[yorik]

People seem to complain a lot about planned obsolescence ....

Some people like to get nostalgic and complain.

I'm not sure why you responded to my post with this - I wasn't complaining about planned obsolescence nor waxing nostalgic.

[Doundounba]

In the end, for most of us, photography is a hobby. If you take the reasoning of some in this thread to the extreme, no one needs a camera at all. Humanity did just fine before they were invented. And certainly no one needs a camera with autofocus. And so on, for every conceivable camera feature...

But Ricoh wants to sell cameras. And, for the moment, I've chosen them as my "fixer" for camera bodies. ;-) I want to buy a camera from Ricoh! I've enjoyed using my K-3 a great deal, and enjoyment is key when you're doing something as a hobby. Sure, my K-3 still does everything it did when I bought it. But it long ago lost its shine, and other brands now offer things like in-camera focus bracketing and stacking, pre-buffering of bursts (a rotating buffer that keeps X previous shots from shutter half-press and saves them when you hit the shutter), live bulb mode (where you can see you exposure appear on the LCD while shooting), eye and animal-eye autofocus, other interesting high-speed burst modes (e.g. 4k and 6k photo-modes on Panasonic bodies), not to mention decent video. Do I need any of these things? Need is simply the wrong metric when you're talking about an object that I use for a hobby! When I purchased my K-3, it destroyed (IMHO) the X-T1 I compared it with. But the delta between the X-T1 and the X-T3 is huge, while the one between the K-3 and the KP is tiny, and in some ways (e.g. buffer depth, battery) the KP is actually a downgrade from the K-3.

I've got the lenses I want. The crucial elements for me are the D-FA 100mm WR plus HD DA 1.4X: a fantastic combo, and tough to beat in a competitor, whose macros are often huge and heavy (and expensive) and/or whose tele-converters only fit long zoom lenses and/or whose equivalent lenses are not weather sealed. I'd really prefer to buy a Pentax body to keep using this glass! But things are always moving, for example, options for smart adapters of Canon EF glass are widening (now not just to Canon EF-M, but also m4/3 and even Fuji).

Anyway, presumably if Ricoh is developing a new APS-C flagship, it's because they feel they can sell it. And I want to buy it. But I'm not sure that will still be the case in one year, especially if we get nothing but silence until the thing is released...

[ThorSanchez]

I'm not sure why you responded to my post with this - I wasn't complaining about planned obsolescence nor waxing nostalgic.

Your post was just a jumping off point for stuff that popped into my head. I wasn't directing any criticism at you.

[Mistral75]

Exactly two years ago, at this very hour (22:00 UTC), Ricoh Imaging announced the K-1 Mark II.

Since then they have announced the KP J Limited and the KP IR.

[ThorSanchez]

Of course, all cameras are reviewed and sold based on "needs" that are completely made up (the race for bigger numbers in spec sheets and spec sheet comparisons, the high the better even if practically never used), and unrelated to unbiased real world usage. If cameras were designed purely on real world usage, we would have the choice between [1] 4K (8 megapixels.. yes) cameras, all with slow motion video capability and seamless high speed wireless connectivity and [2] 100Mpixels medium format cameras at 1 frame per second purely for high quality stills, with both type of cameras being priced fairly close.

I think you're dramatically over-simplifying things. An 8 Mp camera would be really fast, but allow very little, if any, overhead for cropping. People want cameras that do a range of things. My 24Mp APS-C camera is pretty darned good for landscape, it's okay for sports, it's good for macro, and probably not so bad for portraits if I did that type of thing. I can pop a 15mm or 21mm LTD on it and take great travel photos. I can put a 55-300 PLM on it and take thousands of pictures of my kids' soccer teams. Much of that wouldn't be nearly as good on an 8Mp camera, and most of that wouldn't work at all on a 1 fps MF camera.

The market has made 24-36 Mp cameras that do a lot of things well but nothing excellently for the same reason there are more cars available than an 18-wheeler and an F1 car. My Audi isn't nearly as fast as a race car, nor can it haul 1/100th as much as a Peterbilt, but it hauls what I need and is a lot of fun at a semi-reasonable price.


We're not all idiots, mindlessly buying things that are bad for their intended uses. We buy stuff that compromises in ways that work pretty well for what we want to do.

[biz-engineer]

We're not all idiots, mindlessly buying things that are bad for their intended uses. We buy stuff that compromises in ways that work pretty well for what we want to do.

Who defines that compromise? In reality, there isn't a single person directings what product should be offered, nor customers who know what they truly need and fully force what they need. For example, before the iPhone was offered, nobody asked for a smartphone, if you'd do market research surveys before the iPhone was released, every customer would ask for a phone with a physical key pad, that's how a lot of mobile phone makers listening to customers have disappeared after Apple introduced the iphone by not listening to what the market said it wanted. Now if you do market research survey asking people what they want, they'll say they need a smarphone, so yes customers are stupid like sheep, like society is in general. The kind of products offered are based on the limited imagination of what customers think they want and how well manufacturers innovate or fully follow what customers say they want. Customers who don't print and don't crop images are still excited by more megapixels, because the "more mega pixel is better" is hard wired in their brains already back from the years when cameras had 6Mpixels (when cameras had 6Mp, marketers say you don't need more because of the viewing distance...etc). On the other hand, photographers who print large are marginalised by the market, because manufacturers won't make such kind of cameras if the market isn't big enough to make money, that's how the majority of digital camera models actual "performance" for printing are pathetic compared to pre-internet film era where 4K video wasn't driving any of the specs of cameras. To me it's interesting to see that it's almost impossible to buy 4x5 lenses new, all this market died due to internet prioritizing the seeing on images on computer displays instead of printing.

