manually focusing (focus assist) with a prime lens tends to slow me down, and that’s a good thing! It causes me to think about, as well as evaluate, what I want to photograph and from where I want to take the photo. It makes me take the time to compose a good shot. It allows me to be and feel creative, and it  causes me to think about the scene. It keeps me from being bored or lazy as sometimes can happen with a point and shoot or zoom lenses. It makes me move instead of shooting a series of photos from one spot all with the same angle. That is what a prime lens can do for the photographer. It adds elements of composition that, without moving around, I might never have realized. Prime lenses cause the photographer to begin to compose the scene and take fantastic shots. Prime lenses tend to be very sharp from corner to corner, and they have excellent bokeh and clarity and can be very fast lenses. Sometimes f/2.8 on a premium zoom lens is not fast enough and I would like f/1.4,  and my prime lenses deliver.   This gives me a lot of latitude in how, when, and what I can photograph.

On Assignment with a Visual Journalist and Pentax Gear

Albert Siegel photographs the new Emperor of Japan

By PF Staff in Columns on Aug 25, 2019

Albert Siegel is a Tokyo-based visual journalist who just happens to be a long-time Pentax shooter. In a field dominated by Canon and Nikon, Albert is one of the few in the news industry who shoots with an alternative system. This video may not be about his gear, but it's a fun look at Pentax cameras being used to capture a historical event.

For those of you who don't know Albert, he's a contributor to this site and has covered CP+ for us since 2012. Since this was a memorable event to photograph, we asked Albert to tell us about some of his other memorable experiences using his Pentax equipment on the job.

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