[MegaPower]

what sensor will it use?

[totsmuyco]

For Ken100D & totsmuyco,
Pentax made its bones by concentrating on APS-C then joined very late to the full frame game with the outstanding K-1.
Prior to a lifestyle change, my main pleasure was printing and I have award winning prints taken with the ist* 6 meg, and I did my best work with the K-10, when my knees were in much better shape. I know that if the K3 replacement was in the pipeline changing platforms would have been a more difficult decision.
Many of my more well healed friends don't take as many photos as they did previously because they migrated to the full frame "Pro" cameras and lug 40 + pounds of gear on every shoot. No big deal in your 30 's and 40's , no fun in your 60's and 70's.
My point is , the equipment is not that important. A good friend of mine is still doing award winning work with his Nikon D300.
Every new camera will generally be better as the technology improves, but to what end.
What I notice is photo hobbyist have a need to defend their equipment by pointing out deficiencies in others. All cameras have deficiencies, so we make our choices based on what works best for us at the time. We usually stick with a brand because we have invested in it.
Put you energy into taking better photographs. The equipment you use is much less important than your approach to taking the photograph. Good luck ....... Bob

This is quite true Bob. I'll use up my cameras and make do with what I have. Well, maybe buy more lenses and that's it. I don't see myself running after technology as in having the latest camera or going for full frame and lug as you said 40+ pounds of equipment. I don't believe in changing systems just because there's something new. As a matter of fact, if Olympus didn't kill the 4/3 mount I would have stayed there.

As of now, I'm happy with Pentax APS-C. The "unless" part of my statement is when I can no longer grow into the system. Such as Pentax killing the K-mount. I wish I can use all new lenses on my cameras in the future. That's why I'm a little disappointed with the KAF4 mount as I can't use new lenses on my k-5II.

If Pentax maintains the K-mount and allows me to grown into it, I'm in till the end of my life.

[mecrox]

The real force driving mirrorless is the MUCH more automated, robotized (fewer humans) assembly process versus dSLR’s. However, initially designing the manufacturing process (clearly a Sony skill advantage) and then setting up the assembly machinery requires more capital and cash flow (both Sony and Fuji advantages) than Ricoh appears willing to commit.

Far better for Ricoh to continue extending and leveraging its advantage in tweaking image sensors, designing small, ergonomically elegant traditional bodies and being different. I’m not so sure Ricoh Imaging actually could maintain its current ROIC if they properly marketed and increased sales volume - they would need to invest in both marketing and P&E, and it isn’t clear to me we would pay the higher price for their products.

People complain about the $1,099 launch price for the KP, which is a very nice camera. What would the response be to $1,299 with longer warranty, proper dealer financial support, B&M Reps and placement allowances. advertising and higher volume?

I’d guess the driver here would be how badly Ricoh want to stay in consumer imaging. Or maybe at least on the basis of offering system cameras where the mount is everything rather than fixed-lens cameras of the kind they used to do before they acquired Pentax.

If Canon and Nikon go big on mirrorless in 2018 then Ricoh might feel they have little choice but to join them. The market would quickly look very different and the decline in DSLR sales would most likely accelerate. That might soon leave a base of sales too low to sustain even a small DSLR-only house. And most true on Ricoh’s home turf in Asia and Japan where mirrorless has been doing best.

There may even be some good old amour propre in play. I’m sure Ricoh also want to be and to be seen to be cutting edge. That argues for more kickass modern products (think Theta), not more traditional ones. Otherwise the branding and publicity factor in being in consumer things at all starts to backfire.

It’s also very likely Ricoh do have huge expertise in modern automated assembly from all their other operations. Perhaps Sony, Canon et al don’t have any advantage over Ricoh in this regard.

I completely take the point about investment and return. But without the will to be in a market in the first place, the money doesn’t mean much.

Chances are we’ll know by the end of 2018.

[monochrome]

@mecrox From the very beginning the question has been whether Imaging (Pentax) was to be a business or a hobby. The loss of cash flow as smartphones replaced compacts of both brands was not anticipated, and the cost to make Imaging a business was (according to an investment banking report I read in 2013) prohibitively large. Likewise, document management in the Cloud is accelerating, to the detriment of major slices of office printing technology. The $1.2 Billion invested in Chinese manufacturing plant is underutilized.

