[clickclick]

May good idea to someone who start this topic take mild antidepressants

Well, earlier this year, in several threads, there were musings about Adam looking into group/bulk discounts on Prozac...

[agp1337]

I have two Pentaxes and several lenses, and have just lashed out on the 15-30mm for the K1, so I'm dedicated to the brand. The article was really talking about financial viability in a market dominated by CaNikon, with Sony, Fuji and even Panasonic hot on their heels. The question is, why would someone new to photography, or looking to build a new system, go for Pentax?

The cameras are lovely, and I enjoy using them. However, there are issues. The main one for me is the shortage of lenses. If a new one from an independent manufacturer comes out it is reviewed heavily. Exciting news, until you check the mounts it's available for. Too often, Pentax isn't on the list. A significant percentage of shops don't even SELL Pentax.

Are they going to develop new cameras, mirrorless being the latest thing (my Pentaxes are heavy, their only snag)? I won't be wasting my money on the K1-II as the differences from the K1 are hardly significant - or I could apparently pay hundreds to do an online upgrade!

I don't regret buying Pentax. The cameras work the way I want, they are high quality and robust. If I was starting afresh, though, I admit I'm probably go for Sony (lighter) or Canon (huge accessory range). I do suspect that cameras are a very small part of Ricoh now. They won't be able to compete. I prefer them to the others, but they are not dramatically better.

[repaap]

I have two Pentaxes and several lenses, and have just lashed out on the 15-30mm for the K1, so I'm dedicated to the brand. The article was really talking about financial viability in a market dominated by CaNikon, with Sony, Fuji and even Panasonic hot on their heels. The question is, why would someone new to photography, or looking to build a new system, go for Pentax?

The cameras are lovely, and I enjoy using them. However, there are issues. The main one for me is the shortage of lenses. If a new one from an independent manufacturer comes out it is reviewed heavily. Exciting news, until you check the mounts it's available for. Too often, Pentax isn't on the list. A significant percentage of shops don't even SELL Pentax.

Are they going to develop new cameras, mirrorless being the latest thing (my Pentaxes are heavy, their only snag)? I won't be wasting my money on the K1-II as the differences from the K1 are hardly significant - or I could apparently pay hundreds to do an online upgrade!

I don't regret buying Pentax. The cameras work the way I want, they are high quality and robust. If I was starting afresh, though, I admit I'm probably go for Sony (lighter) or Canon (huge accessory range). I do suspect that cameras are a very small part of Ricoh now. They won't be able to compete. I prefer them to the others, but they are not dramatically better.

I could completelly understand about ’worrying’ of end of Pentax. But there are still great things like lighter aps-c (plm) and heavier DA* where is coming completelly new zoom. Then FF is evolving, heavy, yes. But so are Sony, canon, nikon. Some article said that mirrorles was supposed to be lot lighter. It is, but lenses are and will be the same..
Other thing is these new Fuji, oly panny..well they are getting fatter too because of stability and handling factor, where Pentax is great already.

That said, I’d propably also look at Sony or Fuji if I started over now. But would go with Pentax because of cheaper and almost as good as bigger boys..

[iheiramo]

The question is, why would someone new to photography, or looking to build a new system, go for Pentax?

Bang for the buck and IQ. That's why I came in when my Nikon gear was stolen. And at that time I didn't even understand the oppostunity the legacy lenses offer, which is the reason I will hang on as long as I can get my hands on the working Pentax camera.

[Kunzite]

The article was really talking about financial viability in a market dominated by CaNikon, with Sony, Fuji and even Panasonic hot on their heels.

Sometimes, the word 'analyst' suggests the anatomical part used to think a certain article.
I've heard this story about Pentax' "financial viability" over and over and over again. Yawn. I also didn't read stories about Samsung camera division's imminent demise, before they started canceling products and exiting markets.
It's just FUD, as always.

[Alex645]

why would someone new to photography, or looking to build a new system, go for Pentax?

Bang for the buck and IQ.

Pentax entry level DSLRs are much better equipped than Canikony. Compare the K70 to a SL2, D5600, or a68.
Pentax FF also offer so much more for so much less. Compare the K-1ii to a 6Dii, D750, or a99ii.
Pentax MF unless price is not a factor. Compare 645Z to a Mamiya 645DF+, Hasselblad X1D-50c, or Fujifilm GFX 50S.

Yes, there are other reasons for someone new to photography to go with Canikony, but there are also reasons why they would choose Pentax.

