[Nicolas06]

What are you getting at? Nikon's mistakes aren't incredibly relevant. My point remains. Sony continues to push the industry forward, while Ricoh is trying to make one lens work with their camera bodies.

I don't get Ricoh at all...the 645z is the only thing they've done in years that really seems like an unequivocal success, in terms of concept and execution. I guess the k3 could be included in that... But the failure to market it, the theta, the DA560, the KS-1, the DA limited zoom, the most recent action cam...it just seems like they are throwing products out there without any idea what to do with them.

ahaha, but man this is what every company does. You try to market product and create interresting things... I really said that you try. Success is not sure and it might not be at all linked to the quality of your effort or of the product. Pentax is a small company with a small markets, by definition the odds are against it. They don't have the money for advertising, for innovating that much, to attract the best talents. Don't think that if yourself or some or your collegues are not perfect and doing bullshit from time to time or make errors, it doesn't happen to Pentax (or Canon) employees too. Pentax employees also want to go home and would rush a thing to be done faster, Pentax employees will to not admit a mystake to not be fired or by fear of loosing the promotion they wanted for years.

So they have to be very carrefull and need to have many success to grow... While one that is already here just need to not do too noticably worse to stay in business.

If you think that's so easy give yourself 5 year to make a camera company that will deliver only outstanding products and be the #1 in 5 years worldwide... And we will be there to criticize it, remind you of all the mistake you did, complain your product are not innovative, missed their market and are too expensive. And when you are late, we will remind you forever how untrustfull you are and how you just seems to design product and make your company strategy by pure random.

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Last edited by Nicolas06; 06-11-2015 at 11:28 PM.

[fuent104]

ahaha, but man this is what every company does. You try to market product and create interresting things... I really said that you try. Success is not sure and it might not be at all linked to the quality of your effort or of the product. Pentax is a small company with a small markets, by definition the odds are against it. They don't have the money for advertising, for innovating that much, to attract the best talents. Don't think that if yourself or some or your collegues are not perfect and doing bullshit from time to time or make errors, it doesn't happen to Pentax (or Canon) employees too. Pentax employees also want to go home and would rush a thing to be done faster, Pentax employees will to not admit a mystake to not be fired or by fear of loosing the promotion they wanted for years.

So they have to be very carrefull and need to have many success to grow... While one that is already here just need to not do too noticably worse to stay in business.

If you think that's so easy give yourself 5 year to make a camera company that will deliver only outstanding products and be the #1 in 5 years worldwide... And we will be there to criticize it, remind you of all the mistake you did, complain your product are not innovative, missed their market and are too expensive. And when you are late, we will remind you forever how untrustfull you are and how you just seems to design product and make your company strategy by pure random.

I didn't say it was easy...and you're right, the company is staffed by people who are fallible.

However, the problems you and I both pointed out are caused by leadership moreso than a lack of funds. And, the thing is, plenty of other companies have come out of nowhere in the last few years to deliver innovative and successful products. A cohesive, visible strategy has been part of it.

[shhh]

But the failure to market it, the theta, the DA560, the KS-1, the DA limited zoom, the most recent action cam...it just seems like they are throwing products out there without any idea what to do with them.

Quite agree, some fab products, just no idea about marketing..

The phrase that springs to mind

all the gear, but no idea...

[D1N0]

haha no.. he has a point there.. with all the delays on this lens and no other communication on the body as well as no announcement of any other lenses it seems like a really stalled situation. I'm sure they'll get it together but I'm too thinking it will not be this year.

Then why did they give an estimate for the 70-200, right when the FF is supposed to be released. It has to be released before or with the FF. I just think it's a focussing issue or maybe they want a quicker motor in it. They gave the lens to a number of reviewers and pro's. They got feed back. Now they have to tweak it. The 150-450 wasn't delayed. The 70-200 was. The reason is technical. We probably won't here anything useful about the FF until a few days before it's release.

[Nicolas06]

I didn't say it was easy...and you're right, the company is staffed by people who are fallible.

However, the problems you and I both pointed out are caused by leadership moreso than a lack of funds. And, the thing is, plenty of other companies have come out of nowhere in the last few years to deliver innovative and successful products. A cohesive, visible strategy has been part of it.

You only see the winners, like we only hear of the sport professionnal that are the top level worldwide.

At the first level, 90% of all companies that are created go bankrupt in 3 years and most old companies finally go bankrupt at a point or another.

Being very successfull is quite the exception. The company you think of there 1 out of 1000 or even less.

[derekkite]

I didn't say it was easy...and you're right, the company is staffed by people who are fallible.

However, the problems you and I both pointed out are caused by leadership moreso than a lack of funds. And, the thing is, plenty of other companies have come out of nowhere in the last few years to deliver innovative and successful products. A cohesive, visible strategy has been part of it.

It always looks cohesive when it is successful. There are many many companies who have come out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere with equally cohesive and well thought out plans.

No one in the camera industry has the faintest clue what the market will do in 6 months. The technology on both ends is constantly changing, the usage patterns and spending patterns of the world marketplace are changing. The distribution channels are changing. The lead times for a well put together product is years. It is all crap shoot, and once in a while you get lucky. The 645z was one of those.

Ricoh's strategy is to stay alive. So far so good.

[normhead]

It always looks cohesive when it is successful. There are many many companies who have come out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere with equally cohesive and well thought out plans.

No one in the camera industry has the faintest clue what the market will do in 6 months. The technology on both ends is constantly changing, the usage patterns and spending patterns of the world marketplace are changing. The distribution channels are changing. The lead times for a well put together product is years. It is all crap shoot, and once in a while you get lucky. The 645z was one of those.

Ricoh's strategy is to stay alive. So far so good.

