> On Apr 16, 2023, at 2:22 PM, Ralf R Radermacher <fotor...@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Am 16.04.23 um 22:49 schrieb Larry Colen:
>> I've been thinking about how Ricoh does things like their steadfast devotion
>> to the Pentaprism, coming out with a monochrome sensor, most of their
>> software updates are for instagram style filters on JPEGs, and removing any
>> usefulness from the RGB histogram. Ricoh marketing's target demographic is
>> people who want to take photos with a cellphone, but who want to cosplay
>> what they think are real photographers.
>
> This goes all the way back to the days of Pentax still ruling themselves
> when the K-7 shortly after its introduction would have needed a few
> urgent updates and corrections and all Pentax came up with were improved
> water colour and wax crayon filters.
>
> Much of their market research must be done in some kind of kindergarden.
Or by people in kindergarten.
If you go to the weekend motorcycle hangouts, like Alices in Woodside, there
are certain motorcycles that tend to be ridden by two groups of people:
beginners and old farts that have been carving canyons twice as long as most of
the squids on their 150hp crotchrockets have been alive. I don't know what the
current ones are, but the ninja 250 and hawk 650 were like that. They had
everything you needed to have a blast riding the backroads, weren't crazy
expensive, and it's more fun to ride a bike that rewards skill, rather than
doing everything for you, which would be demonstrated by said old farttes
blowing away squids on bikes that had four times their horsepower.
Pentax is kind of like that, I think that most of the people on this list have
been shooting with Pentax since they bought their first Spotmatic. The only
difference is that there aren't a lot of new photographers picking them up. I
suspect that if there is any thought behind their strategy, they really are
looking to attract people looking to move up to their first "real camera" by
making it as much like their phone as possible. Unfortunately, they don't seem
to understand the part about not getting in the way of the user who knows more
than a $2 processor about photography. Ricoh also seems to understand about as
much about cool as the 57 year old high school administrator trying to convince
kids that they shouldn't do exactly the things that kids want to do.
--
Larry Colen
l...@red4est.com. sent from Mirkwood
--
%(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List
To unsubscribe send an email to pdml-le...@pdml.net
to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow
the directions.
