[Wheatfield]

Perfectly agree gatorguy, if there were some more affordable lenses with faster autofocus systems Pentax would gain in money and popularity, this is sure.

People have such short memories. Pentax tried being the cheap and cheerful brand. It cost them their company.
Cheaply priced products need massive sales volumes to be viable.
Ricoh seems smart enough to not repeat the mistakes that Pentax made that drove them into the arms of Hoya.
That ship has sailed.

[LeeRunge]

A dedication to creating the absolute best shooting experience on a DSLR when every other camera maker is rushing to mirrorless.

For me the connection to my subject just isn't there on a digital camera screen and it absolutely affects both my compositions and capture times. Yes I've tried Sony, wanted to see what all that eye-focus talk was about. Wanted to like it too, with an A7II in my hand and the owner making me a great offer. I didn't like it. At all. And the vaunted eye-focus wasn't better than my own focus technique.

Personally I'd miss so many shots on a mirrorless. I can lift the camera, focus on an eye, and shoot my K-70's in a matter of three seconds or less as a rule (except for those few adventurous lenses). No joke. In fairness I'm a couple seconds slower with the K1. On the other hand, I watch experienced Sony shooters I hang with who take far longer just to compose at some event while I've rattled off two or three shots in the meantime. Which of us is more likely to find a keeper?

IMHO there's 10's of thousands of photographers who feel the same: They can't or won't shoot mirrorless. For those folks Pentax is declaring we get you.

If you want mirrorless take your pick from a half dozen companies all fighting each other for attention. FWIW I do like what Fuji is trying to do and hope they stick around. Pentax makes the right choice staying out of that MILC parade. IMO that would have been the fastest route to fail.

So the promise to stick with OVF and a traditional DSLR. Fair enough. I'm with you on preferring OVF myself. I'm not allergic to EVF but I don't "get" the craze. I have an OMD.

The question is will Nikon and Canon abandon DSLR or just run production of both because I have a feeling there is a LOT of Canikon shooters who are very much like you who prefer the DSLR, many of them professionals. It would seem nuts to me for them to abandon that market (which is probably 90% still for them). Many in 10+ years when it's dwindled but I highly doubt anytime soon.

As I mentioned above the move with the 780 to just add the benefits of mirrorless to Iive view on the DSLR's was an indication that they'll keep building them for those who prefer optical.

Personally with my OMD or X100s the EVF is just a shaded live view. Really that's it. I use the X100s in optical 90% of the time. OMD (It's an EM10 ii) is just so compact you can carry it with an array of lenses in a tiny padded case for travel and it's nearly as good as APS-C for image quality. It's a shame Olympus was sold this year.

I can see the appeal of a promise to continue support for SLR. A declaration of we aren't changing, this is the way. That might work well if Canon and Nikon totally exit SLR production.

[FozzFoster]

They did well enough.

Right!

Leica M10:
24 MP full frame rangefinder
No video feature
5 fps continuous shot
8s - 1/4000 max shutter

$11,000 !!!!!!! (CAD)

[Wheatfield]

Leica Leica Leica

Pentax is not Leica. It doesn't have the history or the mystique to the broader market as Leica has.

So you would have them go after a dying market and fail as a business a second time?
Look, the entry level market is doomed, and companies that are dependent on that market are either going to get out of it, or they are going to fail. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is just the way it is.
Ask yourself how Leica built the mystique that allowed them to stay in business selling 1940s era cameras in the 1970s.

[normhead]

Half? You have total sales figures from Ricoh by product type? That would be very interesting to see if you don't mind sharing.

You can look for the old quotes as well as I can..... I have decent memory, I know what they said. But, I have no interest in sifting through the back pages of Exec interviews to find exactly where they said what. But if you really want it , you can find it.

With the K-1 they came right out and said half the purchasers were new to Pentax. With the K-p they said it was intended to be the K-3 replacement's, but so many K-3 owners didn't purchase it, and there were so many new to Pentax purchasers, they realized there was still a market for an upgraded K-3.

Look it up. I'm pretty sure all those old interviews are still posted here on the forum.

[LeeRunge]

Nikon reps already said earlier this year that they aren't leaving DSLR support anytime soon as they are still their financial bread and butter. They will only transition over more fully if Z picks up more fiscal weight. So Pentax will have competition, if it proves true, for many years to come in this segment.

I think the next decade is going to be very transitory for a lot of product brands and lineups. Should be interesting watching it all play out

I think the longterm market will decide OVF vs EVF. The mirrorless lineup really just seemed like them saying "hey we better offer our base this tech or they might jump to Sony" which with Sony's growth was happening. I also highly doubt they will abandoned SLR anytime soon unless Z cameras become the dominant camera. Also smart phone users are used to electronic displays so for them EVF is probably preferential and they realize that. Film users are accustomed to optical.

For now a huge base of professionals shoot with their DSLR's and they don't upgrade until they wear them out for the most part.

The D750 was a huge camera for overall use and for wedding photographers. The D780 just said hey, you like that mirrorless stuff but still prefer OVF? We'll add it to the live view for you. So now that thing has the 273 point AF or whatever it is on the live view just like the Z6 while keeping the 51 points PDAF in the optical viewfinder from the 750 which is a great AF and gets the job done. That doesn't seem like abandoning the market. I bet we'll see a D860 with the same in a year or two adopting the Z7 improvements in live view.

[ThorSanchez]

People have such short memories. Pentax tried being the cheap and cheerful brand. It cost them their company.
Cheaply priced products need massive sales volumes to be viable.
Ricoh seems smart enough to not repeat the mistakes that Pentax made that drove them into the arms of Hoya.
That ship has sailed.

