Since Yokohama is an easy train trip from my home, I’ve been to each CP+ since 2013, except for 2014, when the Saturday was snowed off. Each time I go it seems to get a bit bigger and busier.
The organizers explained their plans and objectives for CP+ 2018 last December.
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There are 128 exhibitors, up from 121 in 2017. This has meant that most of the booths have become a bit smaller this year, including Ricoh/Pentax. They have a target of 70,000 attendees, up from 66,666 attendees in 2017.
Other interesting information from their presentation was that the foreign media in attendance dropped hugely from 2016 to 2017 by around half. On the other hand male and female attendees in the 20s and 30s increased a lot, especially young women. So this has driven their focus of their marketing this year on first-time photographers and women in particular.
I didn’t have all that much time at the show this year, but I tried to get around to as much as I could.
Ricoh Booth
There was no obvious change in the branding from recent years. It’s clear that Pentax, GR and Theta are positioned as sub brands of Ricoh.The booth itself was a bit smaller than last year, with more space given over to the stage in the middle. Left of the stage was an area devoted to Pentax. An equally large space on the right focused on Theta.
I think they clearly decided to push two things at CP+ this time: Full frame K-mount and Theta. APS-C K-mount, GR and 645 were there but not very prominent, except for in the presentation schedule. There was the DA* 11-18 under glass and some obvious hinting about a new GR, with a poster and stickers to make people register for the new GR Facebook page. I couldn’t get any more info about the 11-18, despite asking.
I could not find any reference to Q or its lenses this time. One of the Ricoh staff was using a Q to document the event, and a few visitors had them, but there was nothing I could see on the booth.
There were a number of presentations, but the one I watched was by Yoshiaki Kobayashi on the K-1 mark 2. He is the photographer who took all the photos used in the brochure and the samples, including the wintry ones from Hokkaido Japan (where he lives) and the summer ones in New Zealand. This was quite interesting and contained a lot of hints about how to get the most out of the new features. I wish I could have stayed for more presentations, but it is really time-consuming to do that.
K-1 mark 2
I was able to try the camera with the new lens, Of course the camera looks exactly like the K-1, so there are no surprises in the design. I tested the hand-held pixel shift function. The first attempt wasn’t successful, but I got a clear and detailed shot on the second. You can hear the shutter going four times, so it is not using an electronic shutter. Once it has taken, it locks up the camera for quite a while processing and saving.
In Kobayashi-san’s presentation, he mentioned that he was getting about a 50% success rate with handheld pixel shift. He knows what he is doing, so bear in mind he would not be attempting impossible shots. He said that the key to success is keeping the shutter speed high and avoiding rotational shake in particular (not 100% sure I understood this part). He also made the point that you can always extract a single raw image if the pixel shift goes wrong, so there is little to lose by trying. Another interesting comment was that results handheld can in certain circumstances be better than on a tripod, such when on a wood deck, bridge or another surface that is slightly moving.
They also had a space where you could test the low light ISO performance side by side with a standard K-1. Checking the results on the screen, you can see that the accelerator unit improves noise noticeably. I tried it at ISO 25,600 and it was a lot cleaner on the new K-1, but perhaps still too much for some people. Repeating the test at 6400 was quite convincing, showing less noise without any strange side effects. I’m not much of a pixel-peeper or int post processing, so you might have a more critical eye than me.
I could not really judge AF myself, but in the presentation Kobayashi-san mentioned the continuous AF improvement and showed some nice bird in flight images. I guess the Pentax Forums review will reveal how much it has really improved.
D-FA 50mm
The lens on the K1 mark 2 when I tried it was the D-FA 50mm. It is fairly big for a prime, like the Sigma, but not as enormous as the recent Zeiss primes. Honestly, I think some of the comments about the size have been a bit over the top. It is bigger than the old 50s, but more or less in line with modern primes from other manufacturers. I still don’t think I would be interested in buy that specific lens, but I came away with part of me wanting it anyway.
Right after trying the Pentax lens, I went straight to the Tokina booth, where they had their own Opera 50mm on display. I’m almost certain these lenses are co-developed. They have the same feeling of weight and balance, and exactly the same hood, which is very Pentax-like, with the filter cut-out. They feel different in the texture of the barrel and the rubber grip material. Because of that the Tokina feels cheaper.
Other booths
I went around the whole floor and it was business as usual for most of the brands. They had larger stands than Ricoh. In particular, the Sony stand was enormous this year. Also, I really got the feeling that Sony is gaining on the other brands, based on the cameras people were holding. I did feel the booth was rather bland, though.
The one I liked most was the Olympus stand this year. There seems to be a trend towards having more educational presentations in recent years, and Olympus had two stages with really practical talks going on. They also seemed to be more obviously targeting female photographers. I think it is a tricky balance trying to appeal to both genders, while not being stereotypical and patronizing about it. Olympus seems to be getting it right by featuring work and talks by female photographers more than the others.
One sad point was that Casio didn’t have a booth this time. I’m not really interested in their cameras, and not many people were looking last year, but I think it is said to see a brand decide not to join, other than the usual too-cool-to-show-up Leica, who never attend.
Overall, it was a not the most impressive show this time, but still fun to go to, and there were some indications that Ricoh is getting back to normal service in terms of product releases.
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