Originally posted by LFLee As a long time Pentax fan owning numerous Pentax digital and film cameras, I am not sure if Ricoh should continue the DSLR, I hope they at least have a mirrorless.
Don't think except long time Pentax users, there is much new comer will look at Pentax cameras.
There are many new, nice glasses from Sigma, etc., that simply don't have anything in K-mount.
A mirrorless Pentax at least allow people who wants those glass to consider Pentax.
645z is nice, but why a Fuji mirrorless 645 get more people excited than 645D, 645Z? the endless possibility with MF glasses.
DSLR will be like Facebook, only old folks still clinging on it.
if Fuji goes FF mirrorless, it will be too late for Pentax.
I doubt pretty highly that Fuji is going to release a full frame mirrorless camera. I know that you are a big fan of mirrorless tech, but it is a tough market to enter. Sony has a huge number of mirrorless full frame cameras on the market hitting every price point from 1000 to 4500.
The problems from Ricoh's standpoint that I can think of are that (1) it would require a new mount (if done correctly) which means a whole new lens line up, taking a long time to fill. At a rate of two to three lenses a year, Ricoh would have a mirrorless lens line up done in roughly ten years. (2) It chances driving away Pentaxians who already feel queasy about Ricoh's handling of the K mount and see their lenses as being orphaned -- only able to work with an expensive adapter. (3) The mirrorless market is very tech heavy, with the cameras having high numbers of auto focus points, super fast frame rates and high end video -- none of which is a strength for Pentax. (4) Odds of third party support suddenly coming to the rescue with another me-too short registration mount camera is pretty small. Sigma is as busy as they want to be making EOS and F mount lenses, the same with Tamron and Tokina. The reason they don't make k mount lenses isn't because they can't -- they probably can pretty easily -- it is that Pentax is a tiny fish in a big pond and they aren't going to waste time and resources creating new lenses for the k mount or for that matter whatever mirrorless camera mount Pentax would choose.
As far as Fuji's medium format camera, the buzz before its release was quite a bit, but the camera itself got reviewed pretty harshly as not very functional. I know they are working on more medium format cameras and so those may work better, but just throwing a mirrorless camera out there doesn't immediately sell you cameras -- particularly when mirrorless isn't your strong point (and it isn't for Pentax).