[Class A]

@JPT
Thanks heaps for putting in the effort to translate and share the outcome with us!

Most of the content may have already be known to some here, but it is always good to see confirmation and/or how statements differ that come from different sources/interviews.

Regarding 645, the next model is currently being considered.

I hope they'll be able to use a full-sized 645 sensor in the future.

That would be a nice differentiator to competition from Fuji, for instance, who are using what I like to call "baby MF", the same format as the 645Z which is a 1.27 crop of the original 645 format. This crop factor is roughly the same as that between FF and baby-MF (1.29) and would thus increase the crop factor between FF and (645-)MF to 1.64 which is a more convincing distance to FF. Fortunately, Pentax already has the mount and the lenses that work with the uncropped 645 format.

However, they are more interested in serving their customers than following trends.

Yay to that!

I hope that they are aware that Pentaxians don't care much about video (as per a PF survey) and like optical viewfinders (EDIT: the ratio between DSLR and MILC preferences is 179:100, according to the latest pentaxforums survey). In any event, there are some advantages to mirrorless systems but there is no free lunch. Still photography performance is very likely to suffer if Ricoh were to jump on the mirrorless bandwagon. They could potentially join the L-mount alliance, but I'm not sure it would work well for them as they may not be able to profit from lens sales, given that Sigma and Panasonic should be able to do better at the performance/price game.

Anyway, I hope Ricoh will at least always offer an OVF option!

I can’t understand what they say about noise reduction, but it seems that they are aware that opinion is divided on the approach to noise reduction in the K-1 mark II.

Well, that would be fantastic.

If awareness about the issues associated with the denoising in the K-1 II -- some of them related to the technology, some of them related to review sites -- could persuade them to make the denoising of RAW data optional, that would be much appreciated.

They haven’t seen much development [regarding the SDK] yet, but the reaction was greater than expected.

Nice to hear.

I wish I could have worked on using the SDK already but couldn't for lack of time so far.

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Last edited by Class A; 01-04-2019 at 05:12 AM. Reason: Corrected crop factors

[biz-engineer]

Yay to that!

Serving customers but not following trends is something difficult to do when customers are following the trends. If customers don't follow the trends, then trends rarely exist.

[Madaboutpix]

You're nothing short of an asset, JPT. Thanks a lot indeed for your valuable summaries and insights.

[Class A]

Pentax has for a long time stated they are dedicated to APS-C users.

Yes, and Pentax must still have one of the strongest APS-C lens lineups, plus the upcoming DA* 11-18 is an APS-C lens as you mentioned.

I hope that they are going to offer a new APS-C camera more in the tradition of the K-3, but I also believe that times have changed since Pentax stated their commitment to APS-C. The photography market has been shrinking considerably (in particular regarding DSLRs which still outsell MILCs but have been on a continuous decline) and Pentax is not well-suited to fight out price wars at the entry- and mid-level with companies like Canon and Nikon. I believe it could be a financial necessity for Pentax to focus on products where the margins can be higher, such as upper class full-frame cameras. I understand the market simply isn't large enough anymore to justify Pentax investing into maintaining a sustainable piece of the APC-C cake.

I essentially want to express that it isn't negligence or flakiness on behalf of Ricoh when they may decide to no longer be committed to APS-C as much as before but that it is very likely an economical necessity for them to focus on FF and MF instead.

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Last edited by Class A; 01-03-2019 at 09:06 AM.

[Class A]

Serving customers but not following trends is something difficult to do when customers are following the trends.

When the trends are set by the customers themselves, that's self-evident.

However, some trends are artificially created by agents who have a vested interest in generating new sales. If every DSLR shooter could be coercedconvinced by the companies, dealers, sales agents, and press who would profit from respective sales, to change their cameras and all their lenses to new MILC ones, it would generate huge profits.

I haven't given up hope yet, that a subset of photographers will remain to choose DSLRs, if it suits them better.
For ten years now, we've heard that the end of DSLRs is near. May that prophecy continue to live on forever.

[mee]

There wasn’t any more specific talk of crop, but I suspect that non-roadmapped lens might be APS-C, because it was mentioned immediately after the DA* 11-18 in the discussion. Also, most APS-C lenses would be a replacement for something in the current lineup, which would explain why Ricoh had not put them on the roadmap in the first place.

I should say that Japanese has no marker for plurals, so “telezooms” could be “telezoom”, but there are two relezooms already on the roadmap, so I chose to write it that way. These zooms would probably be attractive to APS-C users as well.

I forgot to mention, the people interviewed were Hiraku Kawauchi and Iwasaki-san (can’t read his given name).

Thanks for the detail.

I took it as the ~60-300 and the 70-200 f/4 lenses. But I guess it could mean one, the other, both, or neither.

[Class A]

Tokyo is a huge city , the view is endless raw of building, when you work there all the time, you can't imagine how some people are using camera in the middle of nature in the mountains, national parks and so on.

