[clackers]

Then after some time that initial investment is amortised and company starts making money.

Well, that's the theory that Fuji, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Olympus are peddling to their nervous boards, and the incumbents Canon and Nikon are rejecting.

But despite also being a very happy NEX 7 user, do pardon me if I'd like to see the actual MILC sales this and the previous few years to see if this bullishness is justified or not.

(I nearly typed MILF sales, but they would be very different! )

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Last edited by clackers; 05-27-2014 at 03:54 AM.

[gazonk]

Pentax will be far better off increasing the flash sync of the K3 (a shutter issue, mostly)

As someone who uses flash only on rare occasions, I don't really want them to do that if it means a noisier shutter. The smooth shutter of my K-5 (less noisy than many mirrorless cameras!) is one of the things I really love about it.

[Uluru]

Well, that's the theory that Fuji, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Olympus are peddling to their nervous boards, and the incumbents Canon and Nikon are rejecting.
But despite also being a very happy NEX 7 user, do pardon me if I'd like to see the actual MILC sales this and the previous few years to see if this bullishness is justified or not.
(I nearly typed MILF sales, but they would be very different! )

Other part of the equation is what companies believe and what they consider it is their goal. Ricoh has taken a long road of constant restructure that won't let just a couple of years. In fact, they are thinking more and more restructure in the next decade. And yet they want to keep all balances positive. Their aim is to make itself immune to market oscillations and other impacts, which is formidable, but it involves constant and very aggressive change of goals.

[clackers]

Other part of the equation is what companies believe and what they consider it is their goal. Ricoh has taken a long road of constant restructure that won't let just a couple of years. In fact, they are thinking more and more restructure in the next decade. And yet they want to keep all balances positive. Their aim is to make itself immune to market oscillations and other impacts, which is formidable, but it involves constant and very aggressive change of goals.

You're guessing, Uluru, but I think you're guessing accurately.

Ricoh look to be treading warily in an uncertain world, making incremental but real improvements.

The rivals for third position seem to be gambling aggressively, and their engineers are coming up with very interesting products, but have they made the radical dent into Canikon the investments require?

Some like Samsung have the cashflow to survive getting it wrong, others haven't.

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Last edited by clackers; 05-27-2014 at 05:50 AM.

[Aristophanes]

As someone who uses flash only on rare occasions, I don't really want them to do that if it means a noisier shutter. The smooth shutter of my K-5 (less noisy than many mirrorless cameras!) is one of the things I really love about it.

Noisier, costlier, less durable.

---------- Post added 05-27-14 at 09:46 AM ----------

You're guessing, Uluru, but I think you're guessing accurately.

Ricoh is treading warily in an uncertain world, making incremental but real improvements.

The rivals for third position seem to be gambling aggressively, and their engineers are coming up with very interesting products, but have they made the radical dent into Canikon the investments require?

Some like Samsung have the cashflow to survive getting it wrong, others haven't.

Ricoh has not been afraid to innovate. Witness the GXR and the GR which innovates on priceerformance.

The k-mount is mature. not much tech can be upgraded in large steps. Going all mirrorless will pretty much require a new mount or sacrificing the size savings to keep the legacy mirror box flange distance. I suspect this is what the DA Limited line is supposed to do, and why we saw a zoom released to that spec.

On a related note with lenses (per the OP), I tried a Fuji XT-1 the other day with the 18-55 kit. I tried it beside a Pentax K-50 with the 20-40.

The Fuji body is dimensionally smaller only in depth, but about 1.5cm. That's quite a bit, and it is lighter. But you add the lens AND the hood on and almost all of the size/weight advantage goes away. The DA Limited series precisely engineered and integrated hoods, plus lighter weight, compared very favourably with the Fuji mirrorless. If Pentax simply replaced the OVF with and EVF given their current lens design philosophy they might be able to transition K-mount. The Fuji lenses aer OK, but add a traditional petal hood to one and they become much like any Canikon offering. The DA Limited integrated hoods are...brillaint and a real market differentiation. Why Pentax doesn't advertise this is beyond me.

