[eddie1960]

ricoh got the deal of the century on pentax imo if they are going to get serious about things. the 1.5 % is almost entirely n DSLR and ILC where the other numbers all contain large numbers of p/s cameras a declining market.
Just because they won't commit publicly doesn't mean they aren't pursuing it.the next 2 years are aggressive rebuild years lots of new product lots in the ppeline and a hiring program to support it. I'm pretty certain hoya did not leave a developed FF solution on the shelf like the K-01, in fact i doubt they spent any money on one because that is a long term investment. Something they really didn't do a lot of

If at the end of this year it looks like Pentax is still going the same direction as the last few years i'd be surprised. nothing wrong with the limited development hoya did do the k7/5 are both ecellent cameras in their time, the Q has done well, the K-01 we'll see but i bet it does far better than the tone on the forums suggests. If I had to have a FF this year I think i'd bail for nikon but there is nothing wrong with the gear offered up so far and i think photokina will really hold some nice cameras for us. given how long i would use a film camera before changing it i'm ok to wait and maybe buy a lens or 2

[Adam]

What are the "10:30", etc referring to in that snippet?

Those are just time stamps in the interview itself.

[jsherman999]

Those are just time stamps in the interview itself.

That's what I assumed at first, but why does the answer to the "what's missing" question have an earler timestamp than the question?

4:00(Interviewer) Is the new DA50mm f/1.8 going to be replacement for the FA 50 or are you going to have both on the market?

4:09(Kawauchi) The FA50 will be continued as it is. The 50mm prototype shown has a whole new optical design. When compared to the usual 50mm, we aim for a reasonable price point. We plan to sell both the FA50mm F/1.4 and DA50mm F/1.8 as different products.

10:56(Interviewer) (Paraphrased) What's missing in your camera lineup?

10:30(Kawauchi) We continuously consider 35mm (full-frame), but it has to be different from what other manufactures are releasing and lenses supporting 35mm have to be prepared. We think these are the principal challenges. So for example, even if we decide to make a full size SLR in the future, we will release what is not available from the other makers. We cannot comment and we do not know when it will be.

(or was it supposed to be "10:26"?)



.

.

[Adam]

Should probably be 9:56, but you'll see this and the following 7 minutes in the video, so stay tuned!

Adam
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[Canada_Rockies]

A long time ago . . .

In a galaxy far, far away . . .

DSLR
WARS

Episode XXVI
THE PERPETUAL HOPE

+1 on that!

[monochrome]

That's what I assumed at first, but why does the answer to the "what's missing" question have an earler timestamp than the question?



(or was it supposed to be "10:26"?).

.

I think Adam randomly threw out a couple passages from the (incomplete) transcript.

And that's all we get until Monday,

Not that I'm not thankful we'll have the transcript Monday

[slip]

If you look at the road map, all the lenses present and upcoming are mostly for digital so doesn't that tell you which direction they are going in? if they were going to release a full frame, you would at least have 1 or 2 lenses for ff that can still be used on a 1.5 crop factor
just a thought

[Pål Jensen]

If you look at the road map, all the lenses present and upcoming are mostly for digital so doesn't that tell you which direction they are going in? if they were going to release a full frame, you would at least have 1 or 2 lenses for ff that can still be used on a 1.5 crop factor
just a thought

I would not expect any FF lens on any roadmap until after an FF camera is released...

[Aristophanes]

Another way to look at it is: "They have instilled and propagated a corporate culture that values caution too highly and risk-taking too little.

It's always easy for us to say someone else should take a risk.

Because of the price, FF Pentax cannot grow the market or the brand. It's simply too expensive to attract new money to the market.

All it would do is stop some from leaving the Pentax brand, but many of those would leave anyway because the Canon and Nikon ecosystems are going to be superior for a decade or more regardless.

All you'd get from FF is, of the 5% of current DSLR Pentaxians who want FF and can afford FF, to consider FF, of which 2.5% actually buy FF leading to a net gain of almost nil considering the 10's of million of $$$ Pentax would have to invest.

