Late CP+ observation: Get rid of Hoya, and let the new owner Ricoh give Pentax a try?

After getting rid of Hoya, the Pentax camera department officially became a partner of Ricoh with a long history, and also made the long-lost lens schedule reappear. Counting the Pentax under Hoya in recent years, although it has made some growth by playing color-changing games, the surrounding parts have gone from bad to worse. Especially in Tokina, you can see a series of top shots, but the disrepair flash system has not been updated. Even if you see the improvement of the electronic performance of the fuselage, it is useless.

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When Hoya came to power, Pentax not only delayed the launch of the lens group, but also the main brand lens designer Hirakawa Chun and the fuselage designer Diejia Jiuji were forced to be fired during this period. At the same time, another lens designer Quan Long was also poached by Nikon. Nikkor 17-55mmF2.8G, APS-C Mirror King and Nikkor 105mmF2.8GMarco were all designed by Nikon. As a result, those who stuck to the company became the first victims of Hoya's savings. No wonder Hirakawa publicly stated that he would never touch Hoya's products in his life. ...

For Ricoh, the merger with Pentax camera department is also a supplement to its long-term lack of monocular camera technology. Although Ricoh tried to run a route different from its competitors with the modular concept of GXR, the modular method also limited the possibility of this system. After all, GXR system can only enjoy itself in certain ethnic groups. Although Ricoh's products are biased towards certain ethnic groups, it is not a long-term solution for the company's operation.

Although the modular design of GXR is novel in concept, it is still not designed for the public.

Especially in the low-priced digital monocular market, M43 system erodes low-priced monocular and high-end portable computers, and Ricoh should also know that this will gradually be marginalized by the market. Different from Fuji's comeback, Ricoh took the opportunity to eat the Pentax camera division that Hoya regarded as a burden and failed. For Hoya, the value of acquiring Pentax lies in the medical optics department. As for the camera department, by the way, Pentax was lucky not to end up ruining the brand after Kyocera bought Contax and Sony ate KM.

Why is Ricoh still willing to keep the Pentax brand? The main reason is that Ricoh has a certain history in the traditional single barrel, but compared with the old Pentax, the brand strength is relatively insufficient, not to mention the Ricoh negative camera era has also produced a body and lens compatible with Pentax design. On the other hand, Ricoh's impression in the minds of ordinary consumers is not as good as Sony's eating KM. If you rashly take off Pentax and hang up Ricoh, you will only lose the original Pentax customer base, and you will not be able to attract more consumers with Ricoh's reputation.

Compared with Canon and Nikon, Pentax has always been characterized by unique tricks, such as the smallest size of the same class fuselage and unique lens design. For example, PentaxK5 is still the smallest dust-proof droplet in APS-C film at present, not to mention the lightweight and convenient lens groups such as DA and FALimited. In addition, we can also see the special side of Pentax by skipping the 35mmFF fuselage and directly pushing out the 645D fuselage.

Q, which was launched at a high unit price, ended up with a price drop of 1/3 in Japan in less than half a year.

Recently, there are two new airframes, PentaxQ and PentaxK-0 1, which are unique in design compared with competitors. The former is the smallest interchangeable lens body on the market at present, and the latter is the largest of all evil cameras at present. Previously, the author thought that PentaxQ was just an experiment of designers' whimsy, and PentaxK-0 1 was just a transitional product selling designers' shapes. However, after watching the lens of CP+ exhibited in Japan this year, it turns out that these two machines are planned strategic products.

Let's start with PentaxQ. The original topics were the world's smallest interchangeable lens body, high-end consumer-grade camera-grade photosensitive elements, even smaller bodies than Ricoh GRD and PanasonicLX5, and rich filters, which created quite a few topics. At that time, five lenses and two colors were also introduced.

I personally own this machine, so I have to review the strategic issues since I used it. First, the listing price is too high, even higher than PentaxKr, and due to the size of the fuselage, the battery life is not ideal. Secondly, with the photosensitive elements of consumer cameras, the first impression of some consumers is much shorter than that of m43. In addition, the standard single-barrel lens is too small, and many pieces are used, which makes the purple edge of the lens more obvious. High price, few buyers, few tests and evaluations, and insufficient brand strength also made PentaxQ's start unsuccessful.

CP+ exhibited Q's available telephoto zoom and pinhole camera lenses, indicating that this product line has not been abandoned.

However, with the beginning of price reduction (you can observe the price in Japan), PentaxQ's competitiveness is not as bad as it was at the beginning. CP+ even announced two new Q lenses, including a pinhole camera and a telephoto zoom lens. Pentax clearly positioned Q as an interchangeable lens body with fun as its essence, so the lens design also focused on fun. The launch of two new lenses further proves that PentaxQ is not an unexpected fortune, but a product of long-term preparation for follow-up plans.

As for the birth of K-0 1, it is even more interesting. In terms of resources, Pentax does not have lens research and development resources like Nikon and Olympus. After all, the camera department in the Hoya era abolished nearly 400 people. It's not as troublesome as Panasonic and Fuji systems. Pentax chose to keep the space and the back distance of the mirror on the grounds of limited resources but keeping up with the trend, so as to maintain the support of the existing lens group.

The result of keeping the mirror back distance is that the transfer ability is not as good as m43 system or SonyNEX, but because there is no mirror in the middle of the mirror room, unless the aperture at the end of the mirror is too large, the transfer ring that goes deep into the fuselage is likely to be made. In addition to being converted from the original mirror DA40mmF2.8Limited to the new DA 40 MMF 2.8 XS, there is also a new thin lens that extends into the fuselage and can only be used in K-0 1, and even makes good use of the space in the reflection room.

Only K-0 1 makes good use of the space in the mirror-free room, and the estimated mass production of the DA560mmF5.6 lens is not like the product of improvisation.

As for the traditional K-ring, although there is no heavyweight new machine on the market, the appearance of DA50mmF 1.8 for low-priced market and DA560mmF5.6 for eco-cannon, and a series of new lenses are planned to reach 20 13, and the new owner Ricoh obviously gives Pentax more space. The author believes that the appearance of these shots is not accidental, but more likely due to the freezing plan under the budget of the former owner.

Judging from these signs, the Pentax team under the new owner Ricoh has a great opportunity to return to the old camera factory with strong engineer thinking. However, both companies are niche companies, which can combine each other's strengths to create a new atmosphere, or they can't open up customers because they go further and further. The trend of new products in the past two years, especially the new fuselage design in the next step, needs to be observed.