Originally posted by pathdoc J
More to the point, see if they'll take the lens off for you and let you look at the mount and inside the mirror box. Before you do this, re-familiarise yourself with the appearance of an uncrippled K-AF mount so you can recognise at a glance whether some of us have had our fondest hopes realised or dashed. The best of all worlds is a de-crippled mount with screwdrive; the worst is no decrippling and also no screwdrive. The suspense is killing us, so for God's sake give us the certainty that will put us out of our misery one way or the other!
Ah, hope springs eternal I suppose.
If Ricoh had intended to let the beast out of the plexiglass cage during the show the would have done so by now.
I think there is more likelihood that Ricoh will release a Full Frame Mirrorless ILC by the end of the year then them ever un-crippling the K-mount. There's little percentage in it for Ricoh. Perhaps if they received a royalty fee or VAT tax every time a M or K series lens was sold they might look into it. The new DFA lens don't have aperture rings on them. And I doubt Ricoh is going to complicate their new lens design and manufacturing process by putting aperture rings on them. And adding aperture ring would be one more reason for 3rd party lens makers
not to produce K-mount versions of lenses. They already grumble about the complexities of design the lens barrels that can work with internal electro-mechanical mechanisms and mechanical levers.
It would be foolish for Ricoh to eliminate the screw-drive at this point if they want to entice owners of FA lenses to go Pentax FF DSLR.