[Clavius]

As someone who uses flash only on rare occasions, I don't really want them to do that if it means a noisier shutter. The smooth shutter of my K-5 (less noisy than many mirrorless cameras!) is one of the things I really love about it.

Don't worry, the K-5's shutter can be amplified twice as and still seem really very quiet when you hear it right after the screwdrive noise.

[clackers]

The Fuji lenses aer OK, but add a traditional petal hood to one and they become much like any Canikon offering.

I think a lot of the mirrorless cameras suffer from the small-body-but-big-lens syndrome when asked to do serious work.

I have a tripod collar for my NEX's K mount adapter. Not for its looks!

[Clavius]

In some ways, I'm not surprised that Fuji or Olympus get so much coverage whether or not their cameras are da bomb and or merely bombs. What they've grasped it that it's not enough to be standard-issue corporate-complacent; you have to stand out from the pack.

/Rant over/

You rant correctly. Fuji, Sony and Olympus have all found their own ways of standing out and they do that well. Ricoh however, is a very conservative company that doesn't like taking risks. They're still stuck on trying to make gear that everybody like, compromising to much to really shine in any area.

[lytrytyr]

Because Ricoh don't have their act together, I'm afraid. Your post led me to take another look at Home - RICOH IMAGING UK LTD. and https://mypentax.ricoh-imaging.eu/ (the site switching itself isn't ideal, imho) which are my local points of entry to the world of Pentax and Ricoh. Yes, the whole presentation is vastly better than it was during the Hoya terror but it's still very sketchy imo. There's no depth to it, just a few marketing brochures refabbed for the web so far as I can see. The descriptions of the metal DA Limited lenses are product-list bald and short.

The home site

HOME | RICOH IMAGING

(in English)
has much more depth to it than many of the individual country sites.

[IchabodCrane]

I'm calling you out on this. CIPA only started breaking out MILCs in their reported numbers from all ILCs in 2012 but 2013 sales fell 15.4% vs. 2012 compared to a 14.7% drop for DSLRs. MILCs are 38% of the ILC market in Japan but 19% in the rest of the world (only 10% in the Americas). For a relatively small market there are more competitors than in the DSLR market, and that means a few of them are going to either fish or cut bait in the near future. How many manufacturers depend on MILCs for most of their total revenue across all divisions? None, so making a decision to stop production is easy to do.

The Pentax expert in the camera store I shop in believes mirrorless will continue to take an increasing share of the ILC market and quite possibly become the dominant technology. You can ask "what does he know?" but he almost certainly knows more than me.

[filoxophy]

The home site

HOME | RICOH IMAGING

(in English)
has much more depth to it than many of the individual country sites.

I had visited various pages on occasion at this site, but had never really perused it as a whole...despite some awkward English, it is very good. The US site has improved recently, but still could use some filling out.

[Kunzite]

The Pentax expert in the camera store I shop in believes mirrorless will continue to take an increasing share of the ILC market and quite possibly become the dominant technology. You can ask "what does he know?" but he almost certainly knows more than me.

That reminds me of "nobody got fired by buying IBM". You can of course claim the MILCs will eventually rule the world, and nobody can say it won't ever happen.
And, of course, your Pentax expert most likely is a MILC user.

But let's extinguish hype with facts (i.e. the CIPA data, which is public):
- MILCs didn't take an increasing share of the ILC market, for the 2013 inclusive. They appeared, grew and then plateaued. In 2013 they actually lost some ground compared with DSLRs. Before that, DSLRs were growing fast.
- In the first 3 months of this year, MILCs are indeed gaining; but 3 months is a short period to know for sure.
At most we would be able to claim they are starting to take share.

