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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-14-2016, 01:18 PM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
That's rich. This is America. My brother-in-law came here from England in 1976 for the 'opportunity' to earn a Ph.D. and teach college. He saw no future in England.

My grandfather had a sixth grade education and plowed land behind a mule until 1930; he to took advantage of the 'opportunity' to get a union job in the city to send money back to the farm and worked it until the day he died. My father took advantage of the 'opportunity' and enlisted at 16 and did all that WWII thing. After the war he got a GED and went to some college on the GI Bill. He sold office supplies most of his life.

I grew up in a small house in a racially integrated community; went to public school until someone saw me playing junior football. I took advantage of the 'opportunity' and earned academic scholarships to a high school, where I studied hard enough to be a National Merit Scholar.

I went to a very good college - I admit, but I paid for it. I worked as a deckhand on the Mississippi River all four summers, and 15 hours each week at college; I never had a car; dates were walking on campus. I earned my room rent as the House Manager in a fraternity, meaning I cleaned up after the kids with money every morning. I had no student loans. I am the first person in my entire family to have a High School diploma and the first to have a college diploma.

Which 'opportunity' did I have? The 'opportunity' to study hard and work hard and save and improve my life and that of my children, just as my father did for me and his for him? And I should feel guilty for doing it, or understand others' resentment?
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-14-2016, 09:50 AM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
@Rupert :Sometimes in life we encounter people whom we respect, whose work we admire and aspire to equal (with humble recognition that we likely won't) but we accept that we approach parts of the world from different perspectives; we will disagree on things, and that's OK.

What irks is that we planned and worked for 40 years to be comfortable now - and those who didn't and aren't resent that we did and are.
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-13-2016, 04:08 PM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
Amateurs and enthusiasts don't need a 645z. A K-1 and the Holy Trinity zooms can produce anything an amateur enthusiast needs, for 1/4 the money. There is absolutely no non-professional application that requires 645z - it is overkill for every possible amateur use.

In fact, it was a mistake by Pentax to release the 645z in the first place. They have to refresh the entire FA645 lens line. They should be concentrating on a consumer model 35mm and an action / sports APSc with tracking autofocus.
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-13-2016, 03:35 PM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
Some people have to choose. They have to decide to buy a K-1. They have to negotiate, sell something or choose not to do or buy something else - or all of that. I did.

My family has never been to Disneyworld - which is a sort of middle American pilgrimage. My wife and I haven't taken a destination vacation in ten years. We drive cars that cost less than $30,000 new for 12 years that we've saved enough to pay for with cash. We've saved the maximum in our 401k's for 30 years, so we're not catching up. We're finished paying for college * 3. We've made our last mortgage payment. We've bought the wedding.

2014 was like getting the biggest raise of your life in terms of excess disposable income. So if I decide to sell some stuff and buy what amounts to an adult toy, so what? Someone wants to spoil it and make me feel guilty now, after all these years denying myself so I could do my responsibilities to everyone else? *

* (I can't say that here.) :mad:
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-13-2016, 12:30 PM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
When the salesman opened the box and handed me the camera I supposedly ginned like a little kid on Christmas morning.
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-13-2016, 09:22 AM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
If we knew what it cost to develop the current AF sensor and the related algorithms, and what it would cost to develop their replacements (and to develop a separate sensor optimized for the FF image circle and viewfinder) we might better understand why they re-use the current technology. This might be a case where the small market share / low volume actually holds Pentax back.
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-13-2016, 07:51 AM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
Likely true, but their story, published I believe on the K-1 special site, is they had a chance meeting at a show in Europe with a Pentax enthusiast who convinced them they should make a FF for Pentaxians. :cool:
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-07-2016, 03:36 PM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
SPARX GROUP is an Asia-based hedge fund and activist investor. Such funds often purchase blocks of shares in asset-rich companies when sales and earnings are off-cycle and attempt to force management to act contrary to the long-term interests of the company in order to achieve short term share price appreciation for themselves.

Pentax Corporation owned significant underutilized real estate and manufacturing assets in Japan - really prime land and facilities - and a large patent portfolio in medical devices, eyeglasses, optical coating process engineering and others..Return on equity in thes areas can be well above 20%. Return on equity in consumer photographic equipment is around 8% in the best times.

