More rumours

http://thenewcamera.com/?p=7915

Make what you will of it.

Hmmm, Pentax FF. Let's see if it does appear. May make use of my 15mm, shift and Ltd's yet?

Best regards

Ricoh plans black and white compact. Interesting idea! Ricoh is already quite popular with b&w street shooters.

the k-01 comes in black and white...lol... just kidden I knew what you meant..!

Mirrorless 645D is also an interesting idea,

If they use the 645D mount, presumably it will still be quite deep but presumably they could introduce a range of 645 XS MF pancake lenses. If it brings digital MF closer to consumer prices then I'm all for it.

This has been posted several times already. It was just the
thoughts of a man from Ricoh, not official plans of
the company

Minor point Algi, but I believe it was head of Pentax R&D, Mr Kitazawa, who was interviewed. But his comments were slipperier than a weasel that had fallen into a vat of KY jelly, so it's hard to draw any firm conclusions from the discussion.

There's no way they could keep five systems going all at once (Q, DA, FF, K-01, 645D) plus the Ricoh stuff Other manufacturers only have one or two!!! They are going to have to decide which basket to put their eggs in very shortly...... The DSLR's are currently being neglected.

DA, FF, and K-01 aren't exactly separate systems though. Basically they've got Q, K, and 645 mounts. As for the Gxr system, that system has it's niche but apart from catering for Leica users, it seems a bit limited in its appeal.

Not strictly true as it looks like there will be K lenses that aren't mountable on the K-5/K-r due to their recessed element.

So we will have Q, K, son of K and 645

One clue as to the likely hood of a FF could be in the specs of the 560mm when they are released – I don’t see the point of making it anything other than FF if Pentax have plans in that direction.

I think they would struggle to make a 560mm lens that just covered APS-C. The DA*300mm covers FF so I'm quite sure that the 560mm will. If it's any good and cheap they may sell some to Canon FF users for use with an adapter.

Camera-makers are seeing the traditional OVF pentaprism as on the way out over the next few years in favour of EVFs and hybrid stuff, so there may be more call for recessed lenses of the K-01 kind. A way round FF/APS-C would be to put a powerful FF Sony sensor inside and then allow APS-C lenses to use it via a mask system. This would still probably yield at least 16 megapixels in the smaller image circle, with the high-end boys using their FA limiteds and the like at FF.

Another line of lenses to add to the mix are video lenses which really will become important to every camera-maker I'd guess.

Interesting times! At least Pentax now has an owner with deep pockets because they'll be needed.