[bladerunner6]

Did you ask if Pentax joined the L mount alliance?

No, I didn’t.

While I am significantly above median US income of about $60k a year I, like most people, can’t afford a FF system with equivalents to all the lenses I currently have.

Also, I like the DSLR experience.

[Kunzite]

There is no leak of info, no tangible rumor, nothing. So, to me it looks more like Ricoh's goal is to push sales (discounts) of existing products until the 100 Year anniversary, and then we don't know. No new product for 18 months[...]

I repeat: stop the FUD.
And stop the misinformation: the last new product was announced 2 months ago, the HD version of the DA 10-17mm - I repeat, this means they're making new batches of it. A weird way of clearing stock.

[normhead]

With Tamron being three times the size of Sigma, and with many K-1 owners also buying the Tamron, 15-30 and 24-70 branded as Pentax lenses, Tamron is making money from everyone. Sigma, not so much. I'm not sure if this is sign of Pentax falling by the wayside, or Sigma falling by the wayside. But my suspicion is it's Sigma.

My guess is, the money they spent developing their own camera lines based on Foveon sensors etc. would have been better invested in continuing the Pentax mount cameras, and getting into KAF3 and KAF4. Myself and many others simply no longer purchase screw drive lenses. But, they are a family business, they do what they see fit with their money. I don't get a say. But I can certainly question what they've done.These are executive decisions and I don't have all the info.

[RonHendriks1966]

With Tamron being three times the size of Sigma, and with many K-1 owners also buying the Tamron, 15-30 and 24-70 branded as Pentax lenses, Tamron is making money from everyone. Sigma, not so much. I'm not sure if this is sign of Pentax falling by the wayside, or Sigma falling by the wayside. But my suspicion is it's Sigma.

I think Sigma probably would have liked the deal of Tamron in delivering lenses under the Pentax brand made in their factory. Those lenses are payed for by Ricoh-Imaging at the doorstep. No inventory on your risk. By missing out on such a deal.....well it does get less interesting.

[biz-engineer]

"I don't want any of your lenses." " Well then, we won't sell you any."

For me this is the case, I never bought a single Sigma lens, for me the quality of Sigma lenses was worse than Tamron, imagine the worse quality of third party glass, knowing that third party glass makers already compromise the materials their use to offer lenses cheaper than OEM lenses.

[boriscleto]

the money they spent developing their own camera lines based on Foveon sensors etc.

This is what happens when you run your company as hobby. It works for Leica because it's Leica and Leicaphiles will pay...

[normhead]

This is what happens when you run your company as hobby. It works for Leica because it's Leica and Leicaphiles will pay...

Pentax came out with the K-1, an immediate boost in customers looking for lenses, and Sigma foveon cameras tanked. It sure looks like they missed the boat.

[Adam]

We live in an era where customers have stopped buying new camera bodies like crazy, and upgrading every year, because the tech has generally matured in the consumer and prosumer space. At the same time, the multitude of product lines offered by other manufacturers has dug in to their profits.

Ricoh wants to keep Pentax going, and to do that they need to adapt to the changing market. Releasing a new camera as often as others do now, or even as often as Pentax did before, would be suicide.

My personal hunch is that they are holding off on releasing a new body until that body can add substantial value over the current line, and that whatever new technology is developed can be meaningfully recycled into other future bodies (i.e. think along the lines of pixel shift). They said very clearly at CP+ that a K-3 replacement is in the works, and when it comes out I'm sure it will deliver in the way that Pentax has always done.

[pres589]

It's weird seeing this same basic thread pop up every month or two, sometimes more often than that, talking about Sigma dropping new k-mount lens from their production. I think it really is a loss to the Pentax user base to not have a few more lenses to chose from, but I'm personally not in the market for any. A couple of their fast wide primes for full frame, their 85 or 105 Art lenses, and that 50-100 mm APS-C f1.8 zoom all seem like they would be nice additions to k-mount land.

The other side of that coin is that lens month that could go to Mother Ricoh would instead be going to Sigma. And I'd rather see Ricoh get the money from lens sales. I think where people get frustrated is seeing Sigma advertise some new lens every month or two (at least seemingly) and Ricoh bringing lenses to market at a slower pace.

[Zygonyx]

RIP Sigma.
Good luck for your centenary...

[Kunzite]

Something crossed my mind - the thought that Sigma L lenses sales might be less than Pentax' K.
A twist on their words: they might have had to improve profitability on their 3rd-party lenses in order to support a money-losing L line.

[biz-engineer]

Releasing a new camera as often as others do now, or even as often as Pentax did before, would be suicide.

Usually, it costs almost the same to have designers design a new camera model or do nothing in the office. Canon and Nikon keep releasing new camera models on a regular basis as long as they employ their engineering staff. Same for phone makers, they keep releasing new models as long as they employs phone designers. The cycle time for electronic designs is between 12 months and 18 months. Not releasing a new camera model every 18 months means there is no camera design team assigned to a camera project. You could send the staff to do other works inside the group and have them come back to design a new camera model two year later, but usually they lost some skills for cameras or aren't up to date with camera tech anymore, or aren't interested to come back to the camera division after two years of absence. The only plausible reason why we haven't seen a new DSLR recently is that Ricoh dissolved some of the teams working on Pentax product lines (645z,K1,KP), and assigned the GRIII team to design a new Pentax DSLR, which means no new DSLR model before mid 2020, assuming GRIII designers are skilled to design high performance DSLR which I doubt because a D500 like camera has design challenges completely different from a GRIII compact camera, hence there could be further delay added to the average camera design cycle time.

[thibs]

IMO this is nonsense.

[Rondec]

I would be shocked if Sigma actually either (a) sells many L mount cameras or (b) sells many L mount lenses. Particularly considering the investment in the camera models and the fact that they are a fifth wheel in the project (Panasonic and Leica both seem to have more invested users who appreciate their ethos) I think it is entirely possible that they end up losing a lot of money on this effort. Then again, they have consistently released lenses for the SA mount. I have never seen an SA mount lens in the wild nor a Foveon camera (although I know there is an active thread for them here).

They have just released the fp which feels like a test to see if it is more important to have real features -- like a mechanical shutter, decent ergonomics and controls, normal flash sync speed (max flash sync of 1/30 second!!) and decent buffer size (the fp can do 18 fps for less than a second with RAW images) -- or just to have a tiny camera. The fp is small and it is sealed. Other than that it feels like a camera that gives little that other cameras on the market (including the S1) don't do better.

As far as Pentax goes, from what I can tell, the K mount is alive and well, although a bit under resourced. They have released the HD FA 35, HD DA 10-17, and DA *11-18 and while there isn't a huge investment in most of these products, I find it unlikely that they would release them if they were planning to shut off the supply of new K mount cameras in the not too distant future. They are currently working on a new processing engine for their cameras -- PRIME II or whatever they choose to call it. That clearly has soaked up a lot of energy and R and D effort as they attempt to get cameras out the door with real improvements in video as well as still photography.

[stevebrot]

For me this is the case, I never bought a single Sigma lens, for me the quality of Sigma lenses was worse than Tamron, imagine the worse quality of third party glass, knowing that third party glass makers already compromise the materials their use to offer lenses cheaper than OEM lenses.

For me, this is not the case. I own two recent product Sigma lenses and quality, initial and otherwise, has not been an issue on either. As for third-party cutting corners on glass to cut prices, that may well be, except that recent product Sigma are not particularly cheap and several offerings never have been.


Steve