Originally posted by Asahiflex
That 3D printed FF prototype is very unusual for Pentax. What gives? All prototypes up to now have been made from the real material. This can mean two things:
1. The design is far from ready as if they started just yesterday;
2. They want to keep the competition in the dark as much as possible, without showing too little to the Pentax customers.
When the 645D was in the prototype stage it always looked like a finished product. Pentax could get away with that because in that field (middle format DSLR) there is almost no competition, especially not from Canon and Nikon. In the case of the FF however, secrecy is key. The 3D product as it is now probably won't trigger Canon and Nikon enough to take notice of Pentax. And who knows, the camera might show up sooner rather than later. It's all part of the plan to deceive Canikon and keep existing (and old) customers happy.
The big difference is that I believe the FF will be released much faster than the 645D was. So they might not be able to show a prototype of the FF yet. (so they made a simple mockup)
I don't think Ricoh have been working on designing the FF camera for very long, and they plan to release it in less than a year from now.
645D was an ongoing project for more than 5 years before release (and was on hold for some time).
They might also want to show some info in early stage of the FF development to to prevent some existing users from jumping ship.
A mockup gives the message at bit more weight, than if only saying that they plan to release a camera at the end of the year.