not impresed

I'm not sure as I was not looking for them but I don't recall seeing any flashguns on the stand?????????????? Correct me if I'm wrong anyone. CHEERS Vic.

I think that it's horses for courses - and why I bought the K-30 (to replace a K-R) for holidays and general travelling, but use the K-3 for airshows and things like that where the extra facilities/speed helps and you don't generally have to carry a lot of stuff continuously from place to place. The tilt and twist screen on the KS-2 looks good (if a bit small) , but a bit vulnerable if you are not careful handling the camera with the screen out to the side (but I suppose that's the hazard with all cameras that have this type of screen).

I think you are right Vic there was no flashiest tha I noticed but saying that I didn't see them on the others ether
I did have a look at the nissin. Flash stand
And I did look at the 14 mm wide angle macro on uk digital which was just over £200

The Pentax/Ricoh stand at Photokina is always hard to find, small, with staff who can be tricky to engage in conversation. It isn't unique to Britain sadly.

The bloke on sigma said it was sad an a little imbarasing as it was only a few days befor that he found out that sigma are going to stop doing macro in any form for pentax

Isn't UK Digital one of those companies that appears to be based in the UK but where the stuff actually comes direct from the Far East (i.e. grey imports)? Didn't stop there for that reason.

TheThere web site is nova .co.uk they was a Chinese lens
The bloke said to me when he firs saw the lens he asked why a wide angle macro and the reply was flowers on a mountain slope the photo he showed was effective

I see this as a missed opportunity ... very strange. As I said on the other 'Show' thread, the company has got 2 new superb weather sealed flashguns with an improved build and controls, and the latest LED technology that provides modelling light, AF assist and acts as a secondary reflector for front fill and catchlights!

It all works together in an integrated wireless system very easily. Theres such a push now towards extreme high ISO 'performance' , but even ISO 52,000 won't solve the problems that a bit of flash will, especially when you go off-camera or into High Speed Sync.

They could have had a set up with one flash on camera, another on a stand with a snoot and do some HSS demos (removing all the background and using a snoot to light just a persons upper body ... 'a la' Gary Fong) ... easy to do and easy to impress! You end up promoting the system as a whole as well as selling flashes.

I think if pentax had had them 3 big lenses set up on tripods with k3s attached and with memory cards or those other cards so they could be transmitted straight to a laptop
Which they could have done with the 645z then there could have been some good fun

Think they ought to ask some of the Pentax users next year for some ideas and help doing it

Yeah, I'll go and do my Gary Fong impression ... do you think they'd give me a couple of the new flashes for my efforts ?

they may do



the only problem i can see comming up is as tamron and sigma bring out new lenses and discontinue old onesand not replace the pentax lenses

it meens second had value gose up pentax will put there prices up and you will also have the loses of lenses which are not servicable ricoh will pull the plug as sales drop even more

I think the answer might be in a new type of universal mount with adaptor for the third party lens makers ... like the old Tamron Adaptall system. That way it is economic to produce the lenses and still get sales for the camera makes with smaller market shares. You get sales of the adaptors as well!

I discussed adapters with a very helpful lady on the SRB stand - they sell them for using other lenses on Pentax. Firstly non of the automatic functions work, and secondly there are sometimes problems with focusing due to the focal lengths being changed. These are a last resort if you have an old lens which you don't mind being all manual settings. The hurdle apparently is Pentax retaining the screw drive focus so that old lenses can be used; all other lens manufacturers are fully electronic as are of course new Pentax lenses. I don't understand why a K-mount without the screw drive can't be made for these lenses but the problem is that Ricoh see Sigma, Tamron etc as competitors so won't cooperate with them. I suppose the Ricoh strategy is to build up market share in the lenses (there's no profit in camera bodies), so at some point the others might take a new interest.

that was a very good system back in the 80s as i had a canon f1 for a week and i hated it so i went back to jessops and he just said what camera you want so i said the lx and he just swaped mounts for my sp200

I think, as always, there's more to things than meets the eye. After all, Pentax do co-operate with at least Tamron and Tokina. We know they do because they sometimes co-design lenses. I am sure that last thing we need is a new mount. One of the strengths of the Pentax system is the backwards compatibility, which puts most other marques to shame.

The Tamron Adaptall mount was a brave idea, but of course that was manual focus, not AF. It also had problems because the degree of accurate register could be a bit variable due to manufacturing tolerances. A fixed mount lens is intrinsically more accurate.