[Uluru]

A user from an other forum claims to have called the Ricoh US and was told the GR was definitely discontinued.
(after 12 months of production.)
There were rumours in February this year the GR will be updated with a new sensor much sooner than previously expected (from the Ricoh's presentation, the GR has a 2-year cycle).
A new 24MP sensor from the K-3 and a faster/better processor alone would be welcome upgrade, and would transform the GR into a true premium compact.
We'll see.

[monochrome]

So - K3 in a super-size body; K3 in a medium body; K3 in a compact body.

What's missing?

[Tanzer]

K3 in a Q-sized body, of course.

[DeadJohn]

Interesting. I also read rumors of a Sony RX100 Mark 3. I'm hoping for GR or RX100 M2 discounts because they are both excellent but very different cameras.

[Doundounba]

K-3 in a mirrorless body.

[Kayaker-J]

A MUCH needed lens... with bonus camera attached! It's the still-missing-from-APS-C digital; 28mm FF-equivalent; "all-purpose", modern design, low distortion; border-to-border sharp prime that landscape, street, and travel photographers have needed, IMO. ...And hardly just in the Ricoh/Pentax realm.

Now, for my wish & fantasy list, make it a no-compromise, two focal length (only) Vario-Elmar type for the 21st Century; at, for example, a 27mm/37.5mm equivalent FL. Add your DA15mm/4; a conventional "normal", if you must; a relatively cheap, small and/or fast 50-58mm of choice (optional); and either a DA70mm or FA77mm Limited... plus maybe a 1.4x tele converter or a dedicated 85-105mm macro/portrait lens of choice (modern or vintage MF)... and you're 95-99℅ done! The tyranny of the zooms ended... except for long telephoto, if you need it; or those (maybe only sometime?) specialty needs.

Bottom line: With a K-5ii[s]/K-3 and the Kayaker's Ricoh, it's back to real quality plus practicality, '70-'80's style... enhanced!

[Uluru]

A MUCH needed lens... with bonus camera attached! It's the still-missing-from-APS-C digital; 28mm FF-equivalent; "all-purpose", modern design, low distortion; border-to-border sharp prime that landscape, street, and travel photographers have needed, IMO. ...And hardly just in the Ricoh/Pentax realm!

Pentax is the only brand in the market that does not have a classic 28mm or 35mm equivalent lenses.
In APS-C those would be 19mm and 23mm. I have stated it many times, it is a terrible oversight. One 23mm f2 lens instead of DA21would draw MUCH more people to try Pentax DSLRs.
Look at Leica T: a brand new system, and it starts with a 23mm Summicron f2 lens + kit zoom.

[Kayaker-J]

K-3 in a mirrorless body.

If we're talking about a K-3 Plus, it MUST have some practical EVF implementation. It's the second decade of the 21st Century, for Pete's sake -- enough with shimming price-y Katz Eye focusing screens; and add-on magnifiers from the 1960's! Presbyopia, and probably loss of visual contrast, is a fact of life, folks.

Given the zero number of real, de-bugged K-3 alternatives out there with EVF; and the likely sorry prospects in the near term from stuck-in-2002 Canikon to give the market a boot, I'd settle for an add-on accessory, hot shoe (?) EVF for the K-3 via what (???) -- USB/firmware mod... Flu card to live view... or dammit, even straight-on hack. Grumble, grumble...

[monochrome]

Presbyopia, and probably loss of visual contrast, is a fact of life, folks.

These apply to me. I had 'settled' on the K-01. but the K3 OVF is so good that I shoot it sans glasses and LV only on a tripod.

[Kayaker-J]

Pentax is the only brand in the market that does not have a classic 28mm or 35mm equivalent lenses.
In APS-C those would be 19mm and 23mm. I have stated it many times, it is a terrible oversight. One 23mm f2 lens instead of DA21would draw MUCH more people to try Pentax DSLRs.
Look at Leica T: a brand new system, and it starts with a 23mm Summicron f2 lens + kit zoom.

I have been riding this hobby horse in numerous posts here. "Terrible oversight" is not too strong a phrase to describe the situation, if the midrange zoom is just not your ticket.

