[Anvh]

lol if its not a K mount what will it be? make a new mount that nobody has glass for? stupid. make it canikon mount? not possible and financial suicide. only thing it might be would be a change to the k-mount.

How many these days do have FF pentax glass?
I don't except the DFA 100mm.

[seventhdr]

If you head over to ricehighs blog he's stating that K-Mount might very well be abandoned and not be compatible with the future FF Pentax. But it is from ricehigh so ya... take it with a grain of a proton... But if they neglected the K-Mount users, oh man, your looking at pentax armageddon...

I know that people think that the K-Mount is sacrosanct, but Pentax may have ideas that we don't know about or want to acknowledge. Some possible ideas for a new Pentax Mount:

1. It has been stated here, and in other forums, that the diameter of the K-mount restricts the amount of shift that a full frame sensor can have without moving the sensor beyond the image circle of current full frame lenses.
2. The K-mount is substantially a "Mechanical" mount. The electronics are there to describe the lens, and the working and range of apertures and the distance. Canon has a full electronic mount, and most other modern mounts are electronic. Maybe Pentax wants to move to a full electronic mount.
3. There is a possibility in Pentax's "think different' attitude and the desire to play in niche markets where the competition is less cut throat, that Pentax may opt for a Mirrorless full frame mount. They have experimented with this with the K-01 and have probably learned a lot of lessons. A different mount with a shorter registration distance would allow the use of an adapter with appropriate contacts to accept Pentax Full frame and APS-C lenses. See the Micro 4/3 and Canon EOS-M mount adapters.

Lets just see what the future holds. Pentax seems to be the camera manfuacturer most interested in photographers.

It could ba a very challenging future.

Regards

Chris Stone

[wlachan]

Perhaps the coming FF will be a thin mirrorless with EVF and hence a new mount...

[thechumpen]

I hope so. I can't wait for all those second hand lenses to come on the market from those that upgrade to the latest and greatest

[Kerrowdown]

hope rice high is wrong about this...

Now would this be the first time...

[macTak]

It must be true! The new FF will have a square sensor as has been occasionally speculated, and therefore the lens mount will be a square as well. Backwards compatibility will be available via a simple adaptor that squares the circle

[StephenHampshire]

I don't believe it.

Me neither!

[EchoOscar]

If you head over to ricehighs blog he's stating that K-Mount might very well be abandoned and not be compatible with the future FF Pentax. But it is from ricehigh so ya... take it with a grain of a proton... But if they neglected the K-Mount users, oh man, your looking at pentax armageddon...

Ho hum.
I haven't been sure whether to be frustrated or just amused when reading this forum during the past few days, at least the news/rumours section of it. I've learned that the proverbial K-3 that is supposed to come some day is nothing new but, during the past week or so people seem to have gone bonkers on some rumour about the proverbial FF Pentax to arrive... yesterday. I was a bit puzzled about what was that all about. Then it turns out that behind all that commotion is just some kid with apparently way too much idle time in his hands. Geez!

I don't know whether to say kudos to the kid for being able to play an entire forum community and beyond without even writing inside it, or shame on you lot for letting some nerdy kid spin you like a bunch of baby lemmings. He certainly got the attention he wanted.
What is wrong with you people? Haven't you got a camera to shoot some pictures with? Bugger off and go take some new pictures!

[LaurenOE]

Impossible.

What *is* possible is that the existing K mount will undergo something along the lines adding the "A" contacts and screw drive. Remember, the SDM contacts were not originally designed for that, as they were for the power zoom function connectors.

I can see more contacts or a change in the contacts a-la the Q, but the base K mount will always be there.

There is room in the K mount specification for enhancement, and if anything, that will take place.

I say look for an enhancement along the inside of the K mount flange or in a place that has nothing to do with a legacy implementation.

[MRRiley]

If you head over to ricehighs blog he's stating that K-Mount might very well be abandoned and not be compatible with the future FF Pentax. But it is from ricehigh so ya... take it with a grain of a proton... But if they neglected the K-Mount users, oh man, your looking at pentax armageddon...

Why would anyone go to ricehigh's blog for anything?

[EchoOscar]

Now, with all that out of the system, let's forget about the original header of this thread and speculate on the concept of a new full frame Pentax, while totally ignoring all rumours from anywhere. For starters, I have not read that ricehigh or whoever kid's blog post, nor do I have any interest in doing so in the future. Didn't even know a one existed, until now.

