[Lev]

I appreciate Pentax for when time is coming it does its maximum, pushes capabilities beyond its limits. Knowing their production power, we mostly left suprised how they even manage to introduce something. But when they do, they are giving us tools one can only dream about.

I'm making this post because I'm bit angry how a huge companies like Sony can produce their products like candies, for example this new 70-200 f2.8 GM II lens, which I'm almost sure was designed by a robot, human being can't design something like this in such a short period of time. They have created it because the first version was behind all other competitors. Now, in a moment, well, technically, it's better than anything, and entire youtube talks about it. BUT, for me, it does not matter, because I have a lens made by Pentax which has something special, never measured by numbers.

[ffking]

The real shame of it is that so few professional photographers use Pentax lenses because the particular qualities that Pentax build into their best lenses are something that can make a picture stand out from the crowd in a very competitive arena

[Lev]

The real shame of it is that so few professional photographers use Pentax lenses because the particular qualities that Pentax build into their best lenses are something that can make a picture stand out from the crowd in a very competitive arena

agree, but sometimes it seems like Pentax is not competing with someone, it just exists, and let it be so if we are happy.

[Bob 256]

You're seeing the transition from making a quality, well-designed and built product, to cheaper mass produced and throw-away products based on previous design work with a few tweeks thrown in. It's much like some power equipment that used to be built to last forever (and in fact I still have fully functioning drills, saws, etc., from the 70s) moving to cheaper to manufacture equipment which barely meets (maybe) long-term use suitability. A lot has to do with how much you are willing to pay which is why we are seeing that former philosophy in equipment manufacture fading away - people want something for nothing (or at least less than it should be worth). A quiver goes up my spine every time one of these throw-away objects has to go into the land-fill, a terrible waste of resources.

Amen to the fact that Pentax and some others still have respect for their manufacturing goals of quality and longevity (at least for the present).

[Lev]

people want something for nothing

I got it, philosophy is not the same, but prices are going up, not down. Your point is that just Pentax is not following this transition?

[MossyRocks]

I would have to agree, there does seem to be something special about Pentax lenses, even at the low end. By low end I mean the DA 18-55 which I found much nicer for a kit lens when compared to the canon kit 17-85. There the DA 18-55 was used on a K2000 and the canon 17-85 was used on a 30D so it wasn't like I was using wildly different camera and if anything the Pentax camera would be considered the interior one.

Then there are those special lenses like the limited and * ones which really do have something special about them.

[biz-engineer]

I'm bit angry how a huge companies like Sony can produce their products like candies, for example this new 70-200 f2.8 GM II lens

Don't confuse business agenda and customer needs. These big business employ entire teams of engineering, they need to keep those teams alive because it takes time to build teams with product specific know-how, it take time to build a team, so once they have the lens design team running, they keep making and advertising new lenses even if no one asked for it. And it's the same at Apple, and all other phone makers, they keep making new models to keep their business rolling, even if no one need the new products, they find ways to make people buy new things they don't need. A lot of electronic businesses survival is based on rapid obsolescence and disposal of products that are still working fine.

[zapp]

I know a couple Nikon, Canon, Sony, Leica lenses to dream about. I like my Pentax glass and appreciate some special lenses, with different haptics and image drawing capabilities. Not all Pentax glass is special or great, but the overall philosophy serves many needs.

[Lev]

I know a couple Nikon, Canon, Sony, Leica lenses to dream about. I like my Pentax glass and appreciate some special lenses, with different haptics and image drawing capabilities. Not all Pentax glass is special or great, but the overall philosophy serves many needs.

Yeah, me too, nice opportunity then to sell em for a good amount of cash

[C_Jones]

My Pentax lenses are excellent.

[Paul the Sunman]

Not all Pentax glass is special or great, ...

Absolutely. However, they seem to put their heart and soul into the special ones. The new DFA 21 Limited is a case in point (TBC), as indicated by the recent Designer's Discussion. The mainstream brands don't talk (or think, or behave?) this way. It certainly does make for a slow release schedule though.

[pinholecam]

I recall listening to a program on the BBC about Australian wine growers (the "newcomers" ) giving the French a run for their money because they were not too seeped in tradition and looked at wine making scientifically.
Likewise, lens design has moved on and computer aided design does mean a very large uptick in productivity.
There are plenty of current designs to "drag and drop" into the software (and the computer does the test to ray trace and compute the numbers )
You probably can get an army of interns to play with them over the course of a summer vacation company attachment and get some viable designs.

How it relates to my starting statement... well.... the lines between not speaking when pressing the grapes (least the yeast gets angry) and knowing that soil composition, water, etc (ie. the scientific ) are really lapped over.
So the computer aided designs aiming for certain numerical targets can result in a better "hit" of good lenses nowadays and more so in the future as even the "artistic" aspect of lens design gets quantified.

Been using 2 recent purchases from Samyang.
The 45/1.8 and 75/1.8, they are so almost perfect especially for the price that I find it hard to comprehend that it came from a until recently "3rd rate" lens company.

[uttam.hathi]

how i wish that pentax made all metal lens, instead of plastic lens. light weight metal as magnesium or aluminum but metal. that itself would be such an appealing feature. plastics reduce weight only marginally but looses its longevity as to its lifespan.
imagine pentax limited lens in plastic that itself speaks volumes. Of course if it an high on repair ability index thats would be a killer.

[Paul the Sunman]

how i wish that pentax made all metal lens, ...

I can't find any plastic on my DA Limited lenses, and very little on my * lenses. As far as I can tell, the new DFA 21 Limited is an all-metal build.

[biz-engineer]

1) I don't think of Ricoh not using CAD (Computer Aided Design) for their lenses, this applies to at least all D-FA lenses released since 2016, and lenses released earlier

2) I don't think the pace of releasing new lenses has anything to do with using CAD or not

CAD software is relatively inexpensive for business, typically $50K or less for software licenses, even family sized consulting firms are using CAD, some of them being specialized in math modeling and things such as finite element computations and optimization for mechanical engineering, fluid mechanics, thermal, optical, electro-magnetic and electro-mechanical , multi-domain simulations. There are thousands of boutique engineering consulting firm using CAD tools. What's much more costly than CAD software licenses is product prototyping for testing in the real world, because it can involve the design and manufacturing of tooling (molds, masks etc..) unique for that product, that can't be reused for anything other product, and that can be super expensive (that's where CAD helps reduce iterations, thus reduce engineering costs). Then, what's even more costly is to build enough product stock to fill retail channels just to have the product available to sale at various selling points world-wide, and that require a lot of cash and risk not being sure to sell everything that's in the sales pipeline, and write off unsold inventory is very costly. And that is why Ricoh are cautious about not releasing too many products and only releasing the "right" product that will achieve maximum sales / inventory ratio. So, Ricoh are much more picky for the kind of products they decide to launch.

Assuming that Sony lenses are "designed by a robot" and Pentax lenses designed manually, is likely wrong. It's even highly likely that Ricoh are using the same "design robot" that all other camera makers are using, especially if the robot is designed by a third party vendor.