Originally posted by Paul the Sunman Is it just me? I would have thought that the discontinuance of the KP was a big story, and deserved a statement from Ricoh and not just a quiet shift to the "Discontinued" bin on their web site. Even Pentax Forums has not said anything editorially.
I was thinking along the same lines. Not that I would expect Ricoh to be singing it from the rooftops, but it would be helpful if they shared with us their overall strategy.
Curious that the only really frank information was the unvarnished response that you got from CRK:
The upcoming Pentax K-3 Mk III is the successor to the KP. ...It caught us by surprise as well. We would have rather seen the K-70 go, but Ricoh Japan thought that having the KP & K-3 Mk III competing would confuse the market, while the K-70 has a bigger feature gap that makes the upgrade more relevant.They are very wary of not falling into the Canon trap, where cameras are so closely positioned to each other that it confuses the market.
It is perfectly understandable that - like most camera companies - they want to rationalise the model range. And sales must be way down with the pandemic. But the KP and K-3iii are so different - and at least $US1000 apart - that the view that the latter is the successor to the former needs some explanation. It seems a long way from "the Canon trap". (If anything the positioning of the K-3iii at the "high end of the two hundred thousand [yen] range" - that is, close to the K-1ii - seems more confusing. But I guess that topic has been done to death in another thread.)
Won't the hole left by the demise of the KP make the DA*11-18 f2.8 and the forthcoming revised DA*16-50 f2.8 less attractive? Or are we all going to be contorting our ageing backs to look through the viewfinder of the tripod-mounted K-3iii or try to see the screen in the light and wondering whether we should have got a Fuji or gone FF instead? (That is, those who haven't got or kept a KP.)