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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-06-2019, 12:47 AM
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I think you'll find there's only been the DA*11-18 this year, Rob.
The re-release of the FA35 and the DA10-17 fisheye with a hood redesigned to be better compatible with the K-1 can be seen can be seen as pitching to full frame owners.
I think you should read the various interviews with the Pentax executives, a replacement for the K-3 is happening, it's in black and white. Now, it may be a step up in pricing as well as performance, and many forum members may not be able to afford it as they did their previous camera. Pentaxians have a proud history of making do with what they have, too, so that's not good for Ricoh.
And whether a low end one, a K-70 replacement, is being worked on, has not been mentioned. We can see this with the APS-C GR III, too. They did not come out with an affordable product, like the X100F is for Fuji, they stayed premium as the GR II was. BTW, I think the K-3 replacement may have features trialled on the GR III, such as an embedded Linux operating system and a touchscreen.
Other companies are following Pentax into being niche premium brands, and I don't think that's easy, turning a dog into a cat. Pentax already started as a low volume operation, these others have thousands of employees and are paying off bank loans on enormous factories built during the 2007-2012 boom.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-05-2019, 11:42 PM
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And that's the problem, Thor.
Not for us shooters, but for the companies. The profits aren't large enough to cover the drop in volume of sales - which the CEO of Canon expects will halve again in the next two years.
They're really squeezing the lemon, and shutting out people on a tight budget. :(
Sony have no interest in the entry level A3000 or mid-level A5000 cameras, it's only the high end 6000s or full frame.
Panasonic have skipped APS-C searching for a premium product and gone straight to FF.
Nikon and Canon ignored APS-C with their vision for the future, the R and Z series also went straight to full frame.
Fuji have even skipped FF and gone for medium format.
If a K-3 user upgrades to a K-3 III there's a real danger they will just reuse their existing lens. Encouraging/forcing customers to go to FF or even a new mirrorless mount means there's potential for additional lenses to be sold.
And in fact, we've seen with the DFA lenses that they sell so few copies with a limited pool of FF customers that it's hard to get their money back - they've tried to sell the DFA*50 to Canon and Nikon owners hoping 'quality wins'. But I've not seen evidence of the Tokina Opera being popular despite its outstanding performance.
It's a lot to think about for Pentax, which has to think, what does a niche player do, that doesn't involve going head to head with the giants?
There are opportunities, perhaps … the big guys are seemingly downplaying APS-C, which on the other hand might be selling five or six times the number of units versus FF right now. And they are betting the ranch on mirrorless, which even at this point is still being consistently outsold by DSLRs.
If you're the Ricoh product manager, you'd be commissioning all kinds of studies for the different scenarios. And you've got to do it without losing money year to year - the orders from above to all divisions including cameras, is to attempt to survive, to break even, to not chase market share in dire economic times.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-05-2019, 08:08 AM
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I can't prove this at all, don't have a shred of evidence for it, Ron, but like Sony, Canon and Nikon, Ricoh might hope that K-3 owners take the hint and upgrade to the FF K-1.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-05-2019, 07:49 AM
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I think the highest quality posts in this forum are the Photo threads, and the worst - with the worst posters - in the News and Rumours threads. Obviously you're not one of those, Lawrence! :)
Well, that's what we do by repeating rumours instead of what a company announces.
At Canon in the golden years, they simply refused to comment on future products.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-05-2019, 07:34 AM
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(Laughs)
I'm not sure where the dividing line is between research and stalking, but I do like repeated rumours to have substance, provenance or what have you.
And that involves assessing the person making the claim.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-05-2019, 07:13 AM
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IIRC. the feisty Tanaka claimed in a blog post that 'it seems [Spring 2020]', but forum member Taks actually watched the interview with Iwasaki on YouTube and said: "Iwasaki-san did not confirm and so no promises were made by Ricoh."
What we do know is that Iwasaki has said to interviewers: "Although we cannot provide specific information such as specifications or a release date, it is planned to be a very attractive product for current K-3 users."
Tanaka is not a Ricoh employee, I must hasten to add, he was asking the questions on the stage, not providing the answers.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-05-2019, 06:32 AM
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Accurate? :)
For fun, I've just scanned through every post he's made on this forum going back twenty one months.
His only prediction was in April of 2018 where he confidently declared:
"K3III will be 2019
GRIII will be this year. "
He was wrong about the GR III, and I guess he has three months to be right about the K3III, even though no one's ever seen one or talked about one.
I also see posts where he's begging Asahiman for rumours and information.
I don't think he knows at all. For some reason, maybe he's connected with retailers or distributors, he can get his hands on official Ricoh documents (like firmware contents) in advance, but if I was an industrial counter espionage consultant, I'd say he's not a Pentax employee, he guesses at anything else like the rest of us.
I don't rate him as a clairvoyant, sorry!
