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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
08-04-2019, 07:20 PM
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Toyota ended contract production of Camrys at the Indiana plant in 2016 and moved the Camry production back to TMMK in Kentucky. Subaru expects to produce 370,000 Ascent, Impreza, Legacy and Outback vehicles at the Lafayette, IN plant in 2019.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
07-31-2019, 05:05 AM
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
07-30-2019, 07:57 PM
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Fuji Heavy Industries changed its corporate name and symbol to Subaru Corporation in May, 2016. Toyota bought 8.7% of the company from GM (which owned 20.1%) and the balance of GM’s shares were sold on the open market. Toyota is an independent company, not owned by Subaru Corporation.
Toyota and Subaru share a Subaru factory in Lafayette, IN, where Subaru makes the Subaru BRZ and Toyota 86 they jointly developed. Toyota Motor Corporation shares trade in the US as an ADR under the symbol TM and Toyota is the #2 automaker in the world. VW is #1, Nissan Renault #2 and GM #4.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-26-2019, 10:41 AM
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In her High School, all extra-curricular courses were then taught as vocational courses, so while Photography qualified as an Art Elective it was taught as Photo Journalism and either Newspaper or Yearbook was the practicum. Her Senior Year she was Yearbook Editot-in-Chief and she and the Newspaper E-i-C jointly convinced the SchoolBoard to convert to Canon Digital cameras. The saving on film, chemicals, paper, paste-up supplies and reduced printing costs due to digital submission paid for the cameras and lenses, the furniture, the software and 20% of the Apple computers (Apple and a grant from the Government covered the balance of the computer cost) in ONE year. They converted the paste-up area to computer cubes. She and Blake received a citation for their work.
Interestingly, Film Photography is now a non-vocational Art Elective and they’re using the same 20 K1000s and lenses over 15 years later.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-26-2019, 07:38 AM
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My daughter learned on a K1000 and photography led to her college Honors Program and her career. The first chance she had she bought some Canon Rebel. She hated that K1000.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-24-2018, 10:09 AM
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About the Pro/Con AppleTalk upthread - I really don’t want to be an Apple person, but it cannot be avoided. We have five Apple phones and three tablets on our Family Plan; five MacBook Pro laptops in the parent/children HH and one PC - my spec-built Dell box. I’m the only person notI an educator in the bunch, which is the reason they’re Apple people. I have significantly more speed, power and storage than any of the Apple gear and my cost was 65% of a like-configured MacPro for more convenience (ports on the back of the monitor? - whose bright idea was that?), but Apple tightly controls its architecture so that everything is Plug and Play. If you know MS systems you’re fine and I’ve been MS-aware since the late 80’s, but God forbid you should buy a Win10 PC and expect to do something your own way if you aren’t.
I do think Apple people are a but smug and closed-minded. I have 2 decades of experience to justify my opinion.
In many ways Pentax is its own universe. If you know the system you’re fine. The other guys are awfully smug about their gear, too.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
10-05-2017, 03:51 PM
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Got into a social conversation with a volunteer (retired professional product shooter) photographer for the St. Louis Art Museum. Long story short, he’s a Pentax guy - used and still uses his 645nll, never uses flash, shoots handheld and uses telephoto (to reduce keystoning) to photograph paintings for the catalogs. The museum staff togs need to close a gallery for hours to shoot. He just gets it done in the morning before the gallery opens, so the museum PR staff uses him instead of the house togs.
He said his best photograph ever is a telephoto image detail of Starry Night that shows every brushstroke in the moon. Wants to meet up to try out my K-1 with FA*300/4.5.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-27-2016, 05:19 PM
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Jay generally doesn't trash us or Pentax. He still likes the gear. He has simply become convinced APSc can't do for him what FF can. I would not be at all surprised to see Jay rent or buy a K-1.
The other two have something else going on. Mirrors or video or something else from the dark side - real anger and derision.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-12-2016, 07:44 PM
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it's a bittersweet loss. Yeah, the Rams are gone, but then so is Kroenke.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-22-2015, 09:43 AM
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They were characterized as students - they interviewee was the Instructor.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-22-2015, 05:57 AM
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Yep - got mine out and stopped the video -
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-21-2015, 07:20 PM
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This evening on PBS News Hour I watched a feature on the effect the California Drought is having on Yosemite National Park. One element is the likely miss this year of the Moon-bow seen a few times each summer at Yosemite Falls (to watch tonight click the link, click 'Rundown' and scroll the Broadcast Reports segments to 'Photographers Chase Yosemite's Rare Moonlight Rainbows' @3:48). It is thought this year the falls will cease flowing in JUNE - so there won't be a moon-bow.
The feature filmed a landscape photography class trekking into a special area of the Park from which the Moon-bow can bee seen in the mist from the falls at the full moons in late May and late June, but this year there isn't enough mist to create the refraction.
When illustrating this lack the videographer shot a closeup of the Reporter's LCD screen and what did it inadvertently show?
PENTAX!!
It was a K-5II or IISs
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-23-2015, 10:10 AM
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You can't make them change their spots.Those leopards just aren't our breed of cat. :cool:
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-23-2015, 08:36 AM
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Do cheetahs dance with leopards?
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-23-2015, 09:50 AM
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'Slackline' is a very big deal under 30.No one drives a sports car the way they show them in commercials either, but 60-year-old guys are buying Corvette Z06's and 911's as fast as they can make them. Just try getting your hands on a Subaru BRZ or some tuner drift whip.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
10-05-2014, 10:49 AM
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I don't think Ricoh is marketing at all in the fashion we think of as marketing (advertising, calling on stores with Reps, doing workshops, doing promotions, buying shelf space in retail establishments large and small, paying website opinion-makers, promoting the brand, attending trade shows). When they closed Golden, CO in 2012 they only brought 50 people to Denver. I have 116 people in my location.