I suppose we'll soon see if expensive and sad works out better. ( Kidding, at least about the sad part)

[Wheatfield]

Right!

Leica M10:
24 MP full frame rangefinder
No video feature
5 fps continuous shot
8s - 1/4000 max shutter

$11,000 !!!!!!! (CAD)

I expect they think will sell enough of them, the same way they sold enough M4s when the Nikon F Photomic was the camera of the moment.
I really find it funny that a bunch of people posting to a web forum think they have the answers, and then it turns out that the answers they have are the ones that drive companies into bankruptcy.
Pentax wasn't able to stay in business selling cheap cameras and lenses when the camera market was booming, exactly why does anyone think Ricoh will stay in business making cheap Pentax cameras and lenses when the market for cheap cameras and lenses is imploding? They many have officially disappeared as a company on August 6, 2007, but the roots of their demise date back to the 1980s and their insistence on sticking with the business model that drove them out of business.

---------- Post added Oct 28th, 2020 at 10:32 AM ----------

Nikon reps already said earlier this year that they aren't leaving DSLR support anytime soon as they are still their financial bread and butter. They will only transition over more fully if Z picks up more fiscal weight. So Pentax will have competition, if it proves true, for many years to come in this segment.

I wonder if that is anything like Canon saying they would support the FD mount long term? Nikon (and Canon) may continue to support DSLRs, but that support isn't very likely going to include D3500s and Rebels.

[Serkevan]

Half? You have total sales figures from Ricoh by product type? That would be very interesting to see if you don't mind sharing.

The quote I remember is "Initially, we designed [the KP] as a replacement for the K-3 Mark II, but we realised that we were selling it a lot more to non-Pentax customers". (Pentax fête ses 100 ans : "notre communauté est extrêmement attachée à notre marque") from the 100 year anniversary.

Without overall sales numbers, the statement is fairly meaningless because half of a thousand cameras (obvious exaggeration here) is not a company saver or even relevant to growing the company's userbase*. And while it's clear they were surprised by the sales to brand newcomers, the statement doesn't really explicitly say they sold "more than half" to non-Pentax cameras, it might be very easily interpreted as "more than expected", but that's open to interpretation.

*I seem to recall that some retailers mentioned that the KP was really not selling well until they lowered the price, it was too close to the K-3ii on release. Don't quote me on that one though, I can't remember where I read that.

[Wheatfield]

I suppose we'll soon see if expensive and sad works out better. ( Kidding, at least about the sad part)

It's the only option they have. Volume sales are not there. That horse has died, and there isn't any point in beating the poor thing.
Expensive means less volume sales required to recover the ROI.

[mee]

So you would have them go after a dying market and fail as a business a second time?
Look, the entry level market is doomed, and companies that are dependent on that market are either going to get out of it, or they are going to fail. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is just the way it is.
Ask yourself how Leica built the mystique that allowed them to stay in business selling 1940s era cameras in the 1970s.

Don't put words into my mouth. It's really rude, Wheatfield.

Leica is a brand built around selling extremely overpriced cameras to people who either enjoy the formfactor and/or enjoy the status symbol they are. They're like Rolls Royce.


Pentax is a storied brand that has competed as one of the big three. It is like a Toyota or Mazda. A dependable, everyday man's camera system.


Pentax has never had the mystique of Leica and never will. They're two different creatures entirely. And for all our sake I hope it stays that way. Otherwise are you willing to spend 11 grand on a K-3 IV? 2k-3k dollars is Fully loaded Toyota money in the camera world, it isn't Rolls money. Maybe we could argue they're into Lexus tiering but that's still not Rolls level.

[Serkevan]

The thing with Leica is that it doesn't have a market. It has a country club.

[normhead]

The thing with Leica is that it doesn't have a market. It has a country club.

Thousands of country clubs....
I have images of 3 dentists who used to come up to a hunt camp their decedents still own, they all had Lieca's.
They tuned up to go hunting in their suits, didn't carry their own gear or canoes, didn't cook, basically a gentleman's club in the bush. There used to be people who would work for peanuts to do stuff like that.

[Breakfastographer]

Well well, sensor could be ~same as in Fuji X-T3 and newer models but is it still a PDAF-variant? Because, in Fuji cameras the sensor has PDAF-array.

Yes, and Fujifilm uses 2 million of the sensor's pixels for PDAF, so it's functionally really a 24 megapixel sensor in Fujifilm's case. I hope Pentax hasn't gone down that road.

[FozzFoster]

I think Canon and Nikon dove in

Canon and Nikon have always played copy cat.
Back when, Leica made rangefinders and was pretty much the big cheese in the camera business.
Nikon and Canon made knock-off Leicas for ages.
Then Pentax came around and instead of making knock-offs, they when with the novel idea of a 35mm SLR (quick-return) with a pentaprism viewfinder.
When Pentax started makin' it big, good ol' Canon and Nikon jumped the rangefinder ship and started playin' copy cat again by making SLRs.
Now with Sony making quite the splash with mirrorless, again Canon and Nikon abandon their customer base and force loyal customers to move into their new system.
Canon and Nikon don't care about their users - they care about their bottom line.
Unlike Pentax that states the will be a partner with their customer for life - they know their users love Pentax for a reason, and they aren't going to change that to chase market fads.
Pentax isn't chasin' the mirrorless mania just to appease some shareholder. They are staying true to themselves and what they stand for.