There will always be some people who prefer a certain new technology but I don't see mirrorless as being the revolution that some others proclaim it to be. I've yet to see a screen that can improve on reality or that reacts as quickly and I'm not convinced that an Olympus OM-D, Fuji XT-1 or Sony or Samsung mirrorless camera is sufficiently smaller and lighter than say an APSC DSLR for it to represent a paradigm shift over say a KS-2. I actually think Pentax are reading the market correctly in perceiving compact DSLR's such as KS-2 to be preferable to a mirrorless alternative.

I can see an advantage to mirrorless in low light situations but that's it!

There are good cameras on both sides of the divide, but I certainly don't see DSLR's becoming a minority in the serious enthusiast/amateur/pro market and fully expect them to remain the dominant technology for serious cameras and from the look of their model ranges I would say Canon, Nikon and Pentax plus the market statistics agree.

Jonathan

Please take this post in the spirit it is intended but are you aware that you can buy this lens brand new (not a grey import) for £279 from a UK main agent with 12months warranty?

In light of that £250 seems very optimistic for a secondhand copy.

Check www.camerapricebuster.co.uk for latest camera and lens prices - I do when I'm thinking of buying a lens and I bet many other do too.

I was just pondering if the recently released new Tokina lenses which are FF and have been announced in Nikon and Canon fit could in fact be two of the lenses on the Pentax roadmap if they are suitably re-finished to match the Pentax lens line. I can see quite a resemblence to pentax lenses anyway and the companies have quite a long history of collaborative lens design.

Here's a link to them:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6404423995/cp-2015-tokina-reveals-new-24-70mm-f...

If they are indeed likely to be the new Pentax lenses it will be interesting to see how they perform in reviews and what the prices are - although of course the price will no doubt be higher in pentax form.

Jonathan

They now have a class leading product range but to a degree face the same problem as Olympus (who also in my view have class leading and excellent products) and the difficult part is getting the public to know how good they are and think of buying them in preference to what they see all the pro's shooting (Canon and Nikon) at Wimbledon etc.

The next step I think is to get some pro's on side, have trade stands at the shows and build true dealer loyalty. I have found for example at London camera Exchange that the sales people are familiar with the Canon and Nikon menu system whereas I had a salesman say he didn't know why I wanted a Pentax because their menu system was so complicated (it isn't, it's just his lack of familiarity with it made him think it was less intuitive than Canikon). He told me they hardly sold any pentax but given he didn't know the features, the Pentax differentiators or his way around the menus and had the only body they had tucked away at the back of the shop it's small wonder they don't sell many!!

The fact Pentax are now in John Lewis is something if I were Ricoh Imaging I would really be working with. John lewis would I'm sure be delighted if the Ricoh people arranged familiarity/benefits training for their staff either on site or at pentax Ricoh HQ. I really think Ricoh need to clarify the process needed to get their dealers on side. I truly believe that a Pentax K3 has many advantages over a Nikon D7100 or Canon EOS 7D but they need to get the salesmen and women to believe it too!! I actually think the K3 is an absolute bargain and if anything it's in the lower APSC level where Pentax don't have the same competitive edge against say Nikon. My Sister was interested in a very cheap bottom end DSLR and when I looked the Nikon D3200 was 24Mp and cheaper than the Pentax K500/K50 at 16MP with a kit lens. Pentax also don't say anything much about their heritage and achievements when in reality they have a better history of innovation and development than Canikon. There seem to be a lot of people who don't realise that until 1995 ish Pentax were one of the 'big 5' camera makers and probably just as commonplace as Canon and Nikon. A lot has changed in 20 years and it's time to reverse the decline.

