[MarkJerling]

My point is: Ricoh uses the name Pentax. It is not an original Pentax!

Yup. And Volkswagen makes Bentleys. Jaguars and Landrovers are made by Tata. BMW makes Rolls Royces. Alfa Romeo is made by Fiat Chrysler. What's your point?

[MarkJerling]

If you have everything you need, great. I want more choices. Within a 200 mile radius I can buy a Leica system hands on but there is not a Pentax retailer to be found and I live in an area with 1.2 million cell phone photographers.

Aren't you lucky. You have Adorama and B&H pretty near to you in New York. And your Pentax can be serviced in the USA. My K-1II is currently en route to Japan for repairs following a bump and if I want to buy Pentax my best bet is ....... B&H or Adorama. The USA is one small part of Ricoh's market. It could be argued that they make cameras for the Japanese market first and foremost. Hearing that you want more choice won't make Ricoh do anything differently. Ricoh does what's best for Ricoh.

[MarkJerling]

Seriously, you walked into a Ford dealership and asked what they think of GM.

[VSTAR]

I think I understand the point that @AfterPentax is making. If I may use an analogy, here in Canada (and in the United States, I believe), we can buy tools that are branded as "Craftsman". This is a venerable brand name that once represented tools of fairly high quality when they were owned and sold by Sears. After many decades, Stanley Black and Decker acquired the brand from Sears in 2017. In my opinion, the tools are inferior in quality to the original lines, and I generally shun from buying any more Craftsman tools -- Stanley Black and Decker uses the name but I'm not sure the quality is there.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say that Pentax branded cameras are inferior to their namesakes of years gone by. Indeed, my K-3 II has been chugging along happily for four years, and I find that it's a quality piece of gear. One might also argue that the (optical) quality of some modern Pentax lenses is better than their predecessors.

- Craig

Put a Craftsman tool from 30 years ago besides several other ones and you could pick it out of the loneup.
Put a new Craftsman tool from 2020 beside other brands from 2020, not so easy to do it.

Put a K1 beside a Canon, Sony, Nikon....not hard to pick it out of the lineup, IMHO. Put the eyepiece in front of your eye and you immediately recognize it is a Pentax pentaprism.

I could not care if Ricoh owns the company at this point, as long as the products are of a high quality and do what I want. The k1 and 645D do that for me.

[garywakeling]

Once you buy into a system you have a tendency to stick with that system. That is your supporting the brand. Over the years your investment in equipment grows. If you only shoot weddings you know what you need. If you only shoot portraits or landscapes or advertising copy the same is true. If you have everything you need, great. I want more choices. Within a 200 mile radius I can buy a Leica system hands on but there is not a Pentax retailer to be found and I live in an area with 1.2 million cell phone photographers.
According to the responses to my initial post it appears folks being satisfied means I should be satisfied. I did my homework before committing to my K1. I am sure I made the right choice. But I'm unconvinced Ricoh has any plans to further penetrate the US market with the brand. I understand the market's shrinking and DSLR sales are tanking. But you don't stop marketing.