I’m quite concerned that the momentum around K-1 has been allowed to dissipate. Unless they have something(s) up their sleeve for CP+ I’ll be even more concerned.

But I’m in the West and overly capital focused due to my career, so I have a somewhat negative bias.

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Last edited by monochrome; 01-16-2018 at 08:32 AM.

[The Squirrel Mafia]

I strongly believe that 2018 will be the year that makes or breaks Pentax. A lot of people are waiting to see what Ricoh has up their sleeve. Hopefully Ricoh answers back with some excellence & win.

One thing is for sure. They need to deliver some goods this year to keep the some of the user base happy or reassure the user base that they are definitely working on projects that will appear late 2018 or sometime in 2019. Some of the user base is beginning to have doubts about the brand & is starting to run out of patience. Some have already jumped ship to other brands & more will follow soon if Ricoh remains silent.

[photobobhunt]

Great discussion, lots of good points.
It did take Nikon about 7 years to make a true replacement for the D-300 , the D500, while they introduced 5 new full frame cameras .
The discussion about mirrorless is much like the discussion about digital in the early 2000's. I never thought digital could be as good as film. A 24mp cropped sensor has a much higher resolution than the medium format cameras I used in the last century. I also thought autofocus would never be as good (accurate) as manual focus.
Reading this thread also made me more aware of how photographers shoot . 100,000 shutter activations is equivalent to 2,778 rolls of 36 @ $ 5.00 = $13,889 and add $4.00 per roll processing and you have a cost of $25,000 give or take.
I sold my 5 year old K3 with about 35,000 shutter activations ( I believe it was rated for 200k).
My last "premium lens" DA 12 -24 f4 is currently on e-bay for $350 /obo . if anyone is interested as you know it has the reliable, but slower, screw focus.

[Kunzite]

Hmm... digital brought immediacy and connectivity. Autofocus brought commodity, and focusing in a larger variety of conditions.
Mirorrless is only about a different viewfinder type.

[photoptimist]

Hmm... digital brought immediacy and connectivity. Autofocus brought commodity, and focusing in a larger variety of conditions.
Mirorrless is only about a different viewfinder type.

Exactly!

For some people, mirrorless brings headaches, ugly TV-screen view finders, and cameras that are too small to use.

The key issue is that there is no universal camera that everyone will agree is the ultimate photographic tool. Some want small cameras and some want large cameras. Some want OVFs and some want EVFs. Some even have a particular preference or abhorrence for particular brands.

None of the camera makers serve all of the photographic niches. Nikon and Canon don't make medium format or micro4/3rds cameras. Oly & Pany don't make APS-C, FF, or MF. Some camera makers insist on make giant body cameras and others make their cameras as small and light as possible. A few go for the retro-controls style of top-dials with numbers on them.

No single format or design dominates to the exclusion of the others. Mirrorless is like a new flavor of ice cream, yummy to some but not as good as the old flavors for others.

[BigMackCam]

Mirrorless is like a new flavor of ice cream, yummy to some but not as good as the old flavors for others.

Yes... for some, it's a Rocky Road...

[BenCPentax]

Mee and Twilhelm, I agree completely.


I'm not surprised by any delay here. Pentax is not a behemoth, with tons of resources to throw at the wall. The K1 is a solid DSLR that should serve well for a large percentage of users who would be in the market for a K3 III+ class APS-C SLR camera.

Pentax must be scratching their head, watching the rest of the world and marketplace shift around them.

High volume consumers are vanishing, increasingly happy with the camera in their iPhone 6/7/8/10 (which frankly are darn good.) Judging by the questions I answer at work (where folks always ask me for camera advice) there is less and less interest in carrying a DSLR system. Many people bought one, and either have no need to upgrade, or they realized they never bring their DSLR anywhere because of size and weight.

Meanwhile, pros and dedicated amateurs are warming to mirrorless, lead there by the pro mirrorless cameras offered by Hasselblad, Fuji and Sony. Pentax is left with SLR-based MF digital and full-frame 35mm digital that suddenly look outdated and clunky.