They outsource many of their functions to contract companies and seem not to maintain a US inventory of parts and accessories. They don't have many Reps (at one time there were two), I don't think their Customer Service is actually Ricoh Imaging employees, their Webstore is outsourced and makes its own decisions about inventory, their Parts Department is one person and doesn't sell to the public any more (but there isn't a parts dealer, so you effectively can't get them), their website was outsourced - but it might be in-house now - they're really a shell, not a company.
James Malcolm said in his Photokina interview they have actually dropped a B&M Dealer recently who wouldn't agree to the new terms. Coincidentally, the 8-store dealer in my area apparently has dropped Pentax recently. I believe they are the largest independent B&M dealer in North America by locations.
I have no idea about the why part but I've spoken off and on over the last 15 years to Canon and Nikon reps (one who was a Pentax Rep) and other dealers who tell the story. At this point (post Hoya) there isn't much they can do to rebuild the infrastructure other than lose money in North America for years.
OTOH, given limited resources, the people who do work for Ricoh are dedicated, hard-working and optimistic. They seem to know where they are going, but they didn't thihk it would be this hard (dealers just aren't interested after the way they've been treated for twenty years).
Perhaps in the long-term, if Ricoh truly develops a robust, multi-platform catalog (Q, large sensor MILC, APSc DSLR, FF DSLR, 645) they can rebuild - but I don't see it until they have enough product volume and market share to justify the expense.
I think Asia is the chicken. ;)
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
09-29-2014, 06:34 AM
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As far as RARE Pentaxes, I know of a young couple taking photographs of their new baby with a Q/02 kit :)
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
09-23-2014, 10:23 AM
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People are VERY expensive.
Asahi started dismantling the USA distribution and support network and raising Dealer Minimums and restricting Dealer Financing Terms as early as 1989. It isn't as if they're not paying attention. They're doing this intentionally, and have been doing for a quarter century.
I have a collection of 70's Pentax Dealer tchotchke's from a buddy who went to Canon in 1993).
Really, Pentax started milking the SMC patents in 1973 when they kept the M42 mount for the SP-F (or earlier) instead of introducing the bayonet. Nikon did introduce a bayonet, and AP changed out their entire body and lens inventory - they even molested their Takumar 500/4.5's in-house to Nikon bayonet mount (I once had one).
Where do you think Pentax eyeglasses and medical equipment came from? (Cash flow from licensing SMC).
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
06-03-2014, 02:40 PM
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Linda Eastman was not an heir to Eastman Kodak - that is an untrue urban legend. Her father's name was Leopold Epstein, son of Rusiian Jewish immigrants. He changed his name to Eastman. Linda was a pretty much amateur photographer who got lucky and became the house photographer at the Fillmore East. She met an photographed virtually all the hot acts of the time.
See Wikipedia Linda Eastman McCartney Good reading.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
06-03-2014, 01:35 PM
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I think they were sold to Seiko and I'm not certain the Pentax brand is used any more. There is an old Pentax vision test card at my optometrist, though.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-02-2014, 06:04 AM
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Assuming Ricoh aren't complete idiots, their actions (or lack thereof) indicate they aren't interested in 'significant marketshare' near term.
IMHO they want to be the alternative dSLR system to Canon and Nikon - not Soney, Oly, Fuji or Panny, not MILC, not adapter multi-mount cmarea builders. They want to be a dSLR system maker (and a somewhat bent take on MILC - the Q system).
Assuming they aren't complete idiots, that's how they think they can make the best ROIC, near term.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-26-2014, 11:27 AM
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Thirty years ago the slogan was 'Just Hold a Pentax' Shutterbug article
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among the Pentax SV's qualities is its marvellous feel, which led the Rank Organisation, Asahi's UK importers, to initiate the 'Just Hold a Pentax' campaign. This was so successful that it spread around the world, boosting Asahi's sales at just the point where they faced increasing competition from a burgeoning SLR Market.
PIXIS WEBPOST
The SV is the ONLY Pentax camera I will never sell. Literally the only one.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-02-2014, 07:12 AM
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There is a number of collected articles at the Asahi Optical Historical Club in Italy and all the work Fred Sherfy has done over the years and Paul Provencher's amazing screwmount website if the internet is satisfactory. There's also THIS website for the very earliest Asahi Cameras and lenses - much but not all is in English.
Though they all concentrate on the cameras and lenses (or oiher optics) there's often some corporate history woven in, especially at AOHC.
In the early 2000's there as a lot more on the web but unfortunately some if not much of it has disappeared. I once had several hundred links in a Firefox folder when the laptop crashed. That's how I discovered Windows NT loads the .pst file into RAM and it doesn't bcak up to a network drive. :mad:
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-02-2014, 07:07 AM
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There are a number of collected articles at the Asahi Optical Historical Club in Italy and all the work Fred Sherfy has done over the years if the internet is satisfactory. In the early 2000's there aws a lot more on the web but unfortunately some if not much of it has disappeared.
I once had several hundred links in a Firefox folder when the laptop crashed. That's how I discovered Windows NT loads the .pst file into RAM and it doesn't bcak up to a network drive. :mad:
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-20-2014, 07:23 PM
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I should have taken the Q and Converter with the 55~300. ;)
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