As Boris said in the Ricewhine Postmortem thread, it may be wise to
wait until after Photokina to say definitively that ALL the
announcements have been made.
My own predictions did worse than RiceHigh's.
I got the K-mount adapter for the Q right (not too tough, after it was
shown at the last CPP+) but I didn't see a lot of other people listing
it.
I got the superzoom lens right, but did not guess exactly the focal
length range. ( said 16-250mm and it was 18-270mm, which is not too
far off)
I got the 560mm right, since that one was basically give to us by the
Teacher (already leaked)
I correctly guessed a new Q lens, but it wasn't the fast wide prime I
hoped for - but the telephoto zoom. I'd give myself half-credit on
that one.
The other thing I got right was that Pentax would be offering a sans
anti-alias filter option. Frankly, I thought that it would be on a
24MP model, but I'm glad it isn't. What Pentax is doing here is
extremely interesting. They have recognized a good thing (I believe in
an earlier conversation, Mark Roberts made a case for calling it a
"sweet spot" for the 16MP Exmor sensor in the APS-C size. Pentax
succeeded in building a 14-bit camera on top of that and doing more
with it than even its creator Sony could. The K-5II and K-5IIs seem to
be mostly refinements on that, but when you are refining the finest
APS-C camera out there (at least from a pure IQ standpoint) that no
one has YET surpassed (two years after it was announced) then I think
that is a smart move.
It's not smart from the standpoint of people who look at only
megapixels as the measure of a camera, but Pentax is saying "that's
OK". We'd rather produce a camera that produces superb results across
a very broad spectrum of ISOs, to one that starts to perform poorly at
higher ISOs or *requires* post-processing noise reduction to get good
results.
There are also different market segments. There are people who can and
will pay $3-3.3K for a Nikon D800/E body. There are people who will
pay $2.3K for a Sony A99 full frame body. But I would argue that in
terms of sheer numbers, there are less of them than will pay $1-1.3K
for the finest APS-C body available. Now would Pentax benefit from
servicing one of those higher markets? Sure, but not before they take
care of their "bread and butter" class of customer.
The question that still remains, regarding Photokina, is if these are
the 9 product announcements or (since they combined some of them)
there are still more announcements coming. I remain a little surprised
that the 645DII was not announced. I'm guessing that it is not quite
yet ready to "come out of the oven". It also looks like Pentax has
abandoned the low-end entry level DSLR, which I find a little sad. I
would never have entered the Pentax "upgrade stream" if it hadn't been
for the $500 K200D (and later the K-x). Now I'm a K-5 and Q owner. I
think this is another serious marketing blunder, unless the K-z is
still coming. Indications I got from my Authorized Pentax Dealer
seemed to indicate that the K-30 is now the entry camera.
Call me gullible, but I do think the Pentax FF is still coming and
that it will be similar to the Sony A99. I think the rumors that Sony
is requiring a 6 month lead time for their A99 before letting someone
else use the sensor makes sense. But that means that if it isn't
announced by April, I will have to assume that one is never coming.
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 6:39 PM, Darren Addy <pixelsmi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For the purposes of discussion, let's assume that the Russian Pentax
> tweet about "nine" press release announcements coming in the next few
> days/weeks are going to cover Pentax (and Ricoh's) combined product
> announcements prior to unveiling them at Photokina.
>
> I think the 560mm telephoto and the 24MP APS-C K-3 are in the "for
> sure" category. That leaves us with 7 more announcements (and they
> could be for anything from flash to accessory to lens to camera).
>
> If I were placing odds I would put them in the following order (from
> most likely to least likely)
>
> The Pentax K to Q adapter shown at CPP+
> A new flash unit
> Pentax 645Dii
> The "DA High Magnification Zoom lens" on the roadmap for 2012 (this
> language sounds a lot like the lens on the X-5 bridge camera, only to
> cover an APS-C image circle, so I'm guessing a 16-250mm superzoom)
> A fast wide lens for the Q... a 5mm f1.8 would be perfect.
> A K-mount module for the Ricoh GXR (sells more lenses to another
> installed base)*
> A K-z entry level (I have my doubts about this even happening... I
> think Pentax is abandoning the low-entry DSLR arena, but I think that
> would be a mistake)
>
> *does this count as a Pentax announcement? Is the Pentax booth
> combined with Ricoh at Photokina this year?
>
> I think the one thing that Pentax may do that will surprise some
> people is to make more cameras with/without the anti-aliasing filter
> (ala Nikon D800/D800E) giving people the choice of which they want.
> The Pentax Q has no anti-alias filter, which is part of the reason
> that it out-performs people's expectations. I think we are seeing a
> trend away from anti-alias filters being used and the moire Bogeyman
> being relegated to the dust bin.
>
> So, those are my 7, but I'll add a wildcard. I'm sure that at least
> ONE of my 7 is incorrect (probably a lot more than one). So to replace
> one, I think that Pentax is going to finally *announce* that they are
> working on a FF camera, but that it won't ship until next year. I
> think that if they are working on one then they almost have to
> announce that it is coming to freeze their constituency (or at least
> MORE of them) from jumping ship. But I don't think they will even show
> a prototype because they will have enough "real" products to show and
> they wouldn't want the FF to steal those products thunder.
>
> Comments? Your conjecture? Last Photokina thread before Photokina!
--
"The key to seeing the world's soul, and in the process wakening one's
own, is to get over the confusion
by which we think that fact is real and imagination an illusion. It is
the other way around."
-Thomas Moore, "Original Self"
--
PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List
PDML@pdml.net
http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow
the directions.
