Originally posted by Urkeldaedalus I'm a reporter. He seemed like a nice enough guy in person. I'll also leave it at that
I would agree with you that Ricoh and Pentax seem perfect together in terms of their philosophy of making well-built, usable cameras instead of gadgets. My only concern with them is can they keep up with the other camera manufacturers in terms of having all the whiz bang features that people seem to be drawn to? Or will they continue as they have done making well made niche products? I'm interested to see what happens.
I'm glad you're enjoying your GXR so far. There's something about the camera that's just addictive to use.
My thoughts of mounting a K-mount on it were that a 15 mm (if I bought one), 43 mm, and even the 77 mm (it's not that big, hood retracted) would work very well on the GXR body. I would agree with you that the FA31 would be sort of giant on the GXR, but it might be fun to try.
The K to M mount adapters seem to be fairly expensive, though, so I may wait to see what Ricoh does either with a K-mount module or that Pentax Mirrorless that they'll be making (there may be a new mount for that, but I'm guessing there will be a Pentax made K-mount adapter in that case). The 28 mm module in many ways is enough for me.
The only problem with that is that I hate waiting! Plus the M-mount module looks really cool.
Speaking of, Steve Huff has some more first impressions from the module:
Ricoh GXR A12 Leica M Mount Module – My quick take…by Steve Huff | STEVE HUFF PHOTOS I was just sort of kidding. That said, I would have thought the last Texan who was in the White House would have been enough for a few years. Actually come to think of it LBJ wasn't exactly very popular either so it's definitely not a party thing.
Texas is a great place but I'm not so sure about our politicians. They tend to have large appetites that Americans tire of very quickly. Lloyd Bentsen was a very good man though.
As for Ricoh/Pentax, I can't see them trying to take on Nikon/Canon right away. On the other hand, if I'm happy with a camera, I'm not sure it matters to me what the brand is or how many people are using them. In some ways, a small niche oriented company that appeals to a specific market segment has some advantages. That said, I use about everything but Nikon or Canon. I have Sigmas, Olympus', Pentax's, a Fuji, and now a Ricoh. I love the DP1/2 but they are a real pain to use. If I had to keep only two I would keep the GXR and the Fuji. So my prediction is they will stay more of a niche oriented company if what is not niche oriented is defined by Nikon/Canon.
Good point on the 77. I have it I just don't use it often. I tend to prefer focals lengths from 28-50mm.
I think you might find some of the Russian lenses in M39 are quite good if a bit of crap shoot mechanically. I use to shoot film on them a lot and they can be quite good optically. I would look at the Jupiter 9 and the Helios 44. You can probably pick those two up for less than $200. There's on dealer on Ebay who goes by Kubanoid is very reliable. I think the Mir 1 might have been made in an M39 too.
I read Steve Huff's blog everyday. I like it because it's about photography not wall chart tests which I find terminally boring.
To some degree the whole industry may be in a state of flux right now. I remain unconvinced that the mirrored DSLR format will be the dominant one 5 years from now.
The one thing Ricoh needs to work on is their EVF. It's definitely not as good as the Olympus one.
Last edited by stanleyk; 09-30-2011 at 06:29 PM.
Reason: terrible spelling....