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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
02-24-2016, 07:48 AM
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There are a lot of photgraphers and a lot of reviewers in a lot of formats, and most of the K-1 review samples are probably still in Japan. TBH, I may have watched one of Tony's videos, ever. Maybe that's my fault. Rather than complain about the incompetence of not giving Tony a camera to review, and dragging Kenspo into it, a more productive action would have been to contact Adam and see if he could let his contacts in Denver know about it.
Some context, for those who are newish or haven't been paying attention: Ricoh Imaging North America has a staff of about sixty people, from the president down to the mailroom clerk. That's sixty people for the largest consumer economy on the planet. Jim Malcom took over in 2012. He has the unenviable job of rebuilding their US presence. Jim's predecessor, Ned Bunnell, was by all accounts a nice guy, but his job under Hoya was to cut costs, dismantle the camera sales & support network, and only sell medical imaging equipment. (In his off time, he enjoyed photography - with his Leica.) The result is that Jim Malcom is starting from slightly worse than nothing, as the remaining brick-and-mortar stores are still angry about how Hoya/Pentax abandoned them. It's a huge undertaking, and Ricoh Japan is tight with the purse strings, as it may be a lost cause. This is going to take time.
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
02-24-2016, 07:47 AM
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Honestly, that's your fault. His name has been on every Ricoh Imaging Americas press release for the past couple years. If you are going to call Ricoh Imaging NA's marketing department incompetent (you did), you could at least read their press releases.
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
02-23-2016, 10:06 PM
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Kidnap their spouses and kids! Bring in hookers and take compromising photos! :D No seriously, I agree. I think folks still don't appreciate how much damage was done during the Hoya years, or how impossible it is just to throw money at the problem and solve it quickly.
In 2006, I was standing on a subway platform in Boston, and a train went by with a huge Pentax ad on the side for the new K100D. The next year, Hoya bought Pentax, and I never saw anything like it again. Frankly, by 2011, new releases were sputtering out, and I genuinely thought we were one or two bodies away from The End. Five years later, we've had ten, soon-to-be-eleven K-mount bodies (some better than others, but all interesting), a dozen new lenses and half a dozen updated ones. If they've had to lean on Tamron or been slow to come up with original new designs, it's because of the brain drain Hoya inflicted on the lens team. The outlook for camera companies in general isn't rosy, so I don't blame Ricoh at all for keeping their hand on their purse and moving cautiously. They have made mis-steps, but I'm still willing to trust their judgement. We have come so very far that we can argue about marketing rather than worry about whether this one will be The Last.
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