[Aristophanes]

You rant correctly. Fuji, Sony and Olympus have all found their own ways of standing out and they do that well. Ricoh however, is a very conservative company that doesn't like taking risks. They're still stuck on trying to make gear that everybody like, compromising to much to really shine in any area.

Have they really found their way of standing out? And well?

Sales are down across the board.

Olympus is in deep trouble. Sony is bleeding money. Fuji admits to losses in their camera sales.

Sales are how we determine success.
Ricoph takes risks. They took one buying Pentax when the entire industry knows that DSLRs are a mature, perhaps low- to no-growth tech. They brought out the very unique GXR. They went all in on the cultish Ricoh GR. I suspect they took a bath on the GXR concept, but they also did not oversell it.

This is a market rewarding patience right now. Fuji appears to have the best momentum (we said that about Olympus 18 months ago) but their X-system is very expensive. Fuji appears to be playing more for the hobbyist crowd and that's saturated, veering into no growth. So it's a cannibal market right now.

---------- Post added 05-27-14 at 03:16 PM ----------

That reminds me of "nobody got fired by buying IBM". You can of course claim the MILCs will eventually rule the world, and nobody can say it won't ever happen.
And, of course, your Pentax expert most likely is a MILC user.

But let's extinguish hype with facts (i.e. the CIPA data, which is public):
- MILCs didn't take an increasing share of the ILC market, for the 2013 inclusive. They appeared, grew and then plateaued. In 2013 they actually lost some ground compared with DSLRs. Before that, DSLRs were growing fast.
- In the first 3 months of this year, MILCs are indeed gaining; but 3 months is a short period to know for sure.
At most we would be able to claim they are starting to take share.

MILC's will eventually rule save for some retro (Nikon Df was premature and failed attempt to re-nostalgia the market.

Take a look at the teardown of the Sony A7:

LensRentals.com - The A7R teardown: A look inside Sony’s awesome full-frame mirrorless camera

That camera is designed for cost-effective assembly, updating, and servicing. The next gen EVFs will probably get me interested (I am Mr. Fussypants). Their next gen sensors with on--sensor PDAF will probably match dedicated PDAF. And so on.

But you see where MILCs fail. Fuji's video sucks. So people hesitate and buy something cheaper and then a GoPro. The lack of consistent vision by the Japanese makers is unbelievable right now. They've been totally sideswiped by wi-fi, for example. it's taken 2 products cycles too long for wi-fi to get into $1,000 cameras. Ridiculous.

[Biro]

I think a lot of the mirrorless cameras suffer from the small-body-but-big-lens syndrome when asked to do serious work.

I have a tripod collar for my NEX's K mount adapter. Not for its looks!

Quite right. I also have a micro four-thirds kit and, while I have most of the system's fast primes, all of my zooms are pedestrian in speed. A few friends ask me why I don't go for something like the Panasonic 12-35mm and 35-100mm f/2.8 zooms. It's because those lenses aren't that tiny and (for me anyway) kind of defeat the purpose of micro four-thirds. As long as I intend to keep my Pentax kit, those larger (and much more expensive) zooms don't make sense for me. Since I just picked up a K-5 IIs body, I guess I'm still with the K-mount crew for a few more years.

[IchabodCrane]

That reminds me of "nobody got fired by buying IBM". You can of course claim the MILCs will eventually rule the world, and nobody can say it won't ever happen.
And, of course, your Pentax expert most likely is a MILC user.

But let's extinguish hype with facts (i.e. the CIPA data, which is public):
- MILCs didn't take an increasing share of the ILC market, for the 2013 inclusive. They appeared, grew and then plateaued. In 2013 they actually lost some ground compared with DSLRs. Before that, DSLRs were growing fast.
- In the first 3 months of this year, MILCs are indeed gaining; but 3 months is a short period to know for sure.
At most we would be able to claim they are starting to take share.

You guessed wrong. He's almost exclusively a K-5 user.