Yes, there are times you want an optical finder of a DSLR -- birding and high speed sports. But I don't personally know anyone who shoots those, and judging by Flickr the majority of folks shoot landscapes or slow-moving people (portraits.) For this majority, there are real advantages to mirrorless, and the DSLR architecture starts to look clunky and rube-goldbergian.

As a manufacturer (whether it's Pentax or Nikon) you have to look at Sony and Fuji and Hassy and think .... here's a way to make desirable cameras that cost less to engineer, manufacture and support, and/or offer a better profit margin.

If Pentax (and Nikon) aren't having these thoughts, then I worry about them still being here in ten years time.

The move to mirrorless is inevitable. It's like the move from viewfinder/rangefinder cameras to SLR cameras in the 60's. The rational drivers are too strong to resist for most of the market and manufacturers. Those with a valid reason to prefer the older technology will continue to be served, but likely only by one manufacturer who stakes claim to the legacy form. With rangefinders it was Leica. With SLRs ... who knows. But do Pentax or Nikon really want to become even more of a niche brand? Especially as they don't have the Veblen glow of Leica?

Therefore any thought of the Pentax K3 II successor being mirrorless is music to my ears.

There are those of us who like a Leica SLR and still shoot Pentax dslr.....
What you describe as inevitable and rational is only market driven consumerism.

[Dan Rentea]

For some people, mirrorless brings headaches, ugly TV-screen view finders, and cameras that are too small to use.

I'm one of that guys. I kind of like shooting with mirrorless and I like Fuji cameras, but the EVF gives me headaches after 15 minutes of use. Lately I came to the performance of shooting half an hour with a mirrorless before the headaches occur. I gained extra 15 minutes because I opened a VR Cinema lately and I started to watch VR movies which gives me the same headaches as EVF does. I'm sure that if I "train" my eyes it will be better, but I'm not so sure that I will definitely get rid of headaches forever by watching through EVF 2-3 more minutes each day.

The key issue is that there is no universal camera that everyone will agree is the ultimate photographic tool. Some want small cameras and some want large cameras. Some want OVFs and some want EVFs. Some even have a particular preference or abhorrence for particular brands.

I don't think it's important to have a camera which could be considered by everyone as the ultimate photographic tool. It's enough if I live with this thought, that I have the ultimate photographic tool in my hands. That way I don't need to blame the camera for not doing what I wanted it to do and I concentrate in improving my technique.

Mirrorless is like a new flavor of ice cream, yummy to some but not as good as the old flavors for others.

As long as we have choices, it's up to us to find a system (mirrorless or DSLR) suited to our needs. Some people told me that it's hard to change the system because they invested in lenses and will lose too much money switching brands. If I sell all my Canon gear to jump to Nikon for example, I can buy the same lenses and a similar camera with the same money, without loosing a cent. I did the math and some researches a few days ago just for fun because a friend of mine told me that he is more into landscape and he wants to change his 5D Mark III with a D810. I've searched top sellers on the second hand market and guess what, it's doable to change the system without investing a single dolar in the new one. But people want (when they change their current system) a brand new camera and brand new lenses and that will cost more money of course. It's just that if you really want to change a system and you look for second hand cameras/lenses from other systems to replace your second hand system, this argument of being to expensive to switch systems is somehow questionable. The only problems I see is when:
- you have exotic lenses like 400mm f2.8, 600mm f4 because this kind of lenses are hard to find in good conditions at afordable prices.
- you have a poor second hand market (as we do have in Romania for Pentax) and you have to buy from other countries
- you have specific needs that a system can't cover (like sports if you want to invest in Pentax, or medium format if you want to change the 645z with something from Canon, Nikon or Sony)

The Pentax/Ricoh bigest (or one of the bigest) problem is the lack of marketing for their products. K1 would have been a dream camera for landscape photographers shooting with Canon or Nikon, given the K1's price and features and KP would have been a very good option for traveling light but in the same time benefit of very good image quality. As long as no one knows about Pentax (young generation in particular) and the shelves from photo stores don't have Pentax products, its hard to convince someone to invest his money in a good system like Pentax. I guess that as long as Ricoh doesn't lose money with Pentax cameras/lenses, their last concern is gaining market share by promotig/advertising their products.

