[sundown]

Since the start of July 2020:

• Canon EOS R6
• Canon EOS R5
• Leica M10-R
• Nikon Z5
• Sony a7S III
• Olympus OM-D E-M10 IV
• Panasonic Lumix DC-S5
• Sony a7C
• GoPro Hero9 Black
• Panasonic Lumix DC-BGH1
• Canon PowerShot Zoom
• Canon EOS M50 Mark II
• Nikon Z7 II
• Nikon Z6 II
• Fujifilm X-S10

The Zeiss camera too.

[totsmuyco]

Do you mean it was hit in a hard way? “Hardly” suggests it wasn't hit at all. Just to know for sure

There was huge spike in COVID cases that it had to be locked down. Some businesses had to stop their operations.

[zapp]

The 85 was released, I am happy.
Time matters for new releases. Announcing new products before anyone else, releasing after anyone else is not perfect. The glass for the new apsc is already available. However great the new camera will be, the glass makes the image. 80% is already there.

[JPT]

The way I view this is that Tanaka is the kind of person who likes to make out he knows more than he does. He made a prediction based on something he heard - early autumn. When time proved him wrong, he felt the need to explain.

Tanaka clearly has genuine connections with Ricoh, but that doesn’t mean they share timelines with him. With his record of spilling information on Twitter, would you share anything confidential with him? Also, in fairness to him, I don’t think he intends his tweets to be anything more than entertainment - they are often jocular and a bit sarcastic.

I don’t think Ricoh is particularly fussed about getting the thing out early. They probably want to do it within 2020 because they said so, but beyond that is there really any urgency? In my case I’ll probably buy it but not before I can see myself having more chance to get out and go places. I don’t want to buy a camera and have half the warranty expire while I’m stuck at home. I guess a lot of customers will think like me.

A long list of other cameras that came out this year was posted. What strikes me is that they are just minor updates and shuffling features around between bodies. The only one that is really “new” is the Canon R5. That had heat trouble, needed an urgent firmware update, and Canon couldn’t meet the demand. I wonder if Canon wishes they’d waited a couple of months.

I know that those cameras are all very competent, but upgrading the chips and firmware in a mostly unchanged mirrorless body is much easier than making a new generation DSLR from scratch. Ricoh has to do all that stuff and a load more mechanical development and testing on top.

I don’t know when it’s coming out, but my guess is it’s going to be announced in the next few weeks.

[interested_observer]

Just some pure unadulterated speculation on my part. If there was a design problem or part sourcing or procurement problem, the body would have been delayed well before this point in time. The new body should be in manufacturing now, which to me would point to some sort of calibration / quality control issue. Pentax has been making cameras for long enough, that any normal body would not have presented any issue.

That leads me to believe that some new type of new technology may be included, that they may be having issues with in terms of scaling up the manufacturing process and not seeing their desired production rates and yields or some sort of unexpected quality control problem (alignment or calibration?). I'll go out on a limb here and suggest the optical viewfinder may be a hybrid (that they have a patent on from a couple of years ago). Pure speculation here in that Pentax touted their new prism technology, but I'm thinking that they were going to potentially surprise us with a bit extra here on this "feature", while shaking up the camera market a bit.

If they were to include some sort of hybrid viewfinder, that would take a lot of the sting out of not being able to go mirrorless, maintaining the DSLR form factor and being able to include some of the new future capabilities that mirrorless folks are pushing. I think that they are trying to be able to offer the best of both worlds - an optical viewfinder with a digital overlay, at an affordable price - and the new top end crop body would be the logical place to introduce this technology (with full backwards compatibility).

Just my 2 cents worth

[Raffwal]

IIRC, in this interview

Youtu.be

Youtu.be

from May they say that they have some challenges getting components due to covid, but they try to release the camera in 2020.

[wed7]

Do you mean it was hit in a hard way? “Hardly” suggests it wasn't hit at all. Just to know for sure

He meant that Cebu was hit the hard way. It was declared as one the Hotspot several months ago.

[Givizub]

I can wait if Ricoh will add articulated screen.

[Oldbayrunner]

I have nothing to "wait" for... I have everything I want in the cameras I have now.

[rawr]

Delay after delay could also mean the project has been quietly cancelled.

Always a possibility. It's tough in the camera business atm.

[Pål Jensen]

Delay after delay could also mean the project has been quietly cancelled. .

What delay?

[rawr]

What delay?

CP+ 2020, even earlier.

[Pål Jensen]

CP+ 2020, even earlier.

I don't think the camera was promised released at CP+.....

[Serkevan]

CP+ 2020, even earlier.

A project that has been "quietly cancelled" never has updates sent every few weeks detailing some design decisions. It just goes, well, quiet.

[rawr]

A project that has been "quietly cancelled" never has updates sent every few weeks detailing some design decisions. It just goes, well, quiet.

The MZ-D also went through a hype cycle of public updates and displays before the project was quietly aborted. It's not unknown in Pentax.