Just thinking out of the box for example why don't they have an interview/tribute with David Bailey about the fact he used a Pentax on the most important fashion shoot in history in New York with Jean Shrimpton? They could film it in house on Pentax gear, put it on their website or pitch it to TV companies as a series of TV shows about great photographers, I bet you could find a whole bunch of other pros who wouldn't mind one bit doing a 30 minute interview/documentary about their life and work and association with pentax. You could pick interesting peple like Leonard Nimoy (does he use Pentax?) or that supermodel turned photographer who used to use a Pentax 6x7 or even Patrick Demarchelier, Peter Lindberg, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton and Arthur Elgort who all used the 67 Pentax. Then there's paul McCartney and Ringo who all seemd to have Pentaxes with them on their first USA trip. If they can get Kanarek back I'm sure he'd be up for it too! You could do it as a sort of part photography history/documentary about the history of photography and then how a different famous photographer fits into that history.

I think it would be worth millions in TV exposure and could be done at relatively low cost...

Jonathan

Wow - really good to see this and you're right, it will be expensive if you want to assemble the ultimate lens system around the new FF body but as ever it's a case of slowly assembling the system for most of us. I actually think Pentax would do better if they made the FA series lenses somewhere between Canon/Nikon and Tamron/Sigma prices i.e. if they don't gouge us too hard!!

If they make the lenses very expensive then it won't encourage canon/Nikon users to jump ship from their APSC level cameras whereas if they undercut the other camera makers it might conceivably be cheaper to switch from APSC Nikon or Canon to FF Pentax rather than FF Nikon/Canon.

Secondly if they make the lenses too expensive people will just buy a Sigma or Tamron.

Either way Pentax lose the sale.

They're coming back from a poor market share position and to build market share they really need to undercut the competition. Of course if their plan relies mostly on getting people like us to upgrade then they might be tempted to charge as much as they can get away with. From the prices of the 70-200 etc already announced unfortunately I would say it's the latter approach they are taking (the 70-200 is more expensive than the L series Canon and Nikon equivalents and they have optical stabilisation motors in them too)

Jonathan

Countdown to launch here:

T-minus 9 minutes and counting:

Though to what I can only guess but I know what I'm hoping for - such shame that Pentax themselves haven't done the countdown thing on their website that they did for the 645Z...

I'm riveted.

Jonathan

You won't hear any moaning from me - I'm just very excited to see what it's like. I think they kind of missed a trick not having a website with a countdown timer like they had for the 645Z to build anticipation - that was very cool and effective in my view and I did keep checking back on it before the launch.

I'm really really pleased for Pentax and everyone out there who uses and loves them. The truth is that you cannot argue with their history of innovation and contribution to photography so I truly hope they are able to regain their former glory in the eyes of today's public:

1952 Asahiflex 1 First Japanese SLR camera and first to use 35mm film

1954 Asahiflex 2 World's first instant return mirror system eliminates mirror blackout when taking pictures this is probably the main innovation that led to the SLR becoming the dominant professional and serious enthusiast camera type.

1957 Asahi Pentax introduces the fixed Pentaprism to enable eye level shooting through the lens

1957 Pentax Auto-Takumar lenses are the first lenses in the world with automatic lens diaphragms controlled by internal signalling between body and lens to permit instantaneous stopdown and re-opening after shutter release

1960 Pentax Spotmatic Pentax pioneers world's first in pentaprism TTL metering system

1966 Pentax Nocta World's first infra-red focussing system enables focus confirmation in total darkness

1969 Pentax 6x7 world's first medium format camera with 35mm style handling and features

1971 Pentax ES World's first aperture priority mode camera with TTL metering

1971 Pentax invent multi-coating lens process for up to 9 layers of lens coating later licenced by Zeiss and everyone else. Even today Zeiss lenses use Pentax SMC coatings. Up to that point nobody had managed to put more than 4 layers of coating on a lens and many lenses still had no coatings or single layers.