In my little part of the world there are no bricks and mortar stores, the online stores have little support for Pentax and all seems doomed. However despite the appearance, the local distributor has a great website, local promotions on the website regularly give 10-15% off the price and given taxes etc, they are price competitive with overseas grey market prices. I believe that Ricoh/Pentax are providing excellent tools for photographers. The current lens line up of star lenses provides plenty of quality to the pentax shooter, in my opinion. You agreed to that quality by purchasing your K1 too. I have always been happy to invest in Pentax glass being able to afford them over the years. The future shows many lenses on the roadmap, some suit my needs , others like the recently announced 70-210 f4 do not, however the fact that it was roadmapped and delivered gives us hope for the future products. I used , and Pentax produced , the LX over 20 years because they didn't see a need for major improvements. When improvements were needed in the K1, they offered to retrofit the camera up to K1 II standard at a reasonable cost, surely another sign they do things a little differently. Regarding the US market, the ability to rent Pentax equipment, have big online retailers selling Pentax products available, seems amazing to me. Marketing is more to do with the local distributors, we have had in Pentax terms, a great deal of press with the 100 year celebrations going on around the world.
Sigma and third party support is for me not a consideration, I see them as offering an alternative to the major brands offerings and as the brands reduce their own product ranges , the ability for niche lens makers like Sigma will also reduce. If most people are able to use non sigma branded lenses with their pentax cameras, naturally the sigma company would find it uneconomic to produce lenses in Pentax mount.
I see you point on marketing, however with limited funds to spend, product development seems to be a smarter use of the money available than marketing. Nikon have invested heavily in the mirrorless product lines, Canon have announced that they will not be making any new designs for their full frame cameras as they have every lens a Canon shooter would ever need already available and all of their dollars are heading to the R lenses and marketing in the future. Sony is doing it's own thing , many others are waving the white flag.
I understand that you would prefer to have marketing dollars spent on Pentax and would like to return to the 60's where the brand had a cutting edge cachet, when The Beatles were flashing spotmatics all over the place and you could be with the in crowd with the same equipment as them. Great memories for me to have, however long gone. Embrace what we have, buy new pentax lenses, show other photographers the images you make and when they ask about what equipment you made it with, proudly tell them Pentax , the best form of marketing that we can have for the brand, word of mouth.

[Kunzite]

I think I understand the point that @AfterPentax is making. If I may use an analogy, here in Canada (and in the United States, I believe), we can buy tools that are branded as "Craftsman". This is a venerable brand name that once represented tools of fairly high quality when they were owned and sold by Sears. After many decades, Stanley Black and Decker acquired the brand from Sears in 2017. In my opinion, the tools are inferior in quality to the original lines, and I generally shun from buying any more Craftsman tools -- Stanley Black and Decker uses the name but I'm not sure the quality is there.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say that Pentax branded cameras are inferior to their namesakes of years gone by. Indeed, my K-3 II has been chugging along happily for four years, and I find that it's a quality piece of gear. One might also argue that the (optical) quality of some modern Pentax lenses is better than their predecessors.

- Craig

If he says Pentax is inferior in quality, that's worse - and obviously untrue.

[From1980]

After all, a lot of people my age are dead.

I'm going to have to remember that line, thanks. I hope your dead age is a long, long time yet.
...and without the longer lenses you might see some things a little differently and find a new niche in the hobby. It's an opportunity.

[redpit]

Once you buy into a system you have a tendency to stick with that system. That is your supporting the brand. Over the years your investment in equipment grows. If you only shoot weddings you know what you need. If you only shoot portraits or landscapes or advertising copy the same is true. If you have everything you need, great. I want more choices. Within a 200 mile radius I can buy a Leica system hands on but there is not a Pentax retailer to be found and I live in an area with 1.2 million cell phone photographers.
According to the responses to my initial post it appears folks being satisfied means I should be satisfied. I did my homework before committing to my K1. I am sure I made the right choice. But I'm unconvinced Ricoh has any plans to further penetrate the US market with the brand. I understand the market's shrinking and DSLR sales are tanking. But you don't stop marketing.

My English don't help me and maybe I miss something, but I'm really and honestly interested on why you say that Pentax doesn't support you. If I understand well you don't mind that they were not in the show but that you can't find a dealer where you can actually handle and test Pentax equipment? This is a serious con but not something that should hold you back in case you know what you need and Pentax covers these needs. This is the situation here too, I never had the opportunity to test the equipment I needed prior to purchasing it, but all I bought were as expected and had studied about. You in USA have more alternatives than buying something you can't return unless it is malfunctioning, so I really don't exactly understand your point...

[iheiramo]

Pentax is modern post brick&mortal brand. More presence would mean higher prices for products and therefore I'm quite happy with present situation. After all I'm a pentaxian because of the value and IQ this brand offers. Actually as I live in capital area there is a store that runs Pentax and they might or might not have something on display also. As the store is located in the downtown of Helsinki it's just not worth the effort to visit. So much easier to gather information online and order to nearest post, which nowadays is open even on sundays from 9am to 10pm and on weekdays even longer

Same situation is on all my main interests, so I might be just used to lack of personal service.