[jsherman999]

It's always easy for us to say someone else should take a risk.

It's also easy for a group of executives to sort of fall into an unspoken agreement to maintain the status quo - where the group-think centers on 'safety,' where no-one's career in this inner circle is adversely affected by standing still - because everyone else in the circle is standing still as well. Just getting through the quarter, and the next, and the next, until the kids are out of college, and then someone else can take it on.

Corporate culture is a very real thing, it's not just something you read about in textbooks. Execs start to sound the same, act the same, even do the same things in their spare time, and it propagates almost organically, hereditarily, generationally, because people tend to hire people like them. And not just at the top. It filters down, middle management starts to talk the same talk, because that's what they think the C-levels want to hear. It's a tough nut to crack. I'll bet a lot of the disease at Olympus could be attributed to a corporate culture almost closing in on itself, adopting a grand... denial attribute, in addition to the garden-variety greed-is-good.

I can't say for certain that Pentax has been afflicted by a malaise propagated by corporate culture.. but then, if it hasn't, we have to come up with some other explanations as to what happened to it and why between 1975 and 1995, and on to today. Because to me it doesn't look like a series of obviously-dumb decisions, it looks like a string of seemingly safe decisions.

You can't apply hindsight to current situations... but you can learn from history.

Because of the price, FF Pentax cannot grow the market or the brand. It's simply too expensive to attract new money to the market.

All it would do is stop some from leaving the Pentax brand, but many of those would leave anyway because the Canon and Nikon ecosystems are going to be superior for a decade or more regardless.

All you'd get from FF is, of the 5% of current DSLR Pentaxians who want FF and can afford FF, to consider FF, of which 2.5% actually buy FF leading to a net gain of almost nil considering the 10's of million of $$$ Pentax would have to invest.

The market can always grow some with the right products, especially when there are largely untapped markets out there. Right now there are a lot of Nikon DX shooters who have never owned an FX camera moving into that tier, judging by the activity on dpreview and elsewhere, despite the FF bodies that existed for them before. D800 is apparently the right product at the right price. It's gonna probably blow up.

But that's just today - as I've been trying to say for a while now, Pentax-Ricoh needs to think about tomorrow and plan for the market it expects to see in 5 years, and the tech it may see then as well. Waiting another three years to start a lens roadmap keeps them a step behind, yet again, keeps them in a continual reactive state.


.

[philbaum]

Rebuilding a company is not usually a fast process. You can only take on people as fast as they can be trained, so its not like turning on a switch in your house. If you try to do it too quickly, you end up with a financial disaster. The more technical oriented the company is, the more difficult it is to ramp up quickly.

There has to be some changes in the marketing/availability, at least in the US. Hard to develop that without product, and hard to sell product without better marketing - its all linked.

The really good sign thats happened is the recent lens roadmap, the 7 new lenses, and the K01 as an initial step.

I think the FF camera will happen, as a mirrorless and of course, with a VF . K 01 was a good prototype for lessons learned.

[Aristophanes]

It's also easy for a group of executives to sort of fall into an unspoken agreement to maintain the status quo - where the group-think centers on 'safety,' where no-one's career in this inner circle is adversely affected by standing still - because everyone else in the circle is standing still as well. Just getting through the quarter, and the next, and the next, until the kids are out of college, and then someone else can take it on.

Corporate culture is a very real thing, it's not just something you read about in textbooks. Execs start to sound the same, act the same, even do the same things in their spare time, and it propagates almost organically, hereditarily, generationally, because people tend to hire people like them. And not just at the top. It filters down, middle management starts to talk the same talk, because that's what they think the C-levels want to hear. It's a tough nut to crack. I'll bet a lot of the disease at Olympus could be attributed to a corporate culture almost closing in on itself, adopting a grand... denial attribute, in addition to the garden-variety greed-is-good.

