Originally posted by Mistral75 To develop an autofocus in K
NEW '
at least as good as the four-year old Nikon D500' (almost five year old, actually, but whatever...) and recoup the associated development costs, Ricoh Imaging would therefore have to price the Pentax K
NEW at:
- $2,000 (Nikon D500's RRP)
- plus a premium to take into account that Nikon planned to recoup and actually recouped the costs associated with the development of their Multi-CAM 20K 153-point autofocus system on many more units (D500 plus D5 plus D850) than Ricoh Imaging can count upon (KNEW plus future K-1 Mark III), considering their respective sales volumes
- plus, potentially, an additional premium to take into account the market shrinkage in the meantime (even less units).
What are we talking about here? $2,500 for the K
NEW?
Or a licence fee paid to Nikon to include their Multi-CAM 20K 153-point autofocus system in the K
NEW? Which, by the way, would explain both the rumoured performance level of the K
NEW's autofocus and the radio silence observed by Ricoh Imaging concerning the specifications of said autofocus.
I think with Ricoh it's different. I read the Patent related to the autofocus system and apparently it's working with the 86K RGB Sensor already used since K3. Maybe they increased the amount of pixel in meantime. That was a sensor used to analyze the scene for the white balance, brightness, face detection and so on.
It shouldn't cost more except for moving the sensor at the bottom of the camera replacing the SAFOX and developing the algorithm. I think the new prism and the hybrid OVF is what costs the most in all of that, if it has been implemented regarding the patents of it (3 releases to get what they wanted!!! That means it should better than what has done Fuji if we consider the patents and what has been said in the interview from Pentax!).
I hope my speculation is not wrong..
IMHO, Pentax is trying to attract action photographers (sports; wildlife) with this new camera as they can't compete against MILC (EVF freezing and blackout is an problem for them and not for the other photographers).
Back in the track: looking at the Twitter account of Kimio Tanaka, he does seem to be a rep of Ricoh Imaging nor Pentax so why people rely on what he said about the potential release date of the new DSLR? We clearly have interviews from Pentax saying that they're doing their best to release it by the end of 2020...
Thanks!