1975 Pentax K mount launched and becomes the most famous and longest running lens mount in the world

1976 Pentax MX World's smallest and lightest SLR camera

1979 Pentax ME Super World's first SLR with push-button electronic control

1980 Pentax ME-F World's first autofocus SLR - a full 10 years before this became commonplace

1981 Pentax is the first manufacturer to produce 10 million SLR's

1985 Pentax D3000 First 35mm SLR camera with DX film sensing

1987 Pentax SF-7 World's first SLR with automatic pop up flash

1997 Pentax 645N World's first autofocus medium format camera

2003 Pentax Ist d, first digital Pentax SLR and smallest and lightest DSLR in the world

2006 Pentax Ist DL - First DSLR for less than £500

2006 K100D Pentax first body with in body stabilisation (no Nikon or Canon camera to date has ever had this feature because they build it into their lenses, but you pay extra for it everytime you buy a lens...)

2008 Pentax K20D First budget/prosumer DSLR with weather sealing

2010 Pentax 645 D first digital medium format camera with SLR like handling qualities

2011 Pentax Q Worlds smallest and lightest interchangeable lens camera system launched

2011 Pentax 645D wins 'camera of the year' and voted best professional DSLR by TIPA

2013 Pentax K3 pioneer's world's first selectable anti-aliasing system, wins best DSLR of the year (TIPA)

2014 Pentax 645Z 51 megapixel medium format DSLR launched at a price point £7000 one third of its Hasselblad competitors. First medium format digital camera with on board video recording.

Martin,

I'm more than happy to send my post to the chap at Which? - it's a good idea because I truly do find it annoying that there does seem to be a bias against Pentax in some quarters. As an example I recently bought a magazine which had a comparison of several mid price DSLR's including the Nikon D7100, the Canon EOS7d Mk2 I think and the Sony A77 mk2, Olympus OM-D EM1 etc, so which Pentax did they choose to compete in this exalted company? - The Pentax K5 Mk2 which they then proceeded to point out wasn't as technologically advanced as the Nikon or Canon!! Well of course it isn't - it's from a completely different generation of cameras and is a 3 year old design - so why didn't they get hold of a K3?? It just makes no sense! In addition it's very rare to see a magazine mention build quality or weather sealing or the price/performance ratio that Pentax offer compared to Canon/Nikon. If you compare the sensor performance of a K3 to an EOS7D mk2 and a Nikon D7100 (thanks DXO mark) it seems that the Nikon and Pentax are way out in front of the Canon. If you compare the build quality of those three you will find the Pentax is the best built, followed by the Canon and then the Nikon. In the area of autofocus performance I would imagine that the Pentax might be behind the Nikon and Canon (largely because of their excellent ring motor lenses rather than the actual body) but I truly believe with the K3 that the gap is very very narrow now where once it was significant.

The K3 then is the best built, cheapest, most weatherproof, fastest, has the widest range of lenses available and pretty much equals the Nikon as having the best imaging quality. Only in the area of autofocus tracking performance might the others have a slim edge.

It's hard not to conclude even with my most objective hat on that the Pentax is simply the best APSC DSLR in the world right now.

Jonathan

I can only conclude that much is driven by advertising spend rather than true merit!

It's interesting to read about other people's journeys and to see how many started with an ME Super or similar and yet are still here. It's also interesting to hear about others who have in fact departed the marque and yet come back into the fold.

I've tweaked the article and also added some Pentax K3 pictures - much easier to do now that I have the K5 going spare to shoot it with!

I'm very glad people found it an interesting read!

Jonathan

Thanks guys - I'm blushing now! It's good to hear that there are many of us who are so happy with our cameras and who are still loyal to the marque. I think 2015 is going to be a very good year for those of us who are still Pentaxians (I have no inside knowledge, it's just that I feel the signs are now consistently pointing one way!).

Congrats on the new K3 Bill

Jonathan

Could we really be saying in 3 months time that:
Pentax build the best APSC DSLR system and camera in the world
Pentax build the best medium format camera system in the world
Pentax build the best/most compelling enthusiast/pro full frame DSLR system in the world
Pentax build the most portable interchangeable lens camera system in the world
Ricoh build the most compelling and flexible action cam system in the world