Well only a bit lucky, the 645z was pushed up a year to take advantage of new sensor technology. Sticking to the plan would have meant a 5 year cycle instead of 4. You can have a plan, but you also have to know when to bail. The downside is without diverting development assets to the development of the 645z, the FF probably would have been out by now. You can second guess these decisions, but these are untestable theories.

In that sense, all the internet experts who know what Pentax should have done while they contribute to the volume of posts on the forum, are really not contributing anything to real knowledge of real situations. They are just telling us what they think about how the world works. Most come with no credentials that support the idea that what they think has anything to do with reality. I'm sure Ricoh marketing has a full grasp of what is making them money, what isn't and week to week trends in sales , profits from different models etc.

It's somewhat amusing to see people post on a forum as if they know what Ricoh/Pentax should or shouldn't do. I saw a recent study that pointed out, dumb people always think they know more than they do... smart people know enough to undervalue their knowledge. Smart people know how much they don't know, not so smart people think they know everything there is to know.

Or in other words, every time you think you're really smart... you aren't.

[rawr]

dumb people always think they know more than they do... smart people know enough to undervalue their knowledge

Or to put it another way, [WW2 Australian govt poster]:

[reytor]

Well only a bit lucky, the 645z was pushed up a year to take advantage of new sensor technology. Sticking to the plan would have meant a 5 year cycle instead of 4. You can have a plan, but you also have to know when to bail. The downside is without diverting development assets to the development of the 645z, the FF probably would have been out by now. You can second guess these decisions, but these are untestable theories.

In that sense, all the internet experts who know what Pentax should have done while they contribute to the volume of posts on the forum, are really not contributing anything to real knowledge of real situations. They are just telling us what they think about how the world works. Most come with no credentials that support the idea that what they think has anything to do with reality. I'm sure Ricoh marketing has a full grasp of what is making them money, what isn't and week to week trends in sales , profits from different models etc.

It's somewhat amusing to see people post on a forum as if they know what Ricoh/Pentax should or shouldn't do. I saw a recent study that pointed out, dumb people always think they know more than they do... smart people know enough to undervalue their knowledge. Smart people know how much they don't know, not so smart people think they know everything there is to know.

Or in other words, every time you think you're really smart... you aren't.

I do agree with most of your post.
We all have biased opinion if things and see many things only after those ocurred.
Biased opinion happens when we -think - we need something and think the company X is stupid if they do not deliver just that.
The company X has it's reasons to do somthing else and most of the times their reasoning is the correct one - though not always.
It is also easy to "have been right" after something goes wrong. There are as many opinions as there are people and surely if something does go wrong, there's huge amount of persons that were "right" in their beforehand opinion.
The more noise you make beforehand the more you have chance to have been right when things go wrong.

Now I always think that I'm not as smart as many of my work mates, but I don't think that makes me any smarter...

[normhead]

Now I always think that I'm not as smart as many of my work mates, but I don't think that makes me any smarter...

And as long as you think that, you'll be the smart one.

My theory has always been let's wait and see what happens. Back in the old Windows vs Macintosh days, I always had an opinion, but my main opinion was, let's wait and see how this plays out. Apple's strength was always being first with new technology, guided by Steve Jobs ability to pick out what was useful new technology and what wasn't. So Apple never caught up with computers, but in new technologies, iPhones and iPads, they were out front and in a sense left Microsoft behind. But, I can look back on those debates, and there was nothing said in any of those debates that predicted what was going to happen. If I could turn the clock back 15 years and get a hold of those arrogant clowns, I'd say "look, you guys have no idea what's going to happen and you don't know crap". And it was true of everyone, doesn't matter which side you were on. Everyone wanted to argue which system had the best hardware available, in the end... that didn't count for much. They all ended up using the same hardware... but Apple got into the new technologies faster and more effectively than Microsoft did.

[reytor]

Steve's computers were always better than Bill's, but Bill had IBM to market and push the sales up, while Steve tried to do everything himself (in the early days).
So, Bill won the first battle but not the war, as Steve stroke back with portable age gadgets and Bill's move to buy Nokia was several years too late.

[normhead]

But be honest, absolutely no one predicted that buy 2015 things would play out the way they did,

[jatrax]

But be honest, absolutely no one predicted that buy 2015 things would play out the way they did,

I did, I just forget to tell anyone

[Nicolas06]

Steve's computers were always better than Bill's, but Bill had IBM to market and push the sales up, while Steve tried to do everything himself (in the early days).
So, Bill won the first battle but not the war, as Steve stroke back with portable age gadgets and Bill's move to buy Nokia was several years too late.

I think the winner is google even if apple and MS both make more money and have more cash and they do it by ensuring their product are free so more people go into the network (search engines, Android).

[angus]

Anybody still interested in the new lens? I had a chance to play around with a sample yesterday - there was a fair in Duisburg where Ricoh/Pentax provided the 70-200/2.8 along with the 150-450 and the 645Z complete with the 28-45/4.5 (a dream). Anyway, I posted some sample photos in a German forum and you can find them here Kleines UT Foto+Adventure in Duisburg - m. Bilder 70-200/2.8 • Pentaxians. The ones with the 70-200/2.8 are ## 10 and 15-18. I was quite impressed by the speed and the quality wide open even though the conditions were far from perfect, the shots were taken inside the exhibition hall, a former industrial building with bad lighting.

For me shot #15 shows quite nicely how well corrected the lens is for shooting into the light - this applies also to the 150-450 as you can see in shots ##3-7. I tested it along with the 70-200 and both showed absolutely no tendency for flare, even when shooting directly into bright halogen spots. Bokeh also looks very nice and smooth and I do believe that this will be a winner once it really does hit the shelves!