LondonDrugs, a Canadian retailer who has carried Pentax for 40+ years, had their annual FotoCon exhibit at my local outlet today. I ventured in not expecting to see much from Ricoh but hoped I would at least get a chance o put my hands on a K-1. To my surprise, Ricoh had the most impressive booth (table actually) at the show - rivaled only by the Canon booth for diversity of products on display. All of the major players were represented, Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, Sony, Olympus, Sigma and of course Ricoh. But only the Ricoh display presented both their full range of DSLRs, lenses, the Theta, a WG and binoculars. Missing were the 645Z and Q lines however. The other brands stuck mostly to their DSLR bodies and few, if any, lenses. Of course the Canon booth was lined up 3 deep while I had the Pentax rep pretty much to myself except for one other enthusiast who was there part of the time.
The Ricoh rep let me handle the K-1 (pre-production apparently) as well as the newer lenses in their line up (24-70mm was not there) and gave me a demo of the Theta (very impressive). The K-1 felt fantastic and only slightly more hefty than the K-3. All aspects of the new full frame appear to be up to the usual high quality builds of other upper end Pentax DSLRs. I asked about shipping date and the rep said April 23rd in Canada. The rep couldn't share any samples from the K-1 as he said it was still pre-production and wasn't up to the release version standards. If they are shipping in a week I sure hope whatever he found sub-standard is eliminated and we aren't all waiting for future firmware fixes to correct issues.
All in all I would say Ricoh is putting their best foot forward on this full frame release and, if the camera sells well and gets as much press as I think it should, the whole brand should do better as a result. I know all of you do your part to support them
Originally posted by bobell69 
Post #13 by totsmuyco
Similar Threads 
