[MarkJerling]

I have last night received this message from Henry Chan, from Cactus. As you may be aware, it's been reported that Cactus may be shutting down so I figured I'd ask so as to get the full story. Here's Henry's reply:

"Dear Mark,

Yes, the news is true. We are getting out of the camera equipment business. As you know, our product line is very limited, and it is not sufficient to pay for the R&D costs for making new products, or providing further firmware updates for new camera models. We have left the business for quite a while indeed, but for the warranty services we tried our best to maintain as long as possible. Since most of our product warranties had become obsolete, we decided to close the service and warehouse by the end of December 2020.

The online store is to be closed next Monday (21 Dec). The website and firmware update will still be available for the next few months. We are not certain, but we will try our best to provide email technical support for a few months more as well.

Thanks for the support from Pentax Forums for all these years. I'm sure many of the Pentax users who use Cactus are introduced by your forum. We sincerely thank you so much for providing such a great platform for PentaxCactusian!

You may disclose the content of this email in your forum. We will make a short notice on our site a few days later.

With our best wishes,

Henry Chan"

Needless to say, I'm really disappointed to hear this. Cactus makes / made great products and it's sad to see them exit the market.

[UncleVanya]

Someone needs to archive their content.

[jatrax]

Especially that firmware update..........

[c.a.m]

I have last night received this message from Henry Chan, from Cactus.

Thanks for making your enquiry, Mark, and for sharing the reply. Their departure certainly means a loss for many users.


- Craig

[lazarustx]

That's sad to hear. Feels like the Pentax world keeps getting smaller and smaller.

Regards,
Rodney

[DWS1]

Someone needs to archive their content.

I would if I knew how. Please some of you tech wizards here do this.

[Breakfastographer]

With wget (available for all *nix systems including macOS, and apparently even Windows (not a *nix)):

Code:

wget -r www.cactus-image.com

Or the longer, textbook version that tries to anticipate every possible issue that might arise:

Code:

wget \
 --recursive \
 --no-clobber \
 --page-requisites \
 --adjust-extension \
 --convert-links \
 --restrict-file-names=windows \
 --domains cactus-image.com \
 --no-parent \
 www.cactus-image.com

[MarkJerling]

With wget (available for all *nix systems including macOS, and apparently even Windows (not a *nix)):

Code:

wget -r www.cactus-image.com

Or the longer, textbook version that tries to anticipate every possible issue that might arise:

Code:

wget \
 --recursive \
 --no-clobber \
 --page-requisites \
 --adjust-extension \
 --convert-links \
 --restrict-file-names=windows \
 --domains cactus-image.com \
 --no-parent \
 www.cactus-image.com

Woooshh.
That was the sound of the text in your post going straight over my head.

[stevebrot]

Woooshh.
That was the sound of the text in your post going straight over my head.

I know what that text does, but would caution that it will get everything...need big hard drive...and might be shut down if detected as a denial of service attack.


Steve

[MarkJerling]

I know what that text does, but would caution that it will get everything...need big hard drive...and might be shut down if detected as a denial of service attack.


Steve

I'm not even convinced it will work. The updater for Cactus is an installer and the actual update is then installed directly to the flash or trigger, by means of the installer. The installer does not collect the update from the website, but probably somewhere off a server.

[stevebrot]

The installer does not collect the update from the website, but probably somewhere off a server.

That sucks. I hate it when makers wed their products to a service.


Steve

[Batman_]

Sad to hear the official news.

I think their margins must have been pretty small because at least when they started I thought they were selling quite well. At one point I had three V6's although I've kept one V6 II.

I liked the concept of re-using legacy flashes but relative to the price of new flashes, the V6 units were quite expensive. Also, once you required multiple flashes it required lots of AA battery recharging assuming you used re-chargeable batteries.

[bdery]

That's really too bad. Sad to see any player leave, sad when it's a good player like Cactus. I'm guessing they wouldn't keep up with the likes of Yongnuo and even more Godox.

[automorphism]

That's really too bad. Sad to see any player leave, sad when it's a good player like Cactus. I'm guessing they wouldn't keep up with the likes of Yongnuo and even more Godox.

Yeah. I have a Godox flash though and it is a pretty fine product. I hesitated buying Yongnuo because they had more failure reviews at the time I bought it but Godox seems to really strive to make something reliable.

[bdery]

Yeah. I have a Godox flash though and it is a pretty fine product. I hesitated buying Yongnuo because they had more failure reviews at the time I bought it but Godox seems to really strive to make something reliable.

Not to highjack the thread but yeah, Godox products are pretty good. I've been using some of their Li-Ion manual flashes for quite a long time in my studio, they are dependable. Their new TTL products, complete with their wireless protocol, seem pretty good too. I hope to be able to test further models in the future.