Ricoh Are Not Exiting The Camera Market

"Not going anywhere" -- For the moment -- let the accountants loose and see what happens !!

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been a member of Pentax Club since the Ron Spillman era! Got COMPUTERISED at last - DIGITISED? Taken the PLUNGE - BUT FILM STILL RULES !!!

"Not going anywhere" is good, but standing there is not. I think Ricoh needs to improve and expand their marketing policy immediately and make the products available everywhere.

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Regards,
Nezih

Quite agree. There's always 'something missing' when compared by the photo press to other brands - flash sync, burst speed, tethering or something else not quite as good as "another camera make"...... and, if not, they fall back (annoyingly and wrongly) on a comment about a perceived shortage of lenses (and with the K1 they're still correct).

The headline of "Ricoh are not exiting the camera market" is, unfortunately, missing the letter 'C' in "exiting".
Don't get me wrong - I'm perfectly happy with my Pentax but, let's face it, lenses are more expensive than other brands and there ARE some deficiencies that are singled out by the photo press. And the K1 has only a few (very expensive) lenses to match it.

Ricoh is falling apart. They need to make a move.

What is wrong with you people? GeoffSteyning, Pentax lenses are demonstrably not more expensive than other brands except in a few instances and remember that only a small percentage of Canon/Nikon lenses have both SR and weather resistance. And in comparison tests the lenses often rate better than comparable ones from other camera manufacturers although Sigma are on a bit of a roll at the moment. Pentax also has the largest number of APS-C lenses of any manufacturer currently on the market and there is the medium format range to consider as well.

Interesting that despite the rude comments I received on another thread it appears from this news item that Ricoh DO take note of what appears on websites.

ricoh now need to stand up to the major 3party lens companys and say come on its time you put us on a level playing field with the rest of them and produce lense which are only avalable on canon nikon and sony in our ball court until that happens we will be always classed as 3rd rate yet ricoh like asia was are the ones that was at the cutting edge of the development

get sigma and tamron on board and i think it would scare the living daylights out of a lot of people

People forgot about ricoh these days, they're good, would recommend.

I think Tamron have a tie-in with Ricoh in that they manufacture some lenses for Pentax, so you will note that where Tamron and Pentax lenses appear nearly identical the Tamrons are not available in K-mount; I guess that is part of the deal. Sigma stopped producing K-mount versions because the mechanical parts of the mount meant interrupting production for a special production run serving a small market; fully electronic mounts mean the lenses can be on a continuous production with just the different mounts from Nikon, Canon and Sony added at the end. With the latest K4 mount this could be achieved now but I don't know whether Ricoh has the appetite for licensing their mount to a rival, although we see new smaller lens makers adopting it.

What they said was "Today there was an article saying that Ricoh considers to shrink the camera business and withdraw from consumer products. This article is not based on Ricoh's official announcement." This is not the same as saying that they will be staying in all markets with all products. I had an interesting discussion in a Jessops store with a member of staff who said that it was Ricoh who had pulled their stock from the Jessops store and other chains, not that the stores had dropped them. This combined with the decidedly amateurish marketing done at various live events plus a slightly incoherent product range, no dual slot means that the KP can't really be used as a prosumer product, does make you worry about their presence in the UK. Plus there was a comment about Sony no longer designing sensors for other manufacturers, such a Nikon, if this were true then Ricoh would have to source from another supplier and with Samsung withdrawing from the camera market then there is a shortage of third party suppliers of the technology required.

This is about the third or forth time this year that Nikkei put out alarmist articles. It's pathetic how much youtube and other reviewers have bought into this. Nikon, Panasonic, Pentax, Olympus all got imminent failor claims when it was just some restructuring and dropping dead weight such as the lithography div of Nikon. Ricoh is actually performing quite well on sales, however i wonder where these new services source their information. Nikkei news coverage has become hap hazard at best in the this pas year.

This is the crux of the matter to some extent. There must be a lot of people like me who whilst they have retained some Pentax interest (I've kept my K3 and a couple of lenses) they have switched to Canon or Nikon because they have some advantages not least the availability of Tamron and Sigma lenses. I don't know if it is to do with the use of computers in lens technology construction but they have upped the game at the budget end and you can't get them in Pentax mount. The 150-600mm contemporary is astounding for wildlife for example and matches or beats the Pentax 150-400mm in some respects and costs just £750. Tamron have just announced a compact and lightish 18-400mm lens for $700 which may serve a purpose. I would have loved these on my K3.

It's a fantastic Pentax camera that takes beautiful photographs. 토토사이트