I can't say for certain that Pentax has been afflicted by a malaise propagated by corporate culture.. but then, if it hasn't, we have to come up with some other explanations as to what happened to it and why between 1975 and 1995, and on to today. Because to me it doesn't look like a series of obviously-dumb decisions, it looks like a string of seemingly safe decisions.

You can't apply hindsight to current situations... but you can learn from history.

The market can always grow some with the right products, especially when there are largely untapped markets out there. Right now there are a lot of Nikon DX shooters who have never owned an FX camera moving into that tier, judging by the activity on dpreview and elsewhere, despite the FF bodies that existed for them before. D800 is apparently the right product at the right price. It's gonna probably blow up.

But that's just today - as I've been trying to say for a while now, Pentax-Ricoh needs to think about tomorrow and plan for the market it expects to see in 5 years, and the tech it may see then as well. Waiting another three years to start a lens roadmap keeps them a step behind, yet again, keeps them in a continual reactive state.
.

You still want others to take a huge risk so you can have FF

These are cameras. There are no untapped markets. Photography is 170 years old. They make photographs by catching light in a box you can now actually hold in your hands.

There's no magic wand to be waved by Pentax to suddenly make hundreds of thousands of people per year spend over $2,000 on a FF Pentax camera. It's all about the cost of the end product and how many individual consumers are willing to pay that much for that little box that captures light.

The D800 is going to make no more people spend $2,999 on a camera body per year than the D700 did when it was first introduced plus natural growth in the market as a whole. All there is is pent up demand for the D800 that was there already. It's not like there are millions of DX shooters who suddenly feel the need to improve by spending $8,000 of new money on FX bodies and lenses. Photography is simply not that important to that many people. Prices for entry into the FF/FX realm are extremely high for 99.999% of all consumers and less than 2% of all DSLR shooters.

You are vastly overstating the demand for such super high-end cameras.

The real tough choice execs make is when not to listen to customers. Sometimes your best customer is the one you have to say no to. Otherwise they will bankrupt you.

Pentax, aside from the credit crunch mess, has actually grown its nets sales and profited fairly well with their modest lineup. They have returned fair value to their shareholders. They make decent cameras and, judging by the K-01, are loyal to their legacy consumers....to a point. The obviously have figured out that the price of the loyalty cannot be asking them to spend huge amounts for FF when all the market data says actually, very few of them can afford that price.

Corporations this large do think down the road a long ways. Their supply chains often compels them to do so. The blunt reality is that as long as FF sensors and other components stay so high in price, there may not be a Pentax FF for many, many years. The competition amongst sensor suppliers is not there, the returns to start competing at the expense of profits are not worth the minimal gains in market share, and frankly, the 99% of photographers don't care about the marginal increase in IQ.

It's not malaise or complacency. It's just being smart by avoiding a fight you will lose.

[Ash]

And that's why Ricoh/Pentax needs to develop any product , including a FF dSLR, with tact and a difference. That takes time.

[deadwolfbones]

Well I guess many of us will switch to the d800. Now I have to learn a whole new lens system... Are there nikkors as sweet as the 31 and the 77? FML..

Hell yes there are.

The modern AF zooms (14-24, 24-70, 70-200, 200-400) are all flat out amazing.

The modern AF primes are similarly awesome. 85/1.8 is a helluva bargain, 24/1.4 and 35/1.4 certainly aren't bargains but they're pretty remarkable. Then you get to the exotic primes like the 105/2 and 135/2 DC lenses and the 200/2 (my personal holy grail).

But the real value is in the old Ai-s and AI manual focus primes. Some real gems there.

[barondla]

I don't understand the FF lust. Recently ended up on a Nikon forum and many of the 700 owners were selling their cameras ( not to get a D800) but to use the D7000 they also owned. Many said the D7000 beat the 700, especially in dynamic range and landscape photography. One advantage the 700 had was high ISO. The large viewfinder would be nice too.
thanks
barondla