With that said, however, I find the concept of a totally new full frame Pentax without the K mount quite interesting, and something to look forward to, rather than to denounce before it even exists.

Therefore I don't quite agree with all the negative and seemingly narrow thinking visible in these threads. If you widen your perspective to see the whole industry, you might notice that other brands, much larger than Pentax, have done it all the time, and got away with it.
In fact, it's a trend that is likely to grow stronger, so why should Pentax stay with the K mount alone forever? Actually, even Pentax already have another one, namely the Q mount. Perhaps this is partly about the Penaxians expecting to always get just a faster horse, rather than something new.

So forget about the K mount and the proverbial K-3 for a while, and look back a couple of decades, and then all the way to this day. What has happened since circa 1983:

1. Minolta designed a new autofocus system and finally in 1985 released a brand new series of SLR cameras with a brand new lens mount that was not backwards compatible with the previous MD mount in any way. They didn't even provide a MD to AF adapter. They got away with it.

Soon Nikon and Pentax adapted the Minolta AF patent but didn't design a new lens mount at this time. They thought the electronic contacts would be enough for the foreseeable future. It has sort of worked, so far.

2. Canon followed suit a few years later, and introduced their own EOS system with a brand new EF mount and lenses. Again, looks like Canon got away with it, too.

Heck, even Leica has done it way back in the 50's, when they came up with the M mount, with the old 39mm screw mount coexisting along with it for a while. Not to mention Pentax, who came up with the K mount, replacing the m42 mount. Yikes.

Fast forward to the 2000's and digital becoming mainstream.
3. Olympus abandoned the old OM mount and came up with a new one, FT, and later on mirrorless µFT.

4. Canikon came up with both APS and FF digital bodies, so did Sony, and in practical terms, each of those brands do have two separate lens lines within their current dSLR lens lines, the ones made for APS sensors, and the ones made for full frame. They may share the same lens mount but in practical terms they could as well be separate lens lines. But that's beside the point.

Then, fast forward to circa 2009 until to date, and the arrival of the mirrorless cameras.
5. Olympus did it again,
6. so did Sony, and
7. even Canikon and Pentax did it, sort of.

But this time, they did it with a new twist. They didn't replace the old mount with a new one, á la Minolta and Canon back in the late 80's, but came up with an all new genre of cameras. So, what has happened during the past few years? Has the old Minolta AF mount faced an 'armageddon' since an all new E mount arrived? Or, has the opposite happened, with Sony selling new cameras with both lens systems, to an even wider audience? Sure looks like it, doesn't it. Canikon are still ruling the market today, but again that's beside the point.

The mirrorless system cameras are coming, and they will eventually replace, at least for the most part, the traditional (d)SLR systems, like it or not. As soon as the Japanese and Korean mainstream manufacturers get past their local p&s upgrader syndrome, and the stalling tactics used by the mighty Canikon, and start designing proper mirrorless cameras for the rest of us. There are some signs that it might happen soon.

I think the K-01 sort of proved that the mirrorless system with the old SLR lens mount doesn't quite make sense, even though it sort of works. Canikon, on the other hand, have only made an half-assed attempt on the market so far, apparently because they don't wish to risk their existing status quo on the DSLR market, and therefore have only aimed at the so called soccer mom and p&s hipster market.

Only Sony have gone much further so far, by not only redesigning their entire DSLR line, but also by making the E mount line a future-proof system in both stills and video shooting. They've even managed to put a full frame sensor behind the E mount in their VG-900 camcorder. The entry level NEX bodies are more or less glorified p&s cameras but, the higher end models are evolving into something more useful with each new update round.

Therefore it would make perfect sense for Pentax to come up with an all new lens system, á la Sony NEX, and thus make sure they're in the game in the future, too. The old K mount is slowly approaching the natural end of its life cycle, and will reach the end of the arch, eventually. There was a reason why Minolta dumped the old MD mount early, and replaced it with a new one, and why Sony came up with a new mirrorless mount a few years ago. Even Leica dumped their regular (d)SLR mount around the time digital started becoming mainstream, and concentrated on their rangefinder (mirrorless) and medium format offerings.


In fact, I think right now Pentax/Ricoh have an interesting window of opportunity to be the pioneer and lead the way (again), by making an all new mirrorless system based on a full frame sensor, and doing it in Pentax/Ricoh style, without the point&shooty gimmicrky the NEX models are plagued with, so far. It would also make perfect sense to do it with the medium format camera, eventually, but not too soon.