[normhead]

I was talking to an old bricks and mortor guy in North Bay the other day. It was just sad. He must be near my age, has a Pentax display case with a 50-200 and a WG-6 in it. He had a display case of cameras he's sold over the years, 4x5, 5x7 press cameras and at least three ancient Pentax's.

Obviously an old Pentax guy with a Brick and Mortar store.

I thought he was going to cry when he told me about the day when Pentax stopped fronting the cost of the gear and said he had to pay for everything up front. Not even 30 days anymore. Maybe it's just the state of the world, and he wasn't laying any blame, but I can tell that change in policy ripped his heart out.

We aren't the only ones suffering. When I first went in there two years ago there were young clerks behind the counter, one of whom was really excited to see my K-1. Last trip, an ancient man who had to be called down from upstairs to talk to me with a few Nikons and Canons on the shelves, and his ancient wife doing the print orders etc. Next door a studio you can rent space from with classes advertised.

You could tell, at one time, this place was a going concern. Now I suspect, when these two choose to retire, that will be it. I'm sure he can get more from selling the property than he'll make if he keeps it going.

[luftfluss]

LOL. I hadn't heard this one before.

The grass is always greener over the septic tank...

[MikeDSr]

Sorry you bought a Japanese model or have to send it back to have it worked on. Mine went to the Midwest to get the upgrade. Manhattan is over 8 hrs away from me so not gonna be a random trip to Adorama or B&H to see what's new. I didn't go to a Ford dealership I went to a trade show at a convention aimed at professional photographers and their businesses. If there was a deal on a K mount Sigma Art I might have bought it... and as I said before there were Sigma lenses in the B&H show catalog, just not what I was interested in. My only error was expecting and hoping for more from Ricoh in the US market. Other brands are now touting things Pentax introduced on the K1 as innovations for their new products. APS-C is still the go to chip even in the upper end of mirrorless. There will be no migration to full frame like it was in the world of film. But if the camera units aren't moving, Ricoh will keep building copiers or whatever they deem to be the source of their bread and butter. I won't jump ship but I might buy a dinghy and upgrade my E mount Sony with a broken in model.

---------- Post added 02-05-20 at 11:25 AM ----------

My English don't help me and maybe I miss something, but I'm really and honestly interested on why you say that Pentax doesn't support you. If I understand well you don't mind that they were not in the show but that you can't find a dealer where you can actually handle and test Pentax equipment? This is a serious con but not something that should hold you back in case you know what you need and Pentax covers these needs. This is the situation here too, I never had the opportunity to test the equipment I needed prior to purchasing it, but all I bought were as expected and had studied about. You in USA have more alternatives than buying something you can't return unless it is malfunctioning, so I really don't exactly understand your point...

Everything is relative. I wasn't saying it was worse for me than anyone anywhere else. I have been shooting Pentax with Pentax glass for many years and knew when they bombed with their first digital camera and quickly fell behind everyone else theirs was going to be an uphill struggle. There are no camera shops in my area anymore. A friend had a place called Camera City which eventually became Camera Town, then Camera Village, Camera Neighborhood, Camera Parking lot and finally a Walgreens Drug Store. He now works for Canon professional product division (commercial movie cameras, etc. but he said all the manufacturers stopped making product available to the local stores to the point where he couldn't survive. When I wanted to see a K1 I was told I would need to go to Philadelphia PA over 4.5 hrs away. I ordered it from Adorama sight unseen and I haven't had a moment of problem with the body. The manufacturers will do what is best for business. Always have and always will. It's ok to want an increasing selection of products and cutting edge R&D. It doesn't mean you will get it.