If 119 current lenses in a system that has a huge legacy of compatible optics is not enough for someone new to photography, then yes, go for Nikon or Canon with +/- 300.

[fs999]

It would be nice to see a Pentax ad in the next Star Wars...

[RobA_Oz]

I still have the copies of Amateur Photographer that I bought as a schoolboy in the early 1960s. In those long-gone days, AP used to exist on bulk advertising, so the front and rear two-thirds of the publication were full of display and classified advertising, but the interior was filled with solid photographic technique and stories, with a minority of articles about equipment, none of which was sensationalist, and most of which evaluated the subject on its own merits and not by unfavourable comparison with rival products.

Obviously, times have changed. In too many print and on-line publications, paid advertising has flowed into editorial columns, and the technique of put-down, FUD and denigration has become the norm, in the quest for gaining prominence in a world of decreasing attention span. It’s sad if AP has joined the ranks of the magazines that have succumbed to this sort of thing, but a quick look through their website suggests to me that they’re still concerned with the sorts of stories they’ve always produced. I do note that there are several articles suggesting that mirrorless bodies are a certain dominant trend.

Andy Westlake, the author of the article under scrutiny here, has, it should be noted, been writing for AP for a number of years (five that I could find, though I’m not sure in what capacity), so he isn’t someone who has just moved to AP from DPR. Whether or not it has any bearing on this discussion, I also note that a number of DPR writers used to also write for AP, so there’s some implied relationship between the two, past, if not currently.

Without having the actual article in front of me (I’m not a subscriber any more, so I’d have to wait for the print version to get here from the UK) it’s hard to critique it objectively. What I can say is that anyone writing from a technical specialist viewpoint should be objective and complete in their work, even if it is an opinion-piece.

If the article purports to provide a projection that seeks to determine future viability of the Pentax brand, it should make some attempt to discern the current sales position and the company’s strategy, as well as review the current and known future product range. While Ricoh’s strategy for Pentax is not known in any detail, it’s probably fair enough to imply some things about it from known information like the lens road map and the projected rate of appearance of new lenses, but it’s not fair to draw conclusions about a whole range of product lines based on the current status of one of them. I wonder if the author made some attempt to analyse the (admittedly broad) known sales value information from Ricoh’s annual reports.

I’ll wait and see what the article actually says, before I draw any conclusions, though.

[Dan Rentea]

Pentax entry level DSLRs are much better equipped than Canikony. Compare the K70 to a SL2, D5600, or a68.

True.

Pentax FF also offer so much more for so much less. Compare the K-1ii to a 6Dii, D750, or a99ii.

Partially true. It offers a lot for certain type of photographers.

Pentax MF unless price is not a factor. Compare 645Z to a Mamiya 645DF+, Hasselblad X1D-50c, or Fujifilm GFX 50S.

That's a topic dedicated to users of medium format cameras.

Yes, there are other reasons for someone new to photography to go with Canikony, but there are also reasons why they would choose Pentax.

True, depending again of the type of photography you want to approach.

If 119 current lenses in a system that has a huge legacy of compatible optics is not enough for someone new to photography, then yes, go for Nikon or Canon with +/- 300.

It's hard to convince someone to invest in a system based on legacy lenses. As far as I'm concerned, legacy lenses are for the nostalgic photographers that are/were used to a certain look back in the film days. In terms of optics...I see a lot of purple fringe, there are not water resitent, not so sharp wide open, slow to focus.

It's even harder to convince someone to invest in Pentax due to:
- delays announced by Ricoh when comes to release lenses
- articles written by some desperate magazines that are interested only in traffic on their websites without giving a ... about the quality of the content

There was a Pentax ambassador who recently said that the postpone of the release of new prime lenses made his job harder when comes to promote Pentax to professionals. I realy don't think that Pentax is doomed, but I do hope to see Ricoh changing the strategy a little, especially now, when Canon and Nikon will attack the mirrorless market. I don't know if releasing a mirrorless camera will be a priority for Ricoh and I don't know if a decision like that will help Ricoh on the long term, but if there is a single area where in my opinion Ricoh is lacking far (and I mean very far) behind competition, well, that area is marketing. You may have the best cameras in the world, but if no one knows about them in an era of digital marketing, then in my opinion this is a very big problem. I assume Ricoh knows that their cameras are orientated to landscape photographers more and more. Why not promoting their cameras in this dirrection? Their cameras have astrotracer, very good build quality, pixel shift, low price, etc. in their favor. Online marketing it's cheaper than most people think. A dedicated youtube channel, a known photographer with visibility on social media and some weekly newsletters and short clips or a time lapse will make some noise among enthusiastic photographers.

