[Kunzite]

Thanks, very insightful.

Thanks, but I think it was rather lazy - I've only read a section of the report, I know there must be some documents with numbers somewhere...

[StarTroop]

So, it seems to me that Ricoh is taking a very conservative approach to the Pentax brand, enough so that they don't even bother to mention it specifically by name in these reports. While some seem to take this as sign that Ricoh is ready to abandon the brand, I take it as the opposite.


Pentax as a brand name and a collection of technology (lens mount, optical designs, and other patents), will always maintain a steady, if small, value that is probably more worthwhile to hang onto, even if it appears to be at a small loss when only considering the expense/income related directly to Pentax. However, we know that Pentax is not an isolated economy, and is only a small part of a larger imaging division, within an even larger company. This means that R&D and manufacturing costs for Pentax products don't need to be recouped by the Pentax brand alone, and that propriety tech and materials can actually be shared between Pentax and Ricoh's other optical products, like how the GRIII borrows heavily from Pentax DSLRs.


With this in mind, and the assumption that Ricoh is an intelligent and efficient company, we can assume that they are not wasting resources on Pentax, and that they are probably subsidising the brand in order to keep their only tap in the ILC market open, which brings in that little bit of steady income to help fund their more profitable ventures. If they abandoned the ILC market entirely, they would lose that window that could potentially be opened wider in the future when the camera market isn't so volatile. The effort to design and release a new lens mount and camera system in a saturated market is very risky, but if they keep Pentax on life-support long enough to turn in a big profit in other divisions, then they'll already have a system to inject with adrenaline in an effort to retake a larger market share, or at least a more profitable one (like Leica).

So, in conclusion, I think the fact that Ricoh barely even seems to mention Pentax is a sign that selling or abandoning the brand isn't even on the table. R&D and manufacturing costs are kept low, new releases are kept slow, but regular enough to appease fans, and all expenses/profits are rolled directly into the imaging division, which itself is maintaining a conservative but healthy growth. Ricoh is doing the smart thing by diversifying their investments, and while it's arguable if they're doing enough to prevent further loss of market share, at least they're clearly not worried about the brand at this moment. Who knows, maybe 10 years from now Canon and Nikon will have majorly slipped because they invested too heavily in mirrorless ILCs, and tried too hard to maintain DSLRs concurrently, and meanwhile GR and Theta sales could have brought Ricoh into a position where they can place a new stranglehold on the OVF market at minimal financial risk. If Ricoh dropped Pentax now, that simply wouldn't be an option 10 years from now.

[biz-engineer]

When I was "new" here. the cry was "give us a camera that will allow a 50mm lens to act like a 50mm lens."Pentax answered that cry.

Ricoh Imaging ( cameras ) know that they don't have the lenses needed for the K1 system, but their budget was cut by the financial controller at Ricoh HQ. There is no need for Pentaxians on Pentax forum to find excuses for why it is Ok to not have a wide angle and portrait lenses available. My guess is that Pentax is now part of a small entity inside Ricoh , with budgets shared with other things such as Theta 360 and Automotive products.

---------- Post added 02-11-19 at 08:08 ----------

Ricoh listened to you and saved the R&D money for these lenses as long as you keep saying you don't need lenses.

Pentax is nowhere to be seen: no mention of the Pentax brand, no picture of a Pentax product. (The page of the presentation dedicated to the 'Other' business segment includes the picture of a Ricoh Z1 and that of a Ricoh GR III.)

My guess is that Pentax R&D is now sunk into other activities, shared resources, no a singulated entity with dedicated budget and staff that would make it easy to sell off Pentax camera. That may be the recipe for the longevity of the Pentax brand, but certain not the recipe for Pentax products remaining competitive.

[biz-engineer]

Ricoh's financial results for Q2 - Pentax still not doomed.

I think you are confusing success of Ricoh with success of Pentax inside Ricoh. Successful automotive projects have nothing to do with survival of Pentax. For Pentax to survive it need to have customers buy new Pentax products.

---

Last edited by biz-engineer; 11-02-2019 at 04:41 AM.

[Dan Rentea]

Ricoh Imaging ( cameras ) know that they don't have the lenses needed for the K1 system, but their budget was cut by the financial controller at Ricoh HQ. There is no need for Pentaxians on Pentax forum to find excuses for why it is Ok to not have a wide angle and portrait lenses available. My guess is that Pentax is now part of a small entity inside Ricoh , with budgets shared with other things such as Theta 360 and Automotive products.

---------- Post added 02-11-19 at 08:08 ----------


My guess is that Pentax R&D is now sunk into other activities, shared resources, no a singulated entity with dedicated budget and staff that would make it easy to sell off Pentax camera. That may be the recipe for the longevity of the Pentax brand, but certain not the recipe for Pentax products remaining competitive.

