Still in the frame...

I stumbled upon this interesting article about cameras v's smartphones. It raises a few interesting points.

link

Very interesting, many thanks for the link.

I agree, very interesting. As I see it, owning a smart phone with a good camera on it might open up the world of photography to you, making for a hankering after something that can doa little more, such as zoom!

To me, a compact camera does little more than a good smart phone, but a CCS or DSLR - that is a different matter.

This is why, I think, it is so important now for Pentax to get there gear into high street shops.

I agree, gents. Perhaps, as well as manufacturing cameras, Ricoh Pentax can work on developing image sensors capable of being built in to smartphones, if not actually launch a range of smartphones themselves. Think of the publicity RP would get if the likes of Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Blackberry, or even Apple were to opt for a phone with an excellent pentax sensor on board. My thinking is: if people that swear by iphone (as an example) knew that the image sensor inside was manufactured by Sony, they would perhaps be swayed to purchase a Sony camera. Likewise, if the Pentax brand and logo were emblazoned on the iphone's packaging, with maybe room somewhere for the Pentax name on the product itself. Surely this is a marketing possibility staring them in the face, but they just haven't got around to noticing... yet!!

Personally I wouldn't want to make telephone calls on my K-5 any more than I want to take photos with my 'phone!

John

I used to think like that until the Nokia 808 was announced.

Check these out ( especially the full size versions

http://product.it168.com/detail/doc/460851/5444876/1/1/piclist.shtml

it's in Chinese but gallery navigation and full size button is easily found

Too late in the Game. Nokia have been developing their 41MP Pureview system for the last 5 years.

You should be thinking the opposite that wouldn't it be great if,for example, the Pentax Q used the Nokia 41Mp pureview system

See the gallery of examples above. impressive

The flaw in your logic is that Pentax is a camera maker not a sensor manufacturer; they are bought in.

I've got a casemate with a 110 filter ring araldited on it, so I can screw in any 110 filter to the camera on my HTC. I.e. a dioptre allowing me to really close focus.

Pentax could do a special adapter/phone body to allow 110 lenses to be used on a cameraphone. A niche following making use of all those 110 lenses knocking about. They could even make a few new ones.

That's as maybe.. But RICOH are an electronics manufacturer - what's to stop them setting up a plant solely manufacturing electronic optical sensors? I would have thought that may be one of the reasons why Ricoh bought out Pentax.