However, it would not make much sense (if it was technically feasible to begin with) to do all that with the old K(AF2) mount. To come up with a new, natively digital and mirrorless system, they simply need an all new design with a shorter back focus distance, and thus a new lens mount. If it's full frame, it might probably be slightly larger than the K mount, but not necessarily.

The new Pentax (FF) mirrorless camera, along with an all new batch of lenses and a K adapter could peacefully coexist with the K mount DSLR's and lenses, until the old system would slowly fade away naturally, within a decade or two. That could be a chance for Pentax to stick it to the mighty Canikon, and make them look obsolete. It would also win over an all new batch of Pentax fans, which would eventually more than replace the few old curmudgeons who refuse to let go of their native K mount DSLR system. Again, which wouldn't go away, anyway, but coexist with the new mirrorless system, as long as it's feasible.

I believe that even Nikon will have to come up with a new lens mount to replace the existing old AI mount, eventually, so right now Pentax might indeed have a unique window of opportunity to be the trend setter once again, and gain some new market share, for a while.

However, that window of opportunity won't be open for too long, because others will do it, too. Sony already have a FF E-mount video camera, and a stills version may be under testing as we speak. No doubt Canikon will come up with their own versions, too, eventually. Olympus have already gone fully mirrorless within the mFT genre, and their E system has become a small niche, to slowly but inevitably fade away in the background. A bit shame for the great glasses and the E-5, though, but perhaps they'll come up with a new OMD body that can use those properly in the near future. Change the brand and the sensor size, and you'll probably see what might happen within a few years with Pentax, too, albeit in less radical fashion.

Sorry about a lengthy lecture/rant, but I think the topic is sort of interesting, as long as we just ignore the meaningless meta talks revolving around some rumours and attention-seeking kids, and concentrate on the possible future concepts.

[EchoOscar]

I'm on a roll here, so I'll do one more.

So, what could that new, so far purely theoretical mirrorless FF Pentax system be like?

Well, I have been daydreaming about it in another thread earlier, and I say it again that, apart from the new mount and lenses, (IMO) Pentax already have a working concept. All they have to do is to take the new MX-1 design with brass top plates and all, make it slightly larger to accommodate a built-in EVF and a full frame sensor, and then equip it with a brand new lens mount. Well, that would be one possible approach, anyway.
They could even come up with a series of MX-x models with both APS-C and FF sensors with just one new lens mount and one series of lenses. Think along the lines of the Fuji X-Pro 1 and X-E1 cameras, or even the Sony RX line, although it's a fixed lens one.

The articulating rear TV is not a must, IMO, but if it's there, so be it. Then they could build a nice user interface simply by taking the best existing parts from K5, K-30 and K-01 and voilá, a brand new killer system by Pentax!

I would be quite tempted to buy into a system like that. I believe many seasoned Pentax K users would, too, provided that there was an adapter to mount the old K mount glass.

As we have learned from the example of Sony, the two different systems wouldn't really fight each other that much, because the DSLR with an OVF and the mirrorless with an EVF are so different. Even if there was a K-3 with a FF sensor and pimped up KAF2 mount some day. Which still is, and may well remain, a myth. We'll see.

[LaurenOE]

Why would anyone go to ricehigh's blog for anything?

I would answer that question if I could here.

[NickLarsson]

I agree with EchoOscar here, I wouldn't find it insane that Pentax comes with a new mount and at the same time is able to provide some kind of backward compatibility with the K-mount. Thus everybody would be happy.

Also, maybe they are thinking about new technologies like this one :

#16. The Pentax Q's shutter system allows it to synchronize flash at up to 1/2000s. Will this technology be used on other Pentax cameras?

[Wakashiro, Takaoka] We have to clear up one point- the Pentax Q body doesn't have a shutter, the shutter is in the lens, which is why we can achieve that kind of flash synchronization. But K-mount cameras do have a shutter inside the body, so that's the biggest difference.

If K-mount lenses had a shutter, technologically and logically speaking we could achieve that concept.

[boriscleto]

So forget about the K mount and the proverbial K-3 for a while, and look back a couple of decades, and then all the way to this day. What has happened since circa 1983:

1. Minolta designed stole a new autofocus system from Honeywell and finally in 1985 released a brand new series of SLR cameras with a brand new lens mount that was not backwards compatible with the previous MD mount in any way, because the MD mount had no room for expansion. They didn't even provide a MD to AF adapter. They got away with it until Honeywell sued.

Fixed it for you.