Asahiman comes up with some very specific hints only known to insiders (again, the way he says" Sorry no,I got only anything about the 3 new primes" says he's not an employee but a receiver of leaks), but on this forum he has made no prediction about an APS-C flagship.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-05-2019, 06:00 AM
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Iwasaki and all the other Ricoh executives interviewed by the different magazines at CP+ did not say this year or next year or the year after that.
So what is the source of these 'rumours', Rondec? People keep repeating them. :)
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-05-2019, 04:11 AM
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The Pentax executive Iwasaki has *never* given a date.
He said only that a product is in development.
Forget '100 years of Pentax', he did not connect that with the eventual APS-C flagship at all.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-18-2019, 08:09 PM
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Or even Auto. That's right, that's why you need to watch what someone is doing when they say something doesn't work.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-18-2019, 06:31 PM
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+1.
What is this with the cloud rather than the bird? I've never seen that.
Alfa, you're a Melbourner, too, I'm happy to stand beside you and watch what you're doing.
It disturbed me that you said 'contrast'.
That is a feature of Live View.
For PDAF, you need a line. The line must be horizontal if one of the outside (non-cross type) points.
That means a visible line on the bird.
A silhouette will not work. In that instance, you need to focus on the edge of its body and the sky instead.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-18-2019, 06:27 PM
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?
I use nothing but AF-C on all my bodies, Alfa - for moving objects and stationary. Don't know what you're talking about! :)
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-17-2019, 01:46 AM
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But that will happen, allowing people to preorder, of course.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-16-2019, 09:49 PM
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Yeah, let's not get the two mixed up. One is a celebrity photographer, feisty and attention getting by Japanese standards as much as I can make out, and the other is a traditional dignified corporate executive who definitely gave no dates.
In this disastrous camera market, companies have to be quick footed to survive and not commit to anything that will result in a loss.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-16-2019, 09:35 PM
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So none of them said 2020, but you did anyway. That's very naughty of you.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-16-2019, 09:27 PM
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I'm not sure that all this bouncing around between brands has helped you, Chris. You went from Olympus if I'm not mistaken, to Pentax where you shot with the 560mm to Sony to Canon.
You might justify it and the cost in a way the rest of us couldn't, particularly the damage you took in terms of image quality.
Here you are on DPR talking about the unfortunate replacement of your DA560 with the Canon 400 and 1.4TC:
"With the Pentax DA560, admittedly a telescope design lens, I had become used to very clear and defined images of distant subjects, even allowing significant crop and still remail clear and well defined. With the 400DOII, which has the disadvantage of a TC to get to 560mm, I did not expect similar performance, but still better than what I am getting: glowy edges when zooming in and what seems to be a very thin sharp focal plane, outside of which things quickly turn "messy".
This may sound a bit harsh, but I am comparing to a high performance 560mm telescope design lens with first class coatings. I may have expected too much from an optic designed for portability and using diffractive optics. I could have known that I should not have sold my Pentax DA560! Inside of its parameters, the 400DOII is a fantastic lens. In future, I will not get around buying a second super tele for optimal distant shooting at the level I was used to with the Pentax DA560."
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-16-2019, 08:28 AM
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Well, newspapers have the funds to keep lawyers on retainers.
But you and I can double check our own claims with another source, right, Ulrich?
It's not even just about cameras, it's about evidence on any matter in our lives.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-16-2019, 06:07 AM
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It's real handy to have someone who reads Japanese on this forum, JPT, but normal news standards apply - be sure of the phrasing, getting confirmation from a third party if possible. Any journo does that. The test is … would you be afraid to show your translation to the person who wrote the original?
And that's because otherwise your brave attempt can be misinterpreted, misquoted, and misused on the Internet. Pentax Rumours can jump on it as they have Mistral75 in the past, and quite possibly Chris here.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-16-2019, 05:56 AM
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Again, where?
You're the one telling the story, Chris.
You can't just write things down for us that you don't know are true.
JPT thinks you somehow were mistakenly quoting his speculations, and he's just one of us, a fellow forum member, not a Pentax official!
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-15-2019, 06:23 PM
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Who said that, Chris?
Just real interested where you got that from, that you'd repeat it here as fact!
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
07-29-2019, 03:31 PM
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?
How weird.
And posting at 4am asking for someone's help about a camera you don't own, double weird.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
07-29-2019, 06:29 AM
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But what would you know?
"The quad-core DRIMe V processor (derived from the*Exynos SoCs Samsung uses in its high-end smartphones)" according to DPR.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
07-27-2019, 11:09 PM
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Extraordinary. :D
Anyway, I just want to point out to you that the 15 fps of the NX1 was possible due to the Quad Core processor derived from Samsung's phone lines.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
07-23-2019, 09:24 PM
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Samsung's own, IIRC - nice tech, BSI, had fast readout so could do 4k video, etc - but nobody else has run with it, so it seems to have died along with their whole camera line.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
07-12-2019, 08:03 AM
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Oh, yeah, you'd have to be nuts to lend money to or buy into a consumer camera company. :)
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