[reh321]

I don't think Ricoh is going to waist money on Pentax. Not in this market.

What makes this market different from the market in which they developed the KP, the market in which they developed the K-1ii?

[boriscleto]

Why did I even click on this thread?

[RobA_Oz]

I don't see any waste in Ricoh's strategy. They are keeping in the game, they have a niche carved out and the business model is to keep a core set of what 25,000 global customers? spending between €2K and €5K a year on enhancements to the system they like and take 20% to 30% margin which they can use for R&D to keep ticking over. They don't waste on advertising, they don't waste on complicated supply chain, they don't waste on loss leaders. The head count is probably minimal too, send in some engineers from the parent firm on secondment to learn how to innovate with limited budget and build some cross business communication channels. If I was in a leadership role in Ricoh, I'd use Pentax as a finishing school for those marked for success. A play area / training ground.
Brief to some hotshot manager or engineer coming up the ranks, you've an awful lot of automy, limited budget, there is a renowned history / culture, you're up against companies with factors of whatever against you in size, advertising clout, engineering resource, R&D budget... Show us what you can do.

I have to agree with much of this. The €2-5k budget wouldn’t buy much enhancement, though.

[NZ_Ross]

Why did I even click on this thread?

Because you had to

[monochrome]

why did i even click on this thread? :deadhorse:

apsh?

[Class A]

In the interview with Adam, they specifically said that there were {not specified} difficulties in making use of the 'accelerator' optional.

I don't hold it against a manager from the product planning department to make such a statement, but it does not make much sense from an engineering point of view.

His answer regarding more support for dynamic pixel shift raw files falls into the same category: it does not make sense from an engineering point of view.
Unless there was a misunderstanding and he spoke about true "pixel shift" (as in shifting the sensor to have each pixel receive full colour information) the idea that "dynamic or hand-held pixel shift" files, i.e., super-resolution files are challenging to support outside the camera is just not tenable.

I can somewhat imagine that implementing an "off"-switch for the "accelerator" unit in the K-1 II via a firmware upgrade might not be entirely possible (surely reducing its effect to almost neutral should be), but I can absolutely not imagine that future in-camera image processing cannot be designed to behave neutrally, if so desired by a photographer.

I very much agree with the overall philosophy expressed by Iwasaki-san which includes the aspect of enjoying the photographic process itself (on top of enjoying the results) showing an appreciation for optical viewfinders that is regrettably lacking from the hipster press. I wish I could extrapolate this philosophy to be inclusive regarding a focus on quality and a purist approach (as in not sacrificing still photography priorities by paying tribute to video demands). In the spirit of the latter acknowledgement of a purist approach to still photography, functionality as offered by the "accelerator" unit should clearly be optional.

If companies are looking for reasons as to why people should be buying real photographic tools rather than relying on computational photography to pretty up the mediocre results of small lenses and small sensors, allowing people to use the tools unimpeded by image processing would be one obvious argument to put forward.

[clackers]

I don't see any waste in Ricoh's strategy. They are keeping in the game, they have a niche carved out and the business model is to keep a core set of what 25,000 global customers? spending between €2K and €5K a year on enhancements to the system they like and take 20% to 30% margin which they can use for R&D to keep ticking over. They don't waste on advertising, they don't waste on complicated supply chain, they don't waste on loss leaders. The head count is probably minimal too, send in some engineers from the parent firm on secondment to learn how to innovate with limited budget and build some cross business communication channels. If I was in a leadership role in Ricoh, I'd use Pentax as a finishing school for those marked for success. A play area / training ground.
Brief to some hotshot manager or engineer coming up the ranks, you've an awful lot of automy, limited budget, there is a renowned history / culture, you're up against companies with factors of whatever against you in size, advertising clout, engineering resource, R&D budget... Show us what you can do.

Nailed it, Robbie.

The big playas are panicking. Canon are ill-prepared for the market to decline a further 50 percent in the next couple of years, they've just launched a new FF mirrorless platform. They've even reportedly had to suspend DSLR lens development, presumably because they have to cut costs and engineering commitments somehow.

Ricoh's instructions to its various divisions has been forget market share and capital injections, try to ride all this out, aim for positive cashflow somehow.

[edri]

The market is the same for all players. If we consider smaller players, not the big CaNikons, players like Fuji or Olympus, they look like active players trying to bring something new, trying to attract new customers. Ricoh/Pentax on the other hand looks like a resigned player trying to live out of memories and trying to live with small cosmetics such as KP custom or old FAs transformed into the new HDs. With only 1-2 new lenses every 2-3 years, while others present 2-3 new lenses in a year, repeating the same technologies in cameras, opacity to new technologies can not bring a good future. Pentax should come out of its lethargy especially under the current market conditions. I think they need another manager.

[Class A]

I've just finished testing several 50s, among which the new D FA*, and while that lens has little to no optical weaknesses, it's not THAT much better.

