This year I was again able to attend cp+ on its last day (Sunday). As I knew for me there were no exciting announcements this year I could enjoy it more casually and relaxed.



I queued to try the GR III but thats no camera for me so cannot comment on that much. The touch screen is a welcome addition because it tickles down to other cameras even though focus via touch feels laggy atm.
Then I was caught by a staff member which was presenting a new 2.5D printing technique by Ricoh. They use a 3D-printer technique to give depth to a picture, even make it look like a real painting. They said their biggest picture, which they printed yet, took about 4 hours to print. The actual printer is industrial size (3 meters) atm, it is still a prototype and no price for an actual print decided yet. The actual depth for printing the 2D photo is calculated partly by algorithm and partly manually adjusted.

There are other companies using a similar technique but Ricoh is better in providing a smoother surface on the printing. The pictures looked very good, I can imagine many people buying these kind of pictures.

I got to try the new 11-18mm DA* Zoom and surprisingly it nicely covers the FF circle at 18mm. On lower focal length the black edges start to occur and you need to crop that out, at 11mm it is pretty severe. I also tried the new 35mm, it is a nice lens but comes with all the drawbacks such old lenses have, longitudinal CA, hexagonal bokeh balls, AF not so fast, no WR.





Here the zoom at 18mm FF @F9:

Here on 11mm FF @F9:

Then like JPT I stumbled over the guys with the factory custom made KP. They really enjoyed there time there and we talked and laughed a lot (so I greatly enjoyed it too). So they are enhancing several points on the KP. They have a special black coating on the lens mount which is harder and smoother than the original coating and is used originally by a famous Japanese watchmaker (I think it was Seiko). They havedifferent body colors and a flash top which is attached via the hot shoe. If you want to use a flash on the hot shoe you have to remove it therefore. Then there are the custom grips. They showed me one which was walnut and said its the same material Lexus uses for their steering wheels.
They have also a collaboration with a famous Japanese photographer and will preprogram the user-settings on the camera with that photographers preferred settings. They can use Ricoh’sresources which helps them a lot , so you might also be able to order it from the official website later I guess.
No words on pricing yet because its still in development. They will over it first in Japan and later on overseas (I complained a little that overseas people are eager to get these options too and always are second in line ;)).
Interesting fact, there were two people presenting the custom KP, one is an engineer and the other a designer.The designer told me that he designed the K-30 and the custom flash cover for the KP also inherits this long shape of the flash housing of the K-30.
Here the two guys, the left one is the designer and the one on the right the engineer. They were very commited to their customizations and gladly discussing any comments I made.

Also I saw a new Pentax baseball cap (black with big grey stitched Pentax) at the booth, these were design samples and will be probably available later this year.
At 2pm there was a presentation on the future development on Pentax products hosted in an interview style. They said the 85mm will be available next year. In fact they said that on all lenses on the roadmap xD (the 70-200F4, the large aperture wide DA*, the DA wide zoom and DFA superzoom). The interview guy also noted that the release date of the 70-200mm F4 changed from “spring 2019” to “2019 or later“. It was confirmed there were issues delaying the release of this lens.
I think they also hinted on a new camera for the 100th year release which might be the K-3 successor.