Originally posted by Wheatfield The reality is that the K1 sensor is now 10 years or more old. At some point Sony will stop supplying it at which time Ricoh will be forced to either come up with a new camera or abandon ship. Ricoh is giving every indication that they are in the camera business for the long haul with no apparent concern that they are going to be a niche player (much to the chagrin of many of the people here).
Yup. In fact, considering the situation with semiconductor production, my bet is that the sensor has not been produced for years already, and Ricoh is running the last batch they bought. And, on that note, the
only off-the-shelf FF sensor Sony have on their website is the 24 MP, 19 fps BSI sensor present in [name a current camera]. The 61 MP sensor that the A7R4 and Sigma FP L have is likely cut from the same wafer of the (also off-the-shelf) 26 MP APS-C chip in the K-3iii, but only as special-order because it's a more specialized, expensive sensor. The 36/42/45 MP sensors look to be very much discontinued.
My hunch, unless Ricoh want to do a Nikon and pay for a customized sensor (which I doubt), is that they'll be ordering a run of 61 MP sensors. They will not pay for a run with different pixel density.