Whatever product plan Ricoh has for Pentax must come with high product margin. Optical is on its way out just from the standpoint of production cost. Sony's A9 shows what AF capability you can get with mirrorless. It will be similar to the transition from CRT to LED.
I don't think Ricoh would mind to be the master of a small market. As long as it can make good money.
Don't disagree with you that there will always be a market for DSLRs. The thing is can you make some money out of it? Even though Nikon is loosing market share to Canon but it still makes good profit. I don't think Ricoh would mind being in that position.
I am betting on EVF to oust OVF. The bottom line is it is not what you or me prefer but what makes sense for business.
Maybe mirrorless is the gateway to those good things you mentioned (indication of a booming business). I believe Ricoh recognizes that DSLRs is not the solution in its official statement responding to Nikkei's report.
No, you don't. No successful business would do that. Every product launch is expected to be a hit or at least profitable.
Well I'm not buying mirrorless.. the EVFs today (even on the top of the line Sonys that I've used) are so awful to me that I'd rather give up photography than use them.
The bottom line is dictated by what the consumer buys. Whether the consumer agrees with what the business offers is another story. But I don't live in an Orwellian society (yet) where the business tells me what I like. I like what I like and the business that offers that the closest gets my money.
Nahh.. mirrorless is largely a gateway to nuking your own lens sales. Plus, as I've mentioned, I suspect a lot of the hype with mirrorless is just that... hype. Flash in a pan. Don't get me wrong, there is a market for it (as seen by Sony, Fuji, Panasonic) but it isn't THE market... just a portion of it. It remains that way in the future.
Certainly true. I'm sure APS-C still outsells FF by a large margin also, but we can probably agree that Pentax hurt themselves by being late to the FF party.
This probably more than anything will determine the possibility of a future Pentax mirrorless. I wouldn't hold my breath.
This only really matters for wide angle lenses. Unfortunately wide angle lenses are very popular. If you can shrink the rest of the camera, the lens mount could protrude from the camera giving it the illusion of being thinner overall.
All of us with a vested interest in K-mount lenses (i.e. everybody on this forum) would hate to see Pentax distracted by a new lens mount.
I'm fully agreed on the hype factor, but there's a real problem behind it. As more and more people become used to phones as their only experience with taking pictures, it will be harder to make the case of OVF being desirable. Mirrorless will just be closer to what they're used to. I know that after my initial experience with compact digital cameras, there was a time that I was convinced that I'd never have a camera with a "squintfinder" again. Luckily I came to see the advantages and disadvantages of both systems, but it's easy to be biased.
Glass always matters. Sometimes equivalents simply aren't available. I'm quite fond of my new Sigma 17-50/F2.8 for example, is there an equivalent FF compatible 26-75/F4 to compare it to?
Good IQ has always come at the expense of a limited focal range, that's nothing new no matter what the format. Prime lenses are the logical endpoint of that game. There has been a change in the way manufacturers can optimize for a given set of compromises, but that's more a matter of the lens newness rather than format.
Hey, if FF mirrorless is guaranteed to make money for Ricoh, I say go for it! But that's certainly not a decision to be made lightly.
The problem is that the imaging division has no leverage as it is and the prognosis for the near future is no improvement:
I agree. Actually, if I had to recommend anything to Pentax (yeah, megalomania kicking in ...) it would be to leap frog their DSLR related AF issues by going mirrorless. But the there is the lens problem: too old (too many screw drive lenses counter the improvements possible with embracing electronics in photography fully), too slow (large aperture helps AF with on sensor PDAF), too slow focusing (most lenses would have to be redesigned to work well with MILCs) and too often lenses are not top notch optically (e.g. compare what Sigma does although with another philosophy in mind [that resembles my own much more than Pentax' lately ...]). I see Pentax becoming more and more a niche player with vintage appeal. And I am not an action shooter. I would call myself an allrounder. Yet Pentax AF-C (and even AF-S) is getting into my way too often. It is not even mediocre any more it is outright bad (speaking of my K-3 - and in my perception there hasn't been the slightest progress since).
If mirrorless cameras are like smart phones then the fighting is between them not with dslrs.
In very short: everything a computer can do better than a non-computer.
No. And never was in my perception. There was a lot of misunderstanding when the first competitive MILCs came to the market.
Yep. Except for the NX1 I am still waiting for a mirrorless that embraces the advantages of the technology without compromising on ergonomics. If Pentax had not the wrong lens system for this step I'd recommend them to go this way. Actually, I had hoped they would by Samsungs's NX system.
Poor people who were named Christian or Christine and would like who become atheists ...
The report to year end March 31 2017 https://www.ricoh.com/IR/financial_data/financial_result/data/29/q4_report.pdf says overseas camera sales in local currency increased but that was offset by the rise in the value of the yen, and the "Other" group which includes cameras has sales which are up from 109,053 to 111,949 -EMEA and Japan both up, US down in yen up in $ (In a market where overall unit sales and price per unit are both down, they seem to increased market share) . We don't know what other than cameras is included in other so it is hard to say anything for sure. But nothing there justifies the "business going further south" claim
