Interview with John Carlson of Pentax

Regarding future and current Pentax products

By PF Staff in Pentax Rumors on Jan 12, 2012

Today at the CES, Imaging Resource interviewed John Carlson, who is the Senior Manager or Sales and Marketing at Pentax USA (officially known as Pentax Ricoh Imaging Americas Corporation).  You can read the entire interview as originally posed here.

In the interview, questions about current Pentax products, the photo industry in general, the influence of Ricoh's acquisition of Pentax, and potential future products were raised.

As usual, almost no concrete facts were revealed via the interview, as employees aren't at libery to share the company's roadmaps and future marketing strategies.  However, we were able to extract at least a few interesting facts and ideas from the conversation:

• The Pentax 645 25mm F4 lens is expected to finally become available in March
• The K-r is now out of production, as we announced on our homepage last month
• The Pentax product line will continue under the Pentax name; Pentax is going to place its investments in the APS-C and 645D lineup despite having acknowleged the public desire for a full-frame camera.  However, John also says that full-frame isn't something that's "going away".

• Pentax acknowledges that there's a strong demand for focal lengths longer than those in the current lineup.  John mentions "something like a 300mm F2.8 lens" and that the company is "looking at" longer lenses, but doesn't comment on the roadmap or on the possibility of a 55-300mm WR lens.
• A Pentax Q zoom lens longer than the current 28-80mm 02 standard zoom lens is being explored.  Pentax will continue investing in the Q lineup.
• Pentax is open to third-party thethering software but isn't actively developing any for the APS-C lineup. (see also: PKTether)
• Manual video control and added video features in the DSLR lineup isn't a priority for Pentax.

Regardless of what the future may hold, one thing is for sure: the Pentax APS-C DSLR lineup isn't coming to an end, which is great news for current K-mount users.  We welcome further discussion of this interview on our forum.