If you ask the new generation of photographers about Pentax, a lot of them haven't heard about the brand because they don't see Pentax cameras and lenses in stores, they don't see professional photographers shooting with Pentax and they don't see Pentax on social media or on Youtube (except for the times when Ricoh release a new product, which is a rare ocassion).

[rawr]

Running Pentax is play-money for a multi-billion $$ Japanese conglomerate like Ricoh.

I bet Pentax is not expensive to maintain in terms of profit/loss (inc R&D, payroll and marketing [!] overheads), nor is it expensive to grow, judging by the slow, incremental pace of product releases over recent years.

Ricoh doesn't have too many globally recognisable brands like Pentax under it's belt, so it would have to be under dire financial pressure (which it is not) for it to kill Pentax.

[Rondec]

Pentax is doing the wise, but conservative approach based on recent sales. In some ways it would be nice to see them dump a bunch of products on the market all at once, but that could kill the company as quickly as anything. Releasing gear slowly, as they pay for it, and not releasing new camera bodies unless they really have something new to offer is what camera companies will need to do as the market matures. But most of them remain pretty committed to the idea that they need to churn out new cameras at various levels, regardless of how much improvement they are really putting into them. Nikon in particular, seems to be struggling because of this.

I don't know that I would attack Westlake -- this is opinion after all -- except to say that I think he is not a business man, but someone who works with gear a lot and probably is not particularly adept at reading financial reports. Those are where the clues would be found that Ricoh was interested in divesting themselves of the Pentax brand, not the rate of release of new gear.

[i_trax]

I have more than I need Pentax cameras, they will last me till the end of my days, so do not care.
Although I think that Pentax will last well beyond my time on this paddock.....

[mecrox]

True.

Snip

There was a Pentax ambassador who recently said that the postpone of the release of new prime lenses made his job harder when comes to promote Pentax to professionals. I realy don't think that Pentax is doomed, but I do hope to see Ricoh changing the strategy a little, especially now, when Canon and Nikon will attack the mirrorless market. I don't know if releasing a mirrorless camera will be a priority for Ricoh and I don't know if a decision like that will help Ricoh on the long term, but if there is a single area where in my opinion Ricoh is lacking far (and I mean very far) behind competition, well, that area is marketing. You may have the best cameras in the world, but if no one knows about them in an era of digital marketing, then in my opinion this is a very big problem. I assume Ricoh knows that their cameras are orientated to landscape photographers more and more. Why not promoting their cameras in this dirrection? Their cameras have astrotracer, very good build quality, pixel shift, low price, etc. in their favor. Online marketing it's cheaper than most people think. A dedicated youtube channel, a known photographer with visibility on social media and some weekly newsletters and short clips or a time lapse will make some noise among enthusiastic photographers.

If you ask the new generation of photographers about Pentax, a lot of them haven't heard about the brand because they don't see Pentax cameras and lenses in stores, they don't see professional photographers shooting with Pentax and they don't see Pentax on social media or on Youtube (except for the times when Ricoh release a new product, which is a rare ocassion).

People have been saying this for a decade and nothing has happened. In North America things have arguably gone backwards. Will a complete change in marketing really happen now?

Mirrorless isn’t about EVF or size. It’s about the change in design and tech whereby everything is derived from the sensor in real time. From this, video and stills begin to merge.

If you say no to that then people think you are saying no to the future and to investment and are preparing to fold your hand. It’s an assumption which doesn’t necessarily follow at all, though understandable. Westlake may be operating on that assumption.

I’ve no idea what the plan is. It does look as if Pentax is increasingly becoming a Japanese specialty brand offering a legacy experience, and one where the rest of the world is some way down the list of priorities. If most of their sales are in Japan it’s no surprise really.

[Winder]

not releasing new camera bodies unless they really have something new to offer is what camera companies will need to do as the market matures.

Then why release the K-1 II? That is not a very compelling upgrade. I think the K-1 II indicates something different.

[Rondec]

Then why release the K-1 II? That is not a very compelling upgrade. I think the K-1 II indicates something different.

The K-1 II is a slight upgrade on an existing camera. I wouldn't call it a "new" release, particularly not since Pentax has offered to allow existing K-1 users to upgrade their cameras and the K-1 remains on the market.

If I were going to guess, I would say that if the accelerator chip had been available at the time of the original K-1's release Pentax would have just stuck it in there, but it didn't take too much work to add it down the road and so that's what they did.