not impresed

After visiting the pentax stand at the photo show i was not impresed
the reps did not seem to want to push any of there products and even when pushed they were not really trying to sell there wares

how do ricoh think they are going to succed with that sort of attitude

and if i was not a pu i would have thought twice about a pentax


regards stu

The stand was poorly located and pretty low-key, so took a long time to find. The full-frame model didn't have any sort of caption or description so a visitor would have no idea what it was - I had to ask. I came away seriously wondering whether I should have gone for Nikon where a rep spent a long time demonstrating the D750 to me and lenses with the compatible teleconverters, although it was interesting that not many are WR which is a strong plus for Pentax.

It was interesting to handle the different models; as a K50 owner I was surprised how much heavier the K3 is, which would be a significant issue as a walk-around camera. Also, the KS-2 being a bit smaller didn't fit so well in my hands.

Both the Sigma and Tamron stands admitted that none of their new lenses will have Pentax mounts due to the higher cost and limited market which is worrying; the Pentax guy said Ricoh recognised this and intended introducing more new full frame lenses to fill the gaps although it is unlikely to include the more extreme long focal length fast lenses used in wildlife photography.

Thanks very much for this write up.

I'm on a K-30 at the moment and appreciated your comments.

Yes, interesting to see the lens manufacturers walking away from Pentax, but unfortunately quite understandable given the size of our market.

did anyone look at the macro lenses on the nest stand as they had taken delivery of some macro lenses from china the week befor and one of them was a 14mm macro which is on pentax fit and they are ready for ff so the guy on there said

sigma said they was also walking away from sony

I have to say that I agree with Stu and Rob on most things - I was there for at least 1/2hr from 1pm, talking to 2 other Pentax users (of which at least one, was a lady whose forum name was, like mine, a little cryptographic!), and no-one approached me either.

OTOH, from a personal point of view, it was rather refreshing not to be hassled by salesmen!

As far as location is concerned, it was probably not the best, but nor was it the worst because Sigma, as (it appears) a sponsor of the show, has a stand that is not much better located.

"Money talks" - so that's why CaniNikon had big and prominent stands, and many others did not.

BTW, I think that I saw Vic C there at the same time - if Yes, then "Hello, and sorry we did not get to chat!", but if "No" then "never mind"!

we had a job to get them to get the 150/450 out of the glass case and put it on a k3

i had to hassle them to do that yet on panasonic they was incouraging you to have a play

it was more like help yourself and if you want to try another lens then lets see what we have

with memory cards in and that arena you could take the photos and then have a play round with them on the camera
i think even canon and nikon would have somthing to learn from that stand

(i enjoyed it there even though i would not be buying one )

If that was yourself that there that I saw when it was put back in the cabinet, then "Hello to you to you too"!

John

PS: and it really does look a heavy bu**er !

I had no difficulty whatsoever getting that 150-450mm out of its case!

you must have got the right person john

and to the other john it is not that heavy got to admit it was nice on that k3 nice balance

by the way did you notice the tee shirt i was wearing as a lot of the stands commented

John

That was "yesterday" - and you are probably "known" to the Ricoh sales staff, but the most of he rest of us (AND the GENERAL PUBLIC!) are NOT - and "today was today"!

I'm puzzled by this. I went yesterday and was approached by a Ricoh rep to go to the 645Z presentation. I went and thoroughly enjoyed Matt Emmett's talk in particular plus I asked to try the 150-450 on a K3 which they obliged me by doing. I spent a while chatting with their rep, played with the 645Z extensively, had a catch up with Matt, got their sales director chap to take a picture of me with my mate. In short they couldn't have been more accommodating and welcoming. I expressed an interest in the WG-M1 and they didn't have it on display (which was daft) so they went and got one from the back for me and then referred me to LCE who had a show deal on it. Unfortunately they didn't have the helmet adapter for sale but I bought the WG-M1 and it seems great.

I liked the stand even if I thought Olympus had the nicest stand of anyone (they were also very friendly and actually their Olympus sales guy asked me what I used and when I said the Pentax K3 he said 'that's a great camera' which I thought was nice). By contrast Canon had a crap stand - swamped by people with two strange acrobat blokes climbing over what looked like a couple of packing crates for some reason and seemingly no actual sales presentation. I was with a Canon owning pro friend (who already has two EOS 5D's (one a MK3) plus an array of expensive L series Canon glass. When we did finally get to speak with someone and he asked to try the new 11-24mm fisheye zoom the guy handed it over as if he didn't give a toss. We then asked about the new 5DS and he said 'it's down the end' with a very nonchalant wave of his hand. The level of corporate arrogance displayed was staggering considering we both had lanyards around our neck saying we were professionals and my mate has already probably around £15000 of Canon gear - unbelievable.

As a result we spent far longer with Pentax Ricoh and even my mate came away very impressed with the 645Z and the new super zoom so I would say they were doing a pretty good job...

I'm sorry your experience was so different.

Jonathan

diffrent day as i was with a canon user and we also went on the canon stand twice the thing was with canon they was near the entrance so every one whent there first the second time we went on to day was just as we was leaving and the lad that we saw there was spot on when it came to help for my friend but then he did know him

Further to my earlier comments I would add that the Pentax rep was helpful and volunteered the 560 telephoto for me to handle. It's just that the display needed to be more eye-catching - some big graphics and images promoting the WR for instance.

I was on the Ricoh stand from 12.50 to 01.15 and only met one person to speak to from the forum. jeallen01 why didn't you say hello. I thought more of us were going to show up at 01.00 approx. I found the guys on the stand helpful but they were all young and new very little of the history of Pentax. I must admit I made a real mess of the 645Z display. "DROOLING" all over it All in all a good day out and I saw what I wanted to see. The Lytro stand was interesting and the young man I spoke to used to work for Chris at SRS.
CHEERS Vic.

Vic

Sorry I didn't say "Hello", but I was unsure if it actually was yourself!.

I agree that the guys on the stand were relatively young, so I think they could do with some more experienced people because most of the potential customers were of older generations, and both sides would be more at ease with a small generation gap - that could be why they did not approach some of us older generation visitors!

I also agree with Rob's comment on the display - it looked like it had just been lifted from somewhere like a PC World shop counter, rather than being designed for a prestigious photography show. The display case for the big lenses also appeared to look a little amateurish, with poor labelling of what the lenses were, and the same was true of the case for the new mock-up (and it really looked like a mock-up!) FF DSLR where there was little, if any, information on what it was, or the benefits that the final version will hopefully bring (not that, TBH, I will be buying one because of the size/weight/cost involved, and the same is even more of the 645Z - what a relative monster, but that's what medium format DSLRs are like!).

However, I'm glad that some of the visitors did get access to the lenses.

On a lighter note, a couple of days ago, we were watching an episode of the SKY series "Fortitude" on their Catch-up service, and noticed that Michael Gambon appeared to be making wet prints in a darkroom whereas it looked like he had taken the shots with a medium format DSLR (but not the 645 series though!) and not with a medium format film camera - did anyone else notice that, or am I mistaken?