How come then that even DPReview recommends the K-1 as a landscape camera in their buying guide and that Tony Northrup (who is much confused about some aspects and not really pro-Pentax, to say the least) called it "possibly the best landscape camera"?

My point is, if Ricoh Imaging are small and have not enough resources to make complete new products, why don't they just deliver a firmware update that add great features to existing hardware.

While I'm all for nice firmware updates, if Ricoh focused on that, how would they generate income?
I'm afraid, even if some features could be made available to older/current products (like the slightly improved AF tracking of the K-1 II that most likely would work for the K-1 as well), it isn't always economically feasible to do so. Yes, it is great to do such things to foster customer loyalty, but one needs to be able to afford such investments (firmware development and the associated quality control is not free).

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Last edited by Class A; 01-03-2019 at 08:42 AM.

[mee]

Hopefully that means the ~70-300 on the roadmap will be a compact lens in the style of the DFA 28-105. But we also need a compact wide-angle zoom as well.

That lens should have been launched with or very shortly after the original K-1 to match the 28-105. Better late than never though!

- Q has been highly valued for it’s compact size by core users. They are looking at the situation with the Q, and it is not accurate to say development in discontinued.

Looking at the Q mount apart from the existing Q bodies, there is a lot that could be done with lenses with that FFL, perhaps a GoPro type body?


Pentax/Ricoh also has experience with CCTV and C-mount optics.

[reh321]

Pentax has for a long time stated they are dedicated to APS-C users. It would make a lot of their customers mad if they ceased the R&D for crop cameras. There are a lot of us who dont want K1, nor any FF stuff... wouldnt use one even if they payed me to do it :/
Besides, they will introduce that 11-18 da, why wouldnt be there another crop lens?

They have only so much lens development resources. A DFA lens is fully usable on APS-C camera, but a true DA lens is limited on a FF camera, so making a series of DFA lenses may make sense {as long as they aren't as "perfect", large, and pricey as the DFA* 50mm lens}

[reh321]

Q has been highly valued for it’s compact size by core users. They are looking at the situation with the Q, and it is not accurate to say development in discontinued. (I think this should be taken with a pinch of salt, because in Japan, Q bodies are only available from Ricoh direct, some shops list the lenses as “production ended”, and that macro disappeared from the roadmap)

The "Q" family has experienced a crisis of identity. It was introduced to meet a particular need, and others were welcome to use it also. The original {domestic Japan} market doesn't seem to be there any more, and Ricoh seems to be having a failure of imagination in moving forward with it. For a few years, my Q-7 was the heart of my birding kit, but the KP {with its 24mp sensor and high useful ISO and AF 55-300 PLM lens} may work out better. For me to purchase another one, they would have to be willing to put a EVF on it and provide a longer native lens (*) {'accelerator' would be nice too to get around limitations of smaller sensor}, but they may be working on too much already.

(*) or a full-function adapter that would allow a PLM lens to be used with it and still have AF and aperture control; I do have the current Pentax adapter, but {looking at price of other adapters and of '01' lens} I think it is overpriced for what you get.

[rojaba]

wasn't there a survey on this site once that clearly showed users wanting Pentax to come up with a K3ii successor?

Why is this taking so, so long?

[normhead]

They have only so much lens development resources. A DFA lens is fully usable on APS-C camera, but a true DA lens is limited on a FF camera, so making a series of DFA lenses may make sense {as long as they aren't as "perfect", large, and pricey as the DFA* 50mm lens}

My DA*55 1.4 is fully functional on my K-1 after picking up a 3rd party lens hood, but ya. The thing is, new lenses like the 55 and 60-250 will now be made to work on FF out of the box, without the now required owner mods, the only ones really APS-c were lenses like the 18-135, which occasionally vignettes on APS-c. SO while generally true, it is possible to put together a DA lineup that will work on FF. Just nit picking here.

[Larrymc]

Firstly, thanks @JPT for your effort!

My take on this article is that we learned precisely nothing. We know no more than we have known for several months now. Everyone responding to this thread should know by now that Ricoh/Pentax plays their cards pretty close to their chest. They will divulge what they want when they want, so all of this conjecture and supposition is a waste of time.

As for me, I am going to continue taking photos with my K-3 and K-50 and wait for some real information from Ricoh/Pentax and not something from a magazine article. Does anyone on this forum think any concrete information would come from a magazine interview and not from a release by Ricoh/Pentax? Apparently some of you do. I've been a member since June 2014 many here have a much longer membership tenure so most should know how Ricoh/Pentax operates with their information releases.

I plan to wait for "Official" information straight from Ricoh/Pentax. It would behove everyone to take articles like this with a grain of salt.

Again thanks @JPT

[RonHendriks1966]

wasn't there a survey on this site once that clearly showed users wanting Pentax to come up with a K3ii successor?

Why is this taking so, so long?

It is not coming in 2019.