What Ricoh is doing it's not my problem as long as they manage to stay in business in the contracted market that we have today when comes to cameras. As long as their business seems ok in terms of cameras division, then my congrats to them.

What I don't like is to see forum members switching their opinion entirely in a matter of days, depending on who they are talking to. It's not ok to see them in a topic defending Pentax by saying that there are enough lenses available and the ones not satisfied about the number of lenses for K1 are trolls or marketing victims, it's not ok to see them in other topics defending Pentax af, etc. and then in a matter of hours or days to see the same persons saying that there are lenses that are missing, saying that Pentax doesn't seem to have a recipe to stay competitive, that af is not as good as it was just a few hours or days before.

I don't know why there is such a need to argue about something as long as those persons who like to argue have completely different opinions on other topics?!? I guess I won't find that answer pretty soon...

[biz-engineer]

What I don't like is to see forum members switching their opinion entirely in a matter of days.

Lack of lenses isn't an opinion, it's a fact.

[Zygonyx]

OK, but this recurrent complaints won't change anything to reality.

---------- Post added 02-11-19 at 03:50 ----------

All that can be done in our hands is BUY and MAKE BUY products.

[xandos]

Lack of lenses isn't an opinion, it's a fact.

Its not a fact, it's an opinion.

It is a fact there are lenses. It is a fact that according to the opinion of some people, there should be lenses that are not there.


In order for it to be a fact that lenses are lacking, there would have to be a non-opinion standard about what constitutes as a 'lack' in a lens lineup. No such standard exists, its just based on opinion. What some people might perceive as a sparse or lacking lineup is sufficient and complete for others. Hence opinion, not fact. If you were to state: 'some lenses I want cannot be bought new from pentax', that would also be a fact. That does not directly translate to 'the pentax system suffers from a lack of lenses'.


(It might not be interesting, bu in my opinion for example there is no lack of lenses. Of course a modern tilt-shift, magnifying macro and other niche stuff does not (or at least barely) exist. And for some lenses you have to go third-party or used. I also agree that it would make sense for pentax to sell a wide fast prime to complement the astro-tracer, instead of only the rather bulky and expensive 15-30 (FF) and 11-18(APSC). In practice though, I have the samyang 14/2.8 and am unlikely to buy a second massive wide angle lens even if pentax does make one. Its also very unlikely pentax would make one that can compete on price, and they might have decided that there is not much room in the fast ultrawide market due to Samyang and Irix. I'd also like to see something like a 20mm FF lens, but I'd probably anyway prefer the 20mm/2.8 that already exists, because a possible new one is bound to be much larger.)

[biz-engineer]

I also agree that it would make sense for pentax to sell a wide fast prime to complement the astro-tracer, instead of only the rather bulky and expensive 15-30 (FF)

I have the D-FA15-30, so for me the wide angle domain is covered, the 15-30 is a very good lens, except that practically it is my least used lens for a couple of reasons:
- it's relatively large and heavy
- the filter system is 150mm x 170mm large
- goes to 30mm at the long end, meaning that I still need to bring along another lens (28-105 or 24-70)
- the 24mm FL of the DFA24-70 can often work for wide angle shots
If I take the 15-30 and 150mm filter kit , I can't bring anything else as by bag is full.
If I take the 24-70 , I can cope with 24mm , still have 35 , 50 and 70mm if I need longer FL, and use the smaller 100mm filter kit.
What's the result of that: my 15-30 almost always stays home. The rare occasion I bring the 15-30 , I can only shoot wide and nothing else.
Same story with the DFA70-200, that's an excellent lens, great for sport venues when no one is shock by seeing a large lens, for people portraits I'd prefer an 85 prime.
Basically, I could select 3 lenses (20mm, 24-105 and 85 1.4) from a competitor brand, reduce my landscape kit to a single 130mm kit, and be done.
Just because Ricoh don't dare making a couple of primes, I have to carry 3kg more to take the same images.

[Mistral75]

Remember that the whole Smart Vision (Pentax cameras, lenses and accessories, Ricoh compact cameras, Ricoh Theta cameras and their respective accessories) is roughly 25 times smaller than Canon's camera business.

Canon have launched a bit more than seven cameras and seven lenses per year on average during the last three years. Divide this by 25: if Smart Vision were to follow the same pace, scaled down according to their size and therefore their R&D capability, they would launch one camera and one lens every 3+ years.

Thankfully they are doing a bit better than that. However, they can't possibly execute their 24x36 roadmap (seven lenses including the 50mm f/1.4) in less than fifteen years from the K-1's launch, except if they rebadge third-party lenses like they did to make the holly trinity of f/2.8 zoom lenses available in 2016.

[Kunzite]

I think you are confusing success of Ricoh with success of Pentax inside Ricoh. Successful automotive projects have nothing to do with survival of Pentax. For Pentax to survive it need to have customers buy new Pentax products.