This is obviously self-contradictory, unless you are talking about images taken at f/5.6 or f/8.

The FA 50/1.4, for instance, has glaringly obvious optical weaknesses, so if the HD D-FA* has "little to no optical weaknesses" than it must be "THAT much better".
I love the FA 43/1.9 Ltd but it too has obvious optical weaknesses unless one stops it down quite a bit. Even the FA 77/1.8 Ltd is not free of problems.

I very much appreciate all three film-era Limited lenses, use them frequently, and think they are a great asset of the Pentax system, but AFAIC is it is clear as day that a modern lens like the HD D-FA* 50/1.4 which was optimised for IQ with pretty much no regard for size and weight, is "THAT much better" when shooting wide open or very large apertures. I can see that even in web-sized images. Not sure why you cannot.

[Kunzite]

I don't hold it against a manager from the product planning department to make such a statement, but it does not make much sense from an engineering point of view.

Are you sure?
Perhaps the difficulty is not to turn off the accelerator completely, but to decide when to use it and how. I don't think that an On/Off menu option is the best solution.

[clackers]

Are you sure?

Perhaps the difficulty is not to turn off the accelerator completely, but to decide when to use it and how. I don't think that an On/Off menu option is the best solution.

I can think of a better person than a designer to decide when it's off and on. The person taking the picture!

Bring on a menu item. It already has on/off behaviour, it only kicks in from ISO 400 onwards.

[RonHendriks1966]

What makes this market different from the market in which they developed the KP, the market in which they developed the K-1ii?

This market is 1/3th smaller then that (KP time) market. And still shrinking.

---------- Post added 16-03-19 at 09:08 ----------

I don't see any waste in Ricoh's strategy. They are keeping in the game, they have a niche carved out and the business model is to keep a core set of what 25,000 global customers? spending between €2K and €5K a year on enhancements to the system they like and take 20% to 30% margin which they can use for R&D to keep ticking over. They don't waste on advertising, they don't waste on complicated supply chain, they don't waste on loss leaders. The head count is probably minimal too, send in some engineers from the parent firm on secondment to learn how to innovate with limited budget and build some cross business communication channels. If I was in a leadership role in Ricoh, I'd use Pentax as a finishing school for those marked for success. A play area / training ground.
Brief to some hotshot manager or engineer coming up the ranks, you've an awful lot of automy, limited budget, there is a renowned history / culture, you're up against companies with factors of whatever against you in size, advertising clout, engineering resource, R&D budget... Show us what you can do.

This sounds a lot healthyer then just asking for 6 new lenses and 2 new camera body's like some do.

[Kunzite]

I can think of a better person than a designer to decide when it's off and on. The person taking the picture!

I disagree. In some exceptional cases that might be true, but... determining on the spot the effect of the accelerator, deciding if it would improve or not the picture and being right about it isn't an easy task at all.
Most likely it would be set to on or off and left there.

[ffking]

The market is the same for all players. If we consider smaller players, not the big CaNikons, players like Fuji or Olympus, they look like active players trying to bring something new, trying to attract new customers. Ricoh/Pentax on the other hand looks like a resigned player trying to live out of memories and trying to live with small cosmetics such as KP custom or old FAs transformed into the new HDs. With only 1-2 new lenses every 2-3 years, while others present 2-3 new lenses in a year, repeating the same technologies in cameras, opacity to new technologies can not bring a good future. Pentax should come out of its lethargy especially under the current market conditions. I think they need another manager.

Perception is a personal thing in the end - to me Ricoh look like a slow but solid builder - sort out the problems (foundations) and start systematically building up from there, Olympus have always been bigger on advertising than Pentax and their profile is higher than their user base as a result, I suspect - but then, that was the route Minolta took. Fuji have alays been an interesting company, but their best cameras have always been on the peripheries of the mainsteam. As I see it, Ricoh can continue what they are doing with Pentax as long as the will is there to do so, although recruiting newer users is a weak point without more physical presence or advertising.

[Class A]

Are you sure?

Yes. Positive.
I have written software for embedded systems used in industry using low level programming languages including machine code. It doesn't get closer to the hardware than that.

Perhaps the difficulty is not to turn off the accelerator completely, but to decide when to use it and how.

What clackers said: You should trust yourself more than you do.

I don't think that an On/Off menu option is the best solution.

It is better than having no option at all.

If you feel overwhelmed by the choice, just leave it "On" and pretend you cannot change it (as is now the case with the K-1 II).

Also, "Off" is a really safe choice because if you later realise that you wished you had it on "On", you can fix it in post-processing. There is nothing the K-1 II's "accelerator" unit can do that cannot be accomplished with post-processing. On the contrary, as some forum members have demonstrated, using the right tools you can even go beyond what the image processing of the "accelerator unit" is capable of. If that sounds like too much work, leave the option on "On" and don't look back.