[monochrome]

Some people buy a Honda Accord sedan with a 4-cyl engine and cloth seats. Others buy the same car with a 6-cyl engine and leather seats. Both cars will get you and three other people most places at legal driving speed in essentially the same drive time.

I buy the 6-cyl Accord. I don't need the leather, but it lasts longer than cloth.

I don't need the extra 2 cylinders for anything.

Except when I do.

[shardulm]

And there are a boat load of people who will want to buy and own a Honda Accord and keep it until it dies (which rarely ever happens).

[Foxbat]

Your car analogy doesn't make sense. Porsches are luxury cars, and they might even be more prone to break down.

Like K-3 flapping mirror issue, right?

I think a better analogy is that you can buy 'cheap shoes from Walmart', they'll last a year or two under heavy use, or you can buy a really nice pair of shoes that will last far longer, for an additional outlay of money.

But so far, there is no indication that parts in KP are cheap, it looks that the only thing that it shares with K-70, is a SR assembly and then Ricoh claims that it's on par with K-1

You avoid shutter and aperture block issues when you buy a flagship.

We don't know whether shutter/mirror assembly is taken from K-30/K-50 family, so far, judging by specs and sound of the shutter compared to K-5, I presume that it's either taken from K-5 or designed from scratch. If it is related to K-X0 line, it will be a deallbreaker for me, personally.

[reh321]

We don't know whether shutter/mirror assembly is taken from K-30/K-50 family, so far, judging by specs and sound of the shutter compared to K-5, I presume that it's either taken from K-5 or designed from scratch. If it is related to K-X0 line, it will be a deallbreaker for me, personally.

The only besetting issue I know of with the K-30/50 is aperture control.

[photoptimist]

The changeable grips are the risk to drop camera[COLOR="Silver"]

Good Grief!

I can't even imagine how this is possible. The grip slides in from the side such that if the screw is even loosely in place, the grip can't come off.

The user would surely notice the grip getting looser and looser, and feel the screw head sticking into their hand. And even if the screw fell out, the way the fingers and palm wrap around the grip and body would still hold it in the grip in place.

It seems like a make-beleive problem in a make-beleive world from someone who has never seen or touched this camera but is convinced of it's flaws.

[monochrome]

And there are a boat load of people who will want to buy and own a Honda Accord and keep it until it dies (which rarely ever happens).

Well, 12 years anyway.

[caliscouser]

The changeable grips are the risk to drop camera

Utter nonsense.

I don't believe Ricoh is pitching this camera at you anyway. The K3ii and future K3iii will be their pitch to you.
This is camera for someone who wants a particular level of packaging and performance without necessarily needing a full pro-level feature set. (Although you are not giving up that much)

[RobA_Oz]

Utter nonsense.

I don't believe Ricoh is pitching this camera at you anyway. The K3ii and future K3iii will be their pitch to you.
This is camera for someone who wants a particular level of packaging and performance without necessarily needing a full pro-level feature set. (Although you are not giving up that much)

In reality, there is a risk involved, but (if you use one of the accepted definitions of Risk) it's the likelihood component that's the key to it.

People drop cameras with startling regularity (just look at some of the sad stories posted here, from time to time) even without this new interchangeable grip, although the percentage of all camera users dropping their gear I would think is fairly small.

To assess the likelihood of it happening in the case of the KP, you have to consider the method of attachment (and it's more than just saying that there's a hex socket screw involved, eg we don't know yet if there are alignment bosses etc to guide you) and the opportunities for something to go wrong (eg you cross threads, so that tightening stops before the grip is correctly attached), or you look at the history of similar devices from the past. For the latter, we have in Pentax cameras the LX and the 6x7. I only have personal experience with the LX, so based on that (albeit that it has two attachment screws, but no other alignment guide) and what we already know about the KP's attachment method, I'd be tempted to say that, if there's no guidance other than the one screw, there's a very small chance that the user isn't going to tighten the screw adequately, and, if there is guidance, there's an extremely small chance of it occurring.

Manufacturers usually spot these sorts of possibilities when it comes to user-assembly, and provide instructions accordingly. Some don't do a good job of it (anyone who's put together flat-pack furniture will probably have experience of that), but I'd expect that Ricoh will provide better instruction than that. Given that (and it remains to be seen, of course) I'd say the risk involved here is negligible. There is, we know, no such thing as zero risk - that lives only in the minds of marketers, politicians and gullible people.

[monochrome]

I think there's a higher risk your cat grabs a dangling strap and pulls your camera off the dining room table.

[Kunzite]

If the risk was real, improperly mounted lenses would fall all the time. Because matching those dots and twisting the lens until there's a click would be too complicated.
Fortunately, we're smarter than that - and the risk is invented.

P.S. I didn't need a cat to catch the dangling strap and pull my camera off the desk. OTOH, I've successfully assembled few Ikea furniture pieces...

[Not a Number]

[RobA_Oz]

Miniscule.

[photoptimist]

I think there's a higher risk your cat grabs a dangling strap and pulls your camera off the dining room table.

Exactly!

Here's my bet:

The % of KP cameras that get dropped because of a loose interchangeable grip will be LESS than the % of other kinds of cameras dropped because their non-interchangable grip was the wrong size for the user.

Thus, the interchangeable grip REDUCES the overall risk of droppage by offering the right size grip for each photographer.

[Not a Number]

If you haven't learned to wrap the neck strap around your arm/wrist by now you will after you drop your camera a few times.

[RobA_Oz]

...and here's a better view of that grip mounting system, courtesy of the DPR site:


Pretty much foolproof, I'd say (provided they had a good range of fools to test it on).