K50 + K500 on SRS site

K500 is on SRS website

http://www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk/9488/Pentax-K-500-Black-DSLR-Camera-with-DAL-18...

and k-50
https://www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk/c/603/Pentax-K-50-Digital-SLR-Cameras.html

I'd love the K50 but going to do my best to budget for the K500 - best entry level camera out there IMHO - and great successor, it would seem, to the K-r/x

Was surprised to see the release info on EPZ before here, would have expected the Official Pentax site to have been given priority. Only happened to be on EPZ by chance having just left this site!

Anyway i'm pleased to see that they haven't hung around since the 'leak' in the French media a week or so ago.

The K50 looks very stylish, curves in all the right places...superb spec and I think the 'gimmick' of a colour combo to suit all tastes is an absolute winner. Weatherproofing is another USP which will allow it to take sales from other main competitors. This model should revitalise whole Pentax experience in the same way that the Kx did. I was planning on buying a K30 to replace my olive coloured Kx but will probably opt for an olive coloured K50 at Christmas now when the price has dropped by £50.

Am not sure that the K500 will do as well as it will suffer the comparison against its better equipped twin...in particular lack of weather proofing and also it's only available in black..will really need to be £350 to overcome those handicaps. Maybe it is a short term sacrificial model designed solely to ensure that remaining stocks of the K30 don't sit around on shelves gathering dust.

Overall though i'm very encouraged...well done Ricoh. Just hope the reviews live up to the promise!

I'm just pleased they're releasing some new models. New models = Chatter = greater Pentax awareness.

All we need now is a K-5 replacement and a Pentax FF model. bring it on

K50 comes with 11 times more color combinations then focal points - would have loved to see it more the other way round...... 5 colors - 55 focal points instead of 120 colors and 11 focal points....

Yes this obsession with the number of colours is boring, especially as they seem to miss out the most obvious one - camouflage!

seems to indicate a bit the product strategy to go into the young consumer market and not necessarily in the pro and semi pro market.....
Reading the specks, I don't see that many new things, that were not already available 2-3 years ago...... It is a valid business strategy and I am sure, that many starters and young urban people will jump on this Lego-Cams, it is simply not my prefered direction

Indications from some interview earlier this year (or was it late last year?) were that Pentax wanted to cover the full range i.e. expand in both directions. The announcment of FF plans ties in with that. There's no reason to believe that position has changed just because the consumer end models have been announced first.

The main difference between the Pentax K-50 vs K-500 is the K-500 lacks the weather sealing of the K-50 and the K-500 doesn’t come in the wide variety of colours.

What’s more – and perhaps most significantly – AF points are not visible in the Pentax K-500′s viewfinder, while they are visible in the K-50 viewfinder. You can view AF points on the K-500′s LCD screen, however.

Pentax will sell bucket loads of these cheaper cameras which will attract new users this will increase the popularity of the brand and get cash in the till to fund their FF range, a certain number will in turn upgrade to higher models. Once the Ricoh coffers are full enough there will be a FF camera which will sell to a much smaller audience and hence not swell the bank balance. It can't be done the other way around (FF first) or Pentax/Ricoh will go bust! There simply isn't the market.

There is no chance of Ricoh going bust due to the performance of it's very small Pentax/Ricoh camera division, it would simply be an unprofitable division overshadowed by its core business which lies elsewhere. Quite a different proposition. But to appeal to the wider audience is clearly the most commercially sensible way to proceed.

According to the latest figures march 2013 domestic sales are down slightly by 1% but international sales are up by 15% so they are doing something right