I see this as a win for Ricoh as they buy a real legacy and heritage for less than the cost of global ad campaign to remind us Ricoh makes cameras too.
Ricoh offered zero interchangeable lens autofocus slrs according to your link.
Ricoh borrowed the K Mount from Pentax, then their "pin" fouls up Pentax cameras. Slip in the feeler gauge trick or chop the lens off the Pentax camera.
Ricoh suffered many delays making their modular system:
Modular offers an answer to a question so few ask.
With sensor tech getting ever better, why attach old sensor to a new lens ?
Indeed, Pentax cameras is a big win for Ricoh, all for just 124 million dollars.
As a continuing Pentax owner I'm not sure Ricoh buyout is a win for me.
Ricoh rich heritage from 1977:
"The company finally took the name of its products, becoming Ricoh (K.K. Rikō, ㈱リコー) in 1963. From 1964, it made a few 35mm SLR with interchangeable 42mm screw lenses, most of which were called Singlex. In 1977, it switched to the K mount introduced by Pentax, for a series of cameras called XR, made until the 1990s. The only autofocus SLR cameras made by the company were the various Mirai, with non-interchangeable zoom lenses.
In 1994, Ricoh released the Ricoh R1, a compact camera with panorama mode. It was followed by various other deluxe compact cameras, such as the GR1, and the company continued this trend into the digital era with the GR Digital.
In 2009, Ricoh released the Ricoh GXR, an interchangeable lens camera without bayonet. The GXR is an interchangeable unit camera system in which lenses are changed by using a slide-in mount system to attach camera units to the body. The lens, image sensor, and image processing engine are integrated into the camera units so the body itself does not contain an image sensor."
Originally posted by Erik