Originally posted by slartibartfast01 Weren't the Ricoh SLRs a cut above Zenit and Praktica?
Abundantly, but in actual constructed quality more than brand value.
But there was a line between optical manufacturers and camera makers. Zenit was made by KMZ, a first-quality optical house by the reduced standards of the Second World. Praktica was part of VEB Pentacon, and they owned everything. (Though at all price points—Meyer Görlitz was more a budget brand than Carl Zeiss Jena, for example.) But Ricoh didn’t make lenses, or at least none of note. (Neither did Hasselblad or Rollei, but where are they these days?—shadows of their former selves).
Pentax is a halo brand for Ricoh. While Pentax was the more budget-conscious of the Big Three back in the day, it was still one of the Big Three. That was on the strength of its optical house as much as the ubiquitous Spotmatic. Canon and (especially) Nikon owners might have thought themselves better, but they still took Pentax seriously.
The main reason is that those three carved their own original product development path, having outgrown the copycat products they made in the 50’s. Pentax was the first of them to really innovate.
But in pro circles, Pentax medium-format cameras were deeply respected, and they still are. In that space, Pentax was the premiere Japanese brand, while Mamiya was more budget-conscious. Nikon and (particularly) Canon stayed out of that space (though Nikon did make some superb lenses for larger formats). Ricoh’s only presence was a cheap TLR copy of a Rolleicord. In the middle 70’s, I saw a commercial pro making promotional photos at a technology exhibition, and he was using a Pentax 6x7. Other pros were using Hasselblads, but they were quite respectful of what the Pentax guy could do with larger film, and none of them wanted to use a Mamiya RB-67 in the field. I was obviously more modest with my C-series Mamiya.
So, Pentax has always enjoyed unusual multilevel positioning.
One final point: the SLR is not dead, but it may become less “talked about”. It’s similar to the housing market. The buzz is about minimalist living in a flat in the city, in opposition to the dystopian views about suburban life, but plenty of unhip people are still buying single-family houses in the suburbs and not feeling guilty about it.
Rick “miscellaneous rambling” Denney