[Rupert]

The retro style Fuji adopted surely contributed to their financial success, but that doesn't mean it should be adopted by a company that wants to build useful cameras rather than old looking ones (whether they look "good" is a matter of taste and probably also depends on the age of the eye of the beholder).

I won't disagree with much of that...beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I have a former employee that has a 375Lb wife and thinks Mrs Rupert is a skinny little novelty. He never notices any woman under 20-250 lbs, but never misses googling over one that is over that weight. So....we do all differ. Age has some to do with it too, no doubt......but I think you underestimate the power of retro design. Noticed the new Dodge, Ford and Chevrolet muscle cars? Selling like crazy...all a blend of modern technology and retro design. Same with Fuji X cameras......plenty of modern advantages in a semi-retro body.
It doesn't have to be ugly to be functional or advanced in every respect.....but again, ugly is defined by the eye of the beholder. For me, I'm sticking with Mrs Rupert...skinny little novelty she is!

Regards!

[NotSteve]

I know this has been talked about before elsewhere on the forums, but it seems relevant to raise it again in the context of the upcoming FF -- how the K-7 housing was designed. This goes back a while but one hopes some of these folks are still part of the Pentax operation under Ricoh.

OK1000 Pentax Blog: Pentax K-7 Designer's Notes: Toshihiro Hamamura, Development Dept. Product Designer

As for the yet to be named FF, I personally like the mock-up. It's quite distinctively Pentax, sharing some lines with the K-7 to K-3, and I like the angles on the prism housing, much better to my eye than the shapeless humps on some of the Canon/Nikon FFs.

[jatrax]

Same with Fuji X cameras......plenty of modern advantages in a semi-retro body. It doesn't have to be ugly to be functional or advanced in every respect.....but again, ugly is defined by the eye of the beholder.

As for the yet to be named FF, I personally like the mock-up. It's quite distinctively Pentax, sharing some lines with the K-7 to K-3, and I like the angles on the prism housing

Design, as art, is subjective and everyone has an opinion or preference.
When I look at the Fuji I see elegant design in a retro sort of 'Steam Punk' style. Lots of wheels and gears and buttons and bumps and knobs. A real gear head delight. A work of art in many ways.

When I look at the Pentax mock up I see a no nonsense, professional level tool designed to go to work and make images. There's a place for both but I'm taking mine to work

[MadMathMind]

yep, one has to leave some room for speculation of the next model :-)

hm, I have a classic K2. no excuse not to buy the digital K2 now..

K-Everest? Nah, leaves no room for improvement. K-Aconcagua? Too hard to pronounce. Maybe K-Annapurna? Too long.

K-Kilimanjaro? Maybe K already stands for Kilimanjaro...

[windhorse]

K-Everest? Nah, leaves no room for improvement. K-Aconcagua? Too hard to pronounce. Maybe K-Annapurna? Too long.

K-Kilimanjaro? Maybe K already stands for Kilimanjaro...

Didn´t you watch Get Smart! K obviously stands for K!

[rawr]

I think K-FA would be nice. It would make it easy to match the camera up with suitable Pentax lenses.
The camera body is just a lens accessory, after all ...

[carpents]

The term "retro" refers to going back, i.e., taking steps backwards which only corresponds to an improvement if recent forward steps led to some form of degradation. There are cases in which modern developments are degradations because they were driven by cost-cutting measures of manufacturers or are due to attempts to dumb down interfaces to make them more mass-compatible, for instance.

There are only so many adjustments that you need to make for photography. That's why Fuji's designs have been such a hit.

I have a Sony with the soft buttons that can be anything. It's my least-favorite camera. I need aperture control, exposure compensation, and ISO control. I don't need soft buttons for...well, who knows what.

[Digitalis]

Pentax was the company who first introduced popup flash in a SLR. Then everybody thought it was a weird nonsense, but soon everybody followed.

Pentax has always been good at it when to comes to the weird stuff.

[philbaum]

@rawr - thanks for the explanation on Nikon WR re 610.

With the FF, Pentax has an interesting structure: 1 645, 1 FF, and a few APS. There's a labor cost involved in designing, mfr, and stocking a number of FF models, like Sony, Nikon and Canon. With Pentax, you can have any FF model you like, as long as its black There's got to be a nice profit margin in these FF cameras otherwise why would those companies have so many different models. I think Ricoh will do well with it.

[gazonk]

Tastes differ. I think it's cute.

+1! Looks better than the D750 in that picture, I think.

Now I only hope that the huge pentaprism lives up to what it seems to promise.

[Rondec]

The retro style Fuji adopted surely contributed to their financial success, but that doesn't mean it should be adopted by a company that wants to build useful cameras rather than old looking ones (whether they look "good" is a matter of taste and probably also depends on the age of the eye of the beholder).