---------- Post added 02-05-20 at 11:45 AM ----------

In my little part of the world there are no bricks and mortar stores, the online stores have little support for Pentax and all seems doomed. However despite the appearance, the local distributor has a great website, local promotions on the website regularly give 10-15% off the price and given taxes etc, they are price competitive with overseas grey market prices. I believe that Ricoh/Pentax are providing excellent tools for photographers. The current lens line up of star lenses provides plenty of quality to the pentax shooter, in my opinion. You agreed to that quality by purchasing your K1 too. I have always been happy to invest in Pentax glass being able to afford them over the years. The future shows many lenses on the roadmap, some suit my needs , others like the recently announced 70-210 f4 do not, however the fact that it was roadmapped and delivered gives us hope for the future products. I used , and Pentax produced , the LX over 20 years because they didn't see a need for major improvements. When improvements were needed in the K1, they offered to retrofit the camera up to K1 II standard at a reasonable cost, surely another sign they do things a little differently. Regarding the US market, the ability to rent Pentax equipment, have big online retailers selling Pentax products available, seems amazing to me. Marketing is more to do with the local distributors, we have had in Pentax terms, a great deal of press with the 100 year celebrations going on around the world.
Sigma and third party support is for me not a consideration, I see them as offering an alternative to the major brands offerings and as the brands reduce their own product ranges , the ability for niche lens makers like Sigma will also reduce. If most people are able to use non sigma branded lenses with their pentax cameras, naturally the sigma company would find it uneconomic to produce lenses in Pentax mount.
I see you point on marketing, however with limited funds to spend, product development seems to be a smarter use of the money available than marketing. Nikon have invested heavily in the mirrorless product lines, Canon have announced that they will not be making any new designs for their full frame cameras as they have every lens a Canon shooter would ever need already available and all of their dollars are heading to the R lenses and marketing in the future. Sony is doing it's own thing , many others are waving the white flag.
I understand that you would prefer to have marketing dollars spent on Pentax and would like to return to the 60's where the brand had a cutting edge cachet, when The Beatles were flashing spotmatics all over the place and you could be with the in crowd with the same equipment as them. Great memories for me to have, however long gone. Embrace what we have, buy new pentax lenses, show other photographers the images you make and when they ask about what equipment you made it with, proudly tell them Pentax , the best form of marketing that we can have for the brand, word of mouth.

Nothing remains the same and everything changes. High megapixel phones with build in goodies will satisfy most photographic needs for most people. Times do change. If you are old enough to remember Dick Tracy speaking into his wrist radio to call headquarters you realize that only your imagination limits the future. Most folks want easy. They don't care about gear or how to capture the light or aperture or image stabilization or purple fringe. They just pucker their cheeks and take that selfie. Getting a camera as a gift was a big deal. Today it requires studying a manual the size of a Tolstoy novel. With youthful attention spans on the wane the book is daunting and the phone is an easy point and click. Goodbye camera business. So all things considered we belong to a techie club striving to achieve perfection regarding folding light via a computer shaped like a film camera and capturing the true essence of our subjects for the client and/or our own satisfaction. It doesn't take much to take an image. Look up pin hole camera (camera obscura effect). That is simple.
Kinda feel like shooting some film.

[biz-engineer]

Sony, Nikon, Canon, Fuji are into full on profit driven product releases followed by marketing to try and get you to purchase stuff for stuffs sake.... like mostly everthing mainstream these days.Pentax..... well.... it's like they know you're all doing well with what you got.... and only put some new stuff out that is needed from time to time..... and all in good time dear fellow.So.... Pentax really is a "new age"camera brand..... looking after our enviroment via the reduction in unnecessary manufacturing, natural resourse use, waste generation etc.

I can observe the same thing. Fuji have how many 24Mpixel apsc camera models, with the same film simulation / jpeg rendering, they pretty much deliver the exact same 24Mpixels photo, and they keep releasing new models that look different externally, and they advertise like hell. They just announced the X100V, and now the internet in literally full of vlog about it, sound like screaming "please buy... please buy", while we all have more camera and lenses then we actually need. At the moment, Pentax do not release anything that isn't significantly superior to current models, they eventually get blamed for it. I wished all camera makers would stop wasting so much resources for making more cameras models that end up collecting dust on shelfs a couple years later (over here there are Xt1, Xt2, Xt2, Xh1 for sales second hand between 400 and 800 euros, and they've been on the shelf for 6 months, nobody buy them).

[Cerebum]

Something surreal happened here. My local Wilkinson's photographic had a customer who was torn between Sony and Pentax and they convinced him to buy a K70 because its better. Have I entered an alternate universe? In the UK, Wex, Park and SLS.. Anyway these three companies support Pentax and actually have stock

[garywakeling]

Kinda feel like shooting some film.

Sounds like a fine way to spend some time, enjoy