|
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
08-17-2017, 10:08 AM
|
| |
Yes, manual adapters AFAIK.
Current user base is not enough, but you're not growing it by offering your users a way out. People would not buy new Pentax lenses to use them on other brands' cameras; they would use their existing lenses on other brands' cameras. Which means, zero additional lens sales.
The adapter is meant to sway people already convinced to switch, to switch to a Pentax MILC system. But, by going m4/3 and with the corresponding adapter, it would be: switch to a Pentax MILC system, or Olympus, or Panasonic - and the latter two are more complete, more compelling (especially as the Pentax is just in our imagination ;) ).
A Pentax' own mirrorless is another matter; if (or when) they'd make it, they will offer a K-mount adapter. Perhaps a manual one, but it will be made (like they made one for the Q).
|
|
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
08-16-2017, 12:53 AM
|
| |
I'm not confused, but perhaps you are?
An adapter to mount K-mount lenses to a m4/3 body - that, by definition, will work on any m4/3 body. Including about 50 Olympus and Panasonic ones, even the YI.
There is no immediate danger of the DSLR market disappearing; although MILC fans are aggressively trying to provoke panic and hasten the DSLRs' demise. I'm sure Ricoh Imaging will have a response before things would go critical... but for now, they have the K-mount user base to take care of.
|
|
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
08-15-2017, 01:41 PM
|
| |
Yep.
Most of the time, people are confounding their interests with the companies'. We want quality products, and we want to pay for them the lowest possible - for free, if possible. So, having access to an established lenses and cameras line? That's great, right?
Indeed, a Ricoh Imaging-made m4/3 camera would already have a full array of lenses, with no real gap anywhere. Indeed, those lenses would not be Ricoh Imaging-made. Just competing directly with Olympus and Panasonic cameras is difficult; but when you're pushing your customers to buy other brands' products (lenses)? Both cameras and lenses, it would be so easy for potential customers to simply go with a cheaper, non-Ricoh alternative - any time they wish, as it's part of the same system. Product by product, Ricoh would have to be more compelling in both features and price - even compared to older, discounted similar products from the competition.
Crawling up in the mirrorless market with m4/3, i.e. building an m4/3 user base capable of sustaining Ricoh Imaging, might be much more difficult than going with their own, built-from-scratch system.
By the way, IIRC Olympus' Imaging division just recently started making a profit.
---------- Post added 15-08-17 at 11:47 PM ----------
An adapter to facilitate Pentaxians moving to Olympus... which brand you said you don't want to disappear? ;)
---------- Post added 15-08-17 at 11:57 PM ----------
There is a huge difference between the 110 film (a Kodak designation, by the way) and the four thirds system. Even though the frame size is similar, four thirds designed as a purely digital system, and as such it defines not just the sensor size, but also the SLR mount and lens' characteristics.
Pentax never participated in the development of four thirds.
|