But wait! Pentax the only slacker here?? There is no APS-C or smaller format manufacturer offering the modern version of a circa 1980 line of up-to-date, all around practical, totable primes under 180mm FF focal length. There is no NOT designed to be IQ-compromised 28mm equivalent prime lens from Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony, Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic*, Samsung (?)... no one! Fuji could get there if they replaced the pancake 19mm. But then you'd be stuck with the oddball X-trans, 16mp, artifact-producing sensor. That's a nice fast 14mm they've got, though! The situation for the 35mm equivalent "journalists'/landscape-or-urban normal" -- which should be an economical option -- is almost as bad. A mediocrity like the 24/2.8 Nikkor AF-D, for example, besides being old, was designed from the start to be cheap. It just doesn't count. I keep the 24/2.8 AI MF for IQ reasons; and I can't even meter with it on my N75 or N80.

And how about the Nikon full frame frame option, for example, should you think they've got it covered? Try this: A from-the-'80's retrofocus 20mm; a 28/2.8 G with heavy field curvature (tricky); a "forced-to-fill-FF" 35mm DX plastic consumer zoom-complementer... an obsolescent 35/2.0 AF-D... or a new, O.K., but apparently disappointing 35/1.8 AF-S G for FX; a just-O.K., old school 50/1.8 AF-D, or a pretty decent, but "gelded" AF-S G at f.1.8 (the f.1.4 being all right, but less flat field and not better at comparable apertures); a surprisingly sharp and economical old school 4-element 85/1.8, plagued (for some) by an uncharacteristically warm -- for Nikon -- and, its said, difficult to correct color balance; and a not-their-best macro lens (heavy, slow) at 105mm... or, of course, the older design f.1.8. This is NOT exactly a compelling line up choice for prime users looking for top notch results today. Hence, the "Holy Trinity" (bring along your assistant bearer boy). And no, I don't need and don't want massive and costly f.1.4's. You could go Zeiss old school MF, I guess... if you can work your way around the tricky -- I know, "artistic" -- idiosyncrasies in that line.

So as you, and others have noted, there is a opportunity of sorts here for a manufacturer which is content to be a niche player to step up and fill the vacuum. But I am very sure you are greatly overestimating the effect on the market such a move would would generate. Not even this would likely "save Pentax", if the gloomier of the armchair economist prognosticators should turn out to be right (not that these types have a glittering track record). Forget the "build a better mousetrap" thing in this market.

* The new Panasonic/Leica 15mm/1.8 (30mm FF-eq. on m4/3) has been previewed. The first report I've seen left me disappointed.

[Uluru]

I have been riding this hobby horse in numerous posts here. "Terrible oversight" is not too strong a phrase to describe the situation, if the midrange zoom is just not your ticket.

But wait! Pentax the only slacker here?? There is NO APS-C or smaller format manufacturer offering the modern version of a circa 1980 line of up-to-date, all around practical, totable primes under 180mm FF focal length. There is NO not-intentionally compromised 28mm equivalent prime lens from Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony, Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic*, ...

All right, before going any further. Canon, Nikon and Leica have their FF lenses in all mentioned FoVs. Leave those three aside, as those brands are dedicated primarily and fully to the FF.

Pentax also had them long ago, but their production of FA lenses has ceased long ago too. And they never bothered to introduce anything of that sort of FoV in their newly chosen crop format. Leica, in their first iteration of a new system based around that same crop sensor, did introduce one such lens. Fuji did too, around that same crop sensor. That Samsung does not have them is is of little concern because Samsung has no heritage in this industry and art — it is a newcomer into photography, and their choices are their own, taken out of consideration of any tradition.

Yes, it was a terrible oversight because for many historic reasons those are the FoVs documentary photographers, photojournalists, and everyday people grew up with. It is the landmark FoV of half the historic newspaper photographs ever published.

DA21/3.2 cannot pretend to be either because it is neither, and the function of it has been subdued to its form and today it is weakest in terms of performance among all Pentax limited primes.

There is no doubt in my mind that a company which could design a magnificent DA35 could also design a 23mm f2 lens to be the anchor and the point of gravity in the entire prime lens lineup.