[mlt]

According to ipforce.jp, over 40 patents filed by Ricoh since the end of August that could be related to both the upcoming camera body and future lenses. January/February has been busy with 16 patents identified.

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Last edited by mlt; 02-21-2020 at 04:34 PM. Reason: Update

[monochrome]

Who defines that compromise?

Compromise is the best combination of what I (IOW market buyers) want and don’t want at a price point that will generate optimal profitable sales revenue. That particular combination is estimated - with the appropriate level of business risk - by the manufacturer’s market research team.

And what’s wrong with that? If a business gets it wrong they won’t be in business long.

[GordonZA]

Changing direction I wonder if this new body will use the new Sony IMX671 AQR sensor?

[Mistral75]

Changing direction I wonder if this new body will use the new Sony IMX671 AQR sensor?

I hope it won't: this sensor won't be available (mass production) until 2021.

[Rondec]

Unless the date they're sure they can hit is October 26th, 2021...

If that's the first date they think they can meet it is better to put it out there than to have us sit around stewing for the next twenty months. Personally, I am thinking some time this fall based on what few tea leaves have drifted this way, but I think it would be beneficial to have an official date in mind.

[BigMackCam]

Sorry, I guess I kind of missed that. But isn't frustration a natural outcome of unmet wants?

Sure... and there's plenty in life that warrants our frustration. But I'm a firm believer in the idiom "don't sweat the small stuff". Frankly, new cameras, lenses and other toys, announcements, release dates, delays etc. - that all strikes me as really small stuff in the grand scheme of things.

I'll step back from this aspect of the discussion for now, lest I be accused of pontificating

[Kobie]

According to ipforce.jp, over 40 patents filed by Ricoh since the end of August that could be related to both the upcoming camera body and future lenses. January/February has been busy with 16 patents identified.

Most seem geared towards science (laser technology), Large Printer/Copiers (Image pickup devices) and Medical. There was one that mentioned 360 cameras, however, that patent was talking about heat map signatures etc. Unfortunately, there really wasn't anything new for DSLR's or MILC's other than the previous Patents that have already been discussed on Pentax Forums.

[JPT]

Most seem geared towards science (laser technology), Large Printer/Copiers (Image pickup devices) and Medical. There was one that mentioned 360 cameras, however, that patent was talking about heat map signatures etc. Unfortunately, there really wasn't anything new for DSLR's or MILC's other than the previous Patents that have already been discussed on Pentax Forums.

If you are finding lots of printer stuff, I think you might be looking in the wrong place.

Are you looking at Ricoh (株式会社リコー) or Ricoh Imaging (リコーイメージング株式会社)?

Here is where most of the ones relevant to cameras are. About two are added each week.
???????????????????? 2020?

However, from what I can identify, things in this list are normally related to cameras that have already been released. Either that or things that never get implemented in a real product.

[ThorSanchez]

Who defines that compromise? In reality, there isn't a single person directings what product should be offered, nor customers who know what they truly need and fully force what they need. For example, before the iPhone was offered, nobody asked for a smartphone, if you'd do market research surveys before the iPhone was released, every customer would ask for a phone with a physical key pad, that's how a lot of mobile phone makers listening to customers have disappeared after Apple introduced the iphone by not listening to what the market said it wanted. Now if you do market research survey asking people what they want, they'll say they need a smarphone, so yes customers are stupid like sheep, like society is in general. The kind of products offered are based on the limited imagination of what customers think they want and how well manufacturers innovate or fully follow what customers say they want. Customers who don't print and don't crop images are still excited by more megapixels, because the "more mega pixel is better" is hard wired in their brains already back from the years when cameras had 6Mpixels (when cameras had 6Mp, marketers say you don't need more because of the viewing distance...etc). On the other hand, photographers who print large are marginalised by the market, because manufacturers won't make such kind of cameras if the market isn't big enough to make money, that's how the majority of digital camera models actual "performance" for printing are pathetic compared to pre-internet film era where 4K video wasn't driving any of the specs of cameras. To me it's interesting to see that it's almost impossible to buy 4x5 lenses new, all this market died due to internet prioritizing the seeing on images on computer displays instead of printing.

In the pre-digital era what percentage of photographs were printed at a meter or two sized? My guess is 1/1000th of 1%. The market was never going to offer a wide range of inexpensive cameras designed for outputting photos for extremely large printing.


I guess your point here is that manufacturers are dumb, and consumers are stupid sheep. Who should be making the decisions? A high council of learned elders whose only job in life is to print wall-sized photos that you can view from 6" away with no degradation?