Without writing a Master's Thesis in Finance, in order to monetize it's investment SPARX wanted to bring the high-return operations to another company, sell as much real estate as possible and dispose of low-return assets efficiently. Eyeglasses were sold by Pentax to Seiko as a defensive maneuver (my molded tri-focal eyeglass lenses are actually Seiko / Pentax), but the Board did not approve selling medical devices to Hoya during the post dot com recession at low market multiples.

In response, SPARX and Hoya obtained private financing, made a hostile tender offer for all Pentax shares and convinced institutions to sell. Hoya took (generally) high return divisions and Factory in a Park, SPARX took real estate, and Hoya/SPARX kept cameras - for one reason and one reason only; the inventory of lenses built up as the global economy had slowed.

The best way to liquidate that asset was to keep the brand just alive enough to keep the lenses saleable at retail, but to liquidate them quickly. 'Just alive enough' included finishing products already in development and extending products by reusing existing engineering (such as 645D, which facilitated selling 645 lenses)., At the same time they dumped DSLR lenses in the USA at stupid low prices, tarnishing the brand as cheap, after closing every in-house operation and outsourcing them. In essence the USA became an Internet distribution operation through B&H, Adorama and Amazon, with virtually no physical assets and only 50 employees. I have heard the company Vice President Marketing was the commissioned salesman for B&H and Adorama. There were only two other sales reps. The company President was supposedly bonuses on inventory draw. To save money Pentax infrastructure and dealer relationships were dismantled -so completely that they might never be rebuilt.

It is said Ricoh paid only $140,000,000 for the brand, some plants overseas and a few specific patents. What isn't known is the assumed soft cost - the known investment it would require to make Pentax a viable brand again.

I read an investment banking report published by the Japanese division of my former employer that stated to compete with Canon and Nikon on their terms would require an immediate investment of $1,400,000,000, a number Ricoh could not afford since they were already committed to a $1,200,000,000 investment in a China factory and entering the MFP market.

Thus Ricoh has chosen the insurgent business model we see today.

Some of you might clarify or reorder these points. I won't spend Sunday afternoon researching and verifying dates and sequence, but this is, I believ generally correct. I welcome corrections and amplifications.
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-07-2016, 04:02 AM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
Pentax AF is fine - good as anyone else's. They/re behind in tracking continuous autofocus, especially subjects moving toward the camera, PDAF eye recognition for studio portrait, and in lens motor technology.

It isn't the mount. It is the entire AF ecosystem, from the PDAF sensor (designed for APSc) through the coverage and display (in FF using an APSc sensor) to the alogorithms.
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-06-2016, 06:02 PM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
It's worth it to me. And that is the ONLY thing that matters to me. Tony Northrup's bloviations are meaningless.
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-06-2016, 10:46 AM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
If Pentax would just change itself and do things the way I think they should be done . . . . . . .
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II 08-06-2016, 06:13 AM  
Full Frame a Mistake?
Posted By monochrome
Replies: 141
Views: 11,343
It's the business model, stupid!

Everyone seems to want Pentax to be CaNikon. Or, since Pentax cannot be CaNikon, to take the appropriate (secondary) rank and be quiet, like Sony.

It is important to understand Pentax does not want to be - nor to beat - CaNikon. Pentax wants to be Pentax, to have its own character, achieve its own goals, carry out its own long-term plan and make its own tidy profit.

These reviewers have a starting point in their evaluation of Pentax. CaNikon. They believe CaNikon is the standard against which Pentax must be measured because they live in the CaNikon bubble. They can never evaluate Pentax as just Pentax.

Consequently Tony Northrup, thinking about Pentax, unconsciously, reflexively asks himself, "What would CaNikon do?" and he answers himself, "Well, CaNikon would never compete with CaNikon in FF, they'd run with their strength. CaNikon would commit everything to professional* APSc."

Ergo 'K-1 was a mistake'.



* completely overlooking the lack of scale necessary to market and support professional anything. Ricoh is unwilling to invest the money in Pentax necessary to compete with CaNikon on CaNikon's terms.

They don't have the same business model!!!
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