I believe I am not confusing anything; but how about you?
I was specifically quoting Ricoh on the Smart Vision's performance; Smart Vision is Ricoh Imaging, and doesn't include automotive (that would be Industrial Products). You're way off the mark, or using a strawman.

[reh321]

Lack of lenses isn't an opinion, it's a fact.

We have more than fifty years worth of lenses.
The K-1 does not have certain modern lenses.
The K-1 was launched with a modern zoom lens that by itself takes care of most conditions.

[Dan Rentea]

Lack of lenses isn't an opinion, it's a fact.

Ah, I see. So, now you use what's available not because you need the lenses you have, but because the ones you really want aren't yet available. So, when I said it's nice to have options to choose from, you and another two people filled 3 pages in another topic telling me how wrong I am. But now you say that the 15-30mm lens stay home because it's heavy, that you prefer the 85mm lens to the 70-200mm f2.8 for portraits and so on.

Same with the ones telling me they are after the ultimate image quality and this is the reason why they bought K1 or K1 II and yet, they don't use any of the modern lenses on their K1/K1 II and they use legacy lenses. It's like buying a Lamborghini without having the option to drive at more than 50km/hour. Stick a Pentax D-FA 50mm f1.4 lens or a Pentax 70-200mm f2.8 lens on K1 and then come and tell me about the ultimate image quality and I'm going to be all ears knowing that a lens like the new 50mm or like the 70-200mm f2.8 will do justice to a demanding sensor like the one from K1. Talking about the ultimate image quality without touching any of the modern lenses, but instead using cheap old lenses or APS-C lenses and crop the images to eliminate the vigneting to me it's just funny.

Same with the ones who said about the Canon 28-70mm f2L lens that it's too heavy and they can't imagine shooting with such a heavy lens. This was very funny because the same guys said all over this forum that they don't have a problem shooting with K1 and with 15-30mm f2.8 or with K1 and 70-200mm f2.8. I wanted to tell them a few times that K1 with 15-30mm weights as much as EOS R with 28-70mm f2, and K1 with 70-200mm f2.8 is even heavier, but each time I or other people tell the above things as observations, some people start a debate between Pentax and Canon or Sony and sometimes Nikon.

If you ask me, if Ricoh is following this forum it would have a hard time figuring out what to do next because:
- some say that Pentax has all the needed lenses on K1
- some say that they don't need lenses like D-FA 50mmf1.4 or D-FA 85mm f1.4 because the old ones like the 55mm f1.4 are good enough
- some say that they don't need f1.4 lenses because they shoot portraits at f4 or f5.6
- some say that they don't buy new lenses because they are expensive, or big and heavy, or both

I said more than once that I hope Pentax will release a lot of lenses and at least another entry level full frame so that people can have options to choose from in terms of price, size and weight and each time I said all this things a few pentaxians jumped at my neck telling me they have every thing they need. With topics like this I see that they just like a good "fight" between Pentax and other brands and surprisingly, from time to time they like a fight between Pentax and Pentax (the use of flippy screen, the use of accelerator, etc.).

Let's just hope that the next APS-C and full frame cameras from Ricoh will incorporate features that a lot of people will want and this way maybe Nikon and Canon will be forced by users to release DSLRs years to come. Why? Because options are welcomed regardless of the manufacturer.

[taktoon]

I said more than once that I hope Pentax will release a lot of lenses and at least another entry level full frame so that people can have options to choose from in terms of price, size and weight and each time I said all this things a few pentaxians jumped at my neck telling me they have every thing they need. With topics like this I see that they just like a good "fight" between Pentax and other brands and surprisingly, from time to time they like a fight between Pentax and Pentax (the use of flippy screen, the use of accelerator, etc.).Let's just hope that the next APS-C and full frame cameras from Ricoh will incorporate features that a lot of people will want and this way maybe Nikon and Canon will be forced by users to release DSLRs years to come. Why? Because options are welcomed regardless of the manufacturer.

I cannot disagree with this statement. More choices are always welcome. For example I would love to have FA 15-30 f8 (or DA 10-20 f/5.6 for APS-C) lens with great sharpness across the frame and minimum distortion if it would be significantly smaller then existing DFA 15--30 f2.8 or DA* 11-18. But I know there is no such a lens on the market and probably never will be and I am fine with that.

[monochrome]

Neither was Samsung. But we were talking about the Imaging divisions, not (necessarily) entire companies or groups.

Actually in the case of Olympus we should be concerned about the entire company. They cooked their books for over a decade and were forced to go to Sony for a rescue capital infusion or they wouldn’t be here now. AFA medical devices, in my personal experience, they have essentially replaced Hoya / Pentax as the preferred supplier of scoping instruments.