The term "retro" refers to going back, i.e., taking steps backwards which only corresponds to an improvement if recent forward steps led to some form of degradation. There are cases in which modern developments are degradations because they were driven by cost-cutting measures of manufacturers or are due to attempts to dumb down interfaces to make them more mass-compatible, for instance.

I'm convinced that camera interfaces are not improved by taking steps backwards. There is nothing wrong with the touch and feel quality of a flagship Pentax DSLR so there is no need to go back to all metal mechanical interfaces that have their own disadvantages.

The "soft dials" approach of modern cameras has many advantages over the old mechanical dials. A non-exhaustive enumeration includes

• the function of dials can be changed according to a shooting mode or just user preference.
• A change of shooting mode can switch the function of some of the dials into "camera-controlled", with lots of different auto combinations that would never be achievable by just using "A" positions on mechanical dials.
• User modes can set any combination of dials to predefined values that are the user's preferred starting points for that mode (e.g., using 1/180s for the shutter speed when using a flash mode).
• It is easy to swap between 1/2 or 1/3 adjustments.
• Dials can have a double or triple function depending on whether one presses certain buttons in combination with them, etc.

Old-school dials have their advantages, e.g. that one can read setting while the camera is turned off but they pale against the advantages of soft dials.

AFAIC, "retro" with respect to camera design mostly means "nostalgic" and is not a step into the right direction unless a company is happy to produce less usable cameras in order to make some bucks by catering to a certain demographic sector.

There is nothing wrong with the latter, but the new Pentax FF should have optimal usability and should therefore not sacrifice ergonomics on the altar of "good" looks.

I guess not having shot these older cameras, I don't have a sense of nostalgia for all the dials they seem to put on them. I agree with you, that having buttons that can be set to do different things is nice. Current Pentax cameras with their two dials are super easy to adjust settings with. I would hate to go back. I don't see how the Fuji could match up with, say a K3 as far as ease of manipulation of aperture/shutter speed in Tav or Hyper Program modes. The buttons are pretty easy too.

My goal is to be able to do everything with my eye to the viewfinder and with the K5 and k3 models, you can do that. I suppose I could learn a Fuji layout, but it would seem like a step backward.

[robgski]

Noticed the new Dodge, Ford and Chevrolet muscle cars? Selling like crazy...all a blend of modern technology and retro design.

This is what caused me to by a 2008 Mustang, just by looking at the car, you knew it was part of a classic lineage. Muscle cars, my other other expensive hobby

The retro look always appeals to a certain group, and surely there is some steampunk fan who is figuring out a way to get an APS-C sensor into an old bellows camera.

Also, "K" is for "Knowledge" of course!

[eurostar]

I wonder why someone has photoshopped icons over the buttons of the FF mock up. I was believing that the function of any of those buttons can be user-assigned. It's the the thing that makes this camera stand apart from the others FF.

[philbaum]

We humans are proud of our intellectual capabilities. Yet we have this nostalgia trait. I remember the first car i ever had, a 1957 Renault Princess, 4CV, and if i could find one today - i'd probably be nutty enough to buy it.

Thankfully my nostalgia doesn't extend to cameras, for others it does - i get that.

One of the Fuji reviews, pointed out that the nostalgic dials on the exterior interfered with some of the automated sub-routines we expect of modern cameras. With Pentax, we like our TVA mode. How do routines like that work with 3 basic control dials, i.e. shutter, aperture, iso, on the exterior. Don't remember what model the review was on, - just don't expect that such nostalgic cameras have all the features we have come to accept as standard in our modern cameras.

[lukulele]

We humans are proud of our intellectual capabilities. Yet we have this nostalgia trait. I remember the first car i ever had, a 1957 Renault Princess, 4CV, and if i could find one today - i'd probably be nutty enough to buy it.

Thankfully my nostalgia doesn't extend to cameras, for others it does - i get that.

One of the Fuji reviews, pointed out that the nostalgic dials on the exterior interfered with some of the automated sub-routines we expect of modern cameras. With Pentax, we like our TVA mode. How do routines like that work with 3 basic control dials, i.e. shutter, aperture, iso, on the exterior. Don't remember what model the review was on, - just don't expect that such nostalgic cameras have all the features we have come to accept as standard in our modern cameras.

Phil,
Agreed! Peugeot 304 with full roof racks for bicycle races, Merckx, Campagnolo, Pinarello, Columbus, etc. factory decals covered the entire car. Virtually every control was on a 1 or more second delay (somewhat like my K-01) but it was fun and did the job well.(also like the K-01)