But Pentax has screwed up many more serious matters in dealing with customers, allowed incompetent people to consecutively make wrong decisions and draw them into an abyss, so we can forgive them that one too, as you perhaps would want us to believe?

[Kayaker-J]

I don't want you believe anything. What's your point?

Canon's 1.6x crop EF-S prime lens options are as nowhere as Nikon's. And mounts for EF and EF-S lenses are incompatible, just to add further insult to injury. Nikon does now have 9 (!), mostly plastic-y midrange-oriented zooms for DX users, who are now presumably deliriously happy with their choices. Leica is not for the same market as Pentax and (for the most part) Canikon. And good luck shooting birds with your M240. I already covered Nikon. Plus, how many still frame shooters here want Canon, anyway? Your hit at Samsung, as if I were promoting them, was utterly superfluous and unnecessary. The Pentax history is well known here.

So, what exactly WAS the point of that post, and the attitude displayed therein?

---------- Post added 04-28-14 at 11:08 PM ----------

P.S.: As for Nikon and Canon being "dedicated primarily and fully to the FF", you must be dreaming, or spending way too much time absorbing "internet wisdom" in that bubble you seem to live in. Profit is what this is about. Nikon's top seller last year up to Christmas season was the almost two generations old 12mp D3100 (read: Save fifty bucks.). The D90 is STILL LISTED AS CURRENT, not discontinued; and Nikon continues to flood the DX channel with the heavily marketed, cutting edge sensor technology low-and-mid-market D3300 and D5300, plus fast turnaround, 3rd generation 1-series mirrorless designs. And Canon has HOW many, all pretty much the same, Rebel iterations out there? THESE are the guys making the profit in a broadly unprofitable game -- selling THIS kind of stuff; mostly to consumers (about 4 out of 5) who will NEVER buy a second lens to complement the kit zoom!

My advice to you is to stop reading dpreview and its ilk for awhile and go shoot some pictures... start picking up a financial page now and then, for a change, and learn something about business economics... and stop trying to find some off-topic argument to pick with me.

[Kayaker-J]

These apply to me. I had 'settled' on the K-01. but the K3 OVF is so good that I shoot it sans glasses and LV only on a tripod.

Well, that's encouraging to hear. I, too, settled for a K-01 when the fire sale prices hit the headlines; and I thought then it was time to take the plunge. Embrace the monopod, that little voice told me, figuring that I was a slow and deliberate kind of shooter, coming from my experience shooting film many years ago (there's been a long hiatus in my pursuit of photographic interests). My new K-3 hasn't as yet been put to the test in this respect due to a temporary disability and grey vistas in the neighborhood until Spring finally arrives once and for all where I am. And while I've had time to catch up and like to research, I face that hands-on part of the learning curve when it comes to the likes of a K-3. I just don't know yet how well I'll handle a focusing screen in "late middle age" under various conditions, shooting the SMC 28mm/3.5 K, the Takumars, etc. I have the VF-4 for my Olympus E-PL5, out of necessity, I think; so that's a model, if a clunky one, for what I have in mind. The newest Fuji EVF implementation does sound like progress, as well. It will be nice when they all get focus peaking more or less perfected.

The f.2.8-4.0 optical focusing screens in modern cameras present another issue, of course.

---------- Post added 04-29-14 at 12:06 AM ----------

K3 in a Q-sized body, of course.

The K-Qute.

[aurele]

boriscletoed ©

[Uluru]

[/COLOR]P.S.: As for Nikon and Canon being "dedicated primarily and fully to the FF", you must be dreaming, or spending way too much time absorbing "internet wisdom" in that bubble you seem to live in. .

How many crop lenses Canon has? And how many full 135 format lenses they have? What is the ratio?
It's some 1 (crop) : 5 (FF). That means Canon fully pursues the FF.

How many crop lenses Pentax makes as of now? And how many FF lenses are in production?
Not even FA Ltds are in production anymore. That is some 8 (crop) : 1 (FF capable).

Dedication of the brand towards a certain format = Number of lenses in production for the format.
Cameras are just excuses.