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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
04-03-2020, 12:33 PM
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After some thought here are some points RE a Pentax MILC:- Ricoh Imaging would likely need to move away from SocioNext since video is a high-demand feature of MILC
- Ricoh Imaging would need to source EVF’s and ground-up develop Firmware to handle the display
- Ricoh Imaging would need to develop a new mount to gain the benefits of MILC. K-mount and an AF screwdrive + electronic adapter just isn’t going to work.
- Using Q as a precedent, Ricoh Imaging could develop a new mount and source lenses from a Third Party such as Nidec Copal - but would they?
- Ricoh Imaging would need to ground-up design the manufacturing process and fund the capital investment for the machines.
Would they do all that under the Pentax brand or build on the GR know-how under the Ricoh brand?
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
04-02-2020, 07:37 PM
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By their own public statements Pentax is the DSLR brand and Ricoh is the new technology brand.
Besides - the likelihood Ricoh Corp would allocate the capital to develop a new mount and a complete suite of lenses - well, it is non-zero, but certainly quite unlikely.. And the whole K-Mount adapter thing won’t help. Why wouldn’t I just buy a known product and an adapter for K-mount lenses?
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
04-02-2020, 03:07 PM
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There might be a Ricoh MILC, but not a Pentax.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
04-01-2020, 08:54 PM
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UHMMM, looking at my K-01 I don’t see a mirror but since I don’t see an EVF I guess that means a K-01 isn’t a mirrorless camera. It does have a K-mount, which seems to negate most of the supposed benefits of MILC’s though. There will never be a Pentax EVF mirrorless camera.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
04-01-2020, 05:09 PM
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^^ Yes, Yes it does.*
* K-01
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
02-18-2020, 08:27 PM
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Pentax is K-mount and 645 mount. Q mount is dormant.
The K- mount itself si not suitable for mirrorless camera and lens designs. It is too deep (45.48 mm) to make the camera thinner and shorter focal length lenses smaller, which was the original marketing “benefit” of mirrorless designs. KP is a design study to show that with DA Limited lenses a DSLR can be thin and small while still producing superb images.
To make a propier MILC Pentax must design a completely new mount, which would be the fourth mount in their catalog, as well as develop a completely new image processing engine to allow competitive video. Pentax has a core corporate value statement promising backward compatibility for every Pentax lens ever manufactured to be operable on every new Pentax camera in each mount. In order to honor this promise any new mirrorless mount would also need an operating converter with mechanical aperture linkage control and a mechanism to allow an in-body or in-converter focus motor to drive existing legacy lenses. Pentax also believes the optical viewfinder is the proper way to frame a scene - agree with them or not, that is their culture and corporate know-how. They have zero corporate know-how in EVF’s and not enough in video.
Pentax would not LOVE to have an APSc MILC on the market. That does not make business sense.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
11-09-2018, 05:07 PM
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Yes, they assemble many of their lenses in-house (and contract assembly for other lenses).
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
10-14-2018, 12:09 PM
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See above. Per Mistral75, Manufacturing was entirely outsourced to Copal. Part of modern lens design includes manufacturing process design. Did Pentax design the process or did Copal? I surely don’t I know. Aren’t the Q lens optics 100% polymer? Can Pentax make polymer optics? I surely don’t know. Did Copal make the polymer optics for Pentax compact cameras? I surely don’t know.
But my gut tells me Q was dependent on techniques, tools and relationships that existed in the compact camera era - that no longer exist at all.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
10-14-2018, 12:00 PM
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Copal made the Q lenses. I also believe the cameras were assembled in the compact camera facility Ricoh wrote down as impaired and took away to use for automotive imaging, but that’s a business source, not a photography source.
Mistral75 will spank me if I got it wrong again. I said Cosina twice, but they were always outsourced. . :D
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
10-14-2018, 10:33 AM
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You all do realize Pentax doesn’t make Q lenses, don’t you?
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
08-27-2018, 06:09 PM
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All Pentax needs to do is put an EVF on the KP and they have an instant APSc MILC with outstanding lenses.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
08-26-2018, 12:31 PM
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I just don’t see RIcoh developing yet another mount, nor do I see them dumping K-mount; but it seems mirrorless requires an electronic mount. Ergo, as Ricoh Imaging has said over and over, there are no plans to make a MILC any time soon.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
08-23-2018, 10:02 AM
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You’re not helping your case.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
08-23-2018, 09:35 AM
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So here’s my opinion. Converse.
Ricoh Imaging doesn’t adhere to any calendar impressed from the outside (such as by mass-consumers or Tony Northrop or DPR or Amateur Photographer or Thom Hogan). Pentax Brand has a different goal set, definition of success and Vision than most Western observers, so Pentax can be making considerable progress and winning in their eyes while threatened in ours. It is, after all, a Japanese home market company, with Japanese sensibilities. We are Gaijin. We don’t get it.
My considered guess is there will be a RIcoh-branded MILC down the road. I think it likely such a camera will share significant technology with Pentax mirrored cameras. I also think it likely Ricoh Imaging (Pentax) is presently concentrating on developing modern lenses, AF algorithms, a new, robust AF sensor and other fundamental technology improvements which will appear in the next APSc flagship. Those (transferable) technology investments might be a necessary step before a mirrorless can be viable.
It won’t be absolutely necessary for Ricoh to manufacture lenses in a new mount if a new mount appears in a RIcoh MILC. Lenses can be outsourced, as they are for Q. K-mount lenses can be adapted to a new mount. I don’t believe screw drive lenses can be adapted to a future Ricoh MILC. To adapt Pentax lenses as a product strategy I think it likely there is some critical mass of modern, electronic-aperture lenses with in-lens focus motors in K-mount that Ricoh Imaging wants in the catalog before they feel a RIcoh MILC would be a viable product, and they have some idea when they will get there.
I also believe Ricoh Imaging plans to continue to develop and market traditional, OVF cameras and K-mount lenses under the Pentax Brand for the foreseeable future. A MILC from Ricoh should not assume an end to the mirrorbox from Pentax. AFAIC that’s a good thing because I prefer to look through a viewfinder rather than into a viewfinder.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
08-23-2018, 03:36 AM
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It means Pentax doesn’t make cameras for Consumers - that subset of camera buyers who are acquisitive, motivated by marketing and wear their mirrorless cameras as totems.
In the end game I suppose Pentax should expect to be a significant choice within a shrunken but still relevant technology but I expect to be dead before that issue is resolved.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-04-2018, 07:54 AM
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My final images are better, in my opinion (using my personal standard of ‘Good’) when I look through a viewfinder rather than at a viewfinder. The technology “helps” - to a great degree - merely allow new, less experienced or never-instructed photographers* to shorten the necessary practice period learning how to control a camera. That has value for some camera buyers, but not for me.
However, If someone could come up with a corollary replacement for analog golf clubs I’d be very open to spending money on it. :cool:
* Note that the UK is replacing traditional round clocks with digital displays because current students cannot tell time using analog clocks. They were never taught how a round clock displays time.
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Forum: Pentax Mirrorless Cameras
05-02-2018, 11:20 AM
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None of them is objective. Objective reporting doesn’t get clicks - or viewers.
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