I have no doubt that K-3 III will bring some overall improvements over K3 II, but I do hope that maybe Ricoh will be more marketing oriented this year also because there is a matter of time until Canon and Nikon will enter also in the mirrorless terittory and it will be even harder for Pentax to retain their current market share without making some noise over their products.

[monochrome]

It seems so logical. You at least have to tell people you’re out there - much less incite them to act - or you won’t sell many widgets. Maybe our assumption that they want to grow the brand is wrong.

[JPT]

I think there's a real possibility that what is holding the K-3 successor up is actually is a new generation sensor from Sony. APS-C sensors have been stuck at 24mp for quite a long time, while the FF sensors have getting BSI and gone up 50mp. At some point surely APS-C sensors are going to increase as well.

It's interesting that Sony themselves have not released a new APS-C camera for an uncharacteristically long amount of time - it was October 2016. What are they waiting for - probably a new sensor as well.

There's a recent rumor that the Fuji X-T3 will debut at Photokina sporting a new sensor with more than 24 but less than 30mp. Fuji generally uses standard Sony sensors with their own color filter, so I would expect that to be a sensor Ricoh could use.

So how about the following specification?
- 28mp (on the assumption that I'm right about the above)
- 4K video (don't see how they can leave it out on a high-end model in 2018 and all the chips they use should support it)
- On sensor PDAF for video AF (sensor should allow it and K-70 has it)
- Sensor shift image stabilisation for video (hinted in interview)
- All fundamental specs at least as good as the K-3ii and probably better
- The accelerator chip from the KP
- Body features from the K-1 (monitor, illumination, 3rd dial)
- Released by late summer, along with the new wide APS-C zoom already shown
- Price probably above $1,500

I don't think this is beyond the realms of possibility, and it would be a great camera.

[MMVIII]

I think there's a real possibility that what is holding the K-3 successor up is actually is a new generation sensor from Sony. APS-C sensors have been stuck at 24mp for quite a long time, while the FF sensors have getting BSI and gone up 50mp. At some point surely APS-C sensors are going to increase as well.

It's interesting that Sony themselves have not released a new APS-C camera for an uncharacteristically long amount of time - it was October 2016. What are they waiting for - probably a new sensor as well.

There's a recent rumor that the Fuji X-T3 will debut at Photokina sporting a new sensor with more than 24 but less than 30mp. Fuji generally uses standard Sony sensors with their own color filter, so I would expect that to be a sensor Ricoh could use.

So how about the following specification?
- 28mp (on the assumption that I'm right about the above)
- 4K video (don't see how they can leave it out on a high-end model in 2018 and all the chips they use should support it)
- On sensor PDAF for video AF (sensor should allow it and K-70 has it)
- Sensor shift image stabilisation for video (hinted in interview)
- All fundamental specs at least as good as the K-3ii and probably better
- The accelerator chip from the KP
- Body features from the K-1 (monitor, illumination, 3rd dial)
- Released by late summer, along with the new wide APS-C zoom already shown
- Price probably above $1,500

I don't think this is beyond the realms of possibility, and it would be a great camera.

Right, some very good points. Pentax always developed certain hardware fore more than one platform in parallel. And new generations in certain platforms were heavily dependend on available third party hardware.
A new AF modul could be used in the APS-C flagship, the rumoured additional FF and an eventual 645. Same for new generation processing unit.
In best case this would make a stepping of KP 1000$ K3^3 1400$ K1 1800$ K1^2 2200$...
But who knows...

[zapp]

Mirorrless is only about a different viewfinder type.

No - this is so wrong, it is actually funny.

No mirror affects camera and lens design.
No mirror affects image quality.
No mirror affects size and weight of a camera.
Did you ever look at the (correct) explanations why MFT is smart, why Leica M system is still around, why technical cameras have no mirrors, ...
I can live with my DSLR btut no mirror has advantages.