Q7/Q10 Designers' Stories (Interviews)

http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/interview/20130719_607368.html

The above article is in Japanese, an Excite machine-translation to English can be found here.

Actually, there is not much useful information that we do not know, but if you still want to read it further, just click the above! ;-)

Loyal Pentax Merchant and PR Tool is Pissed Off by Ricoh Recently! >:-o

I seldom quote Mr. Bourque actually, but this time I really can't help myself! :-(

http://pentaxdslrs.blogspot.com/2013/07/sometimes-it-just-feels-good-to-be.html

The following is told, quoted:

"I'm not sure of what's going on with Ricoh/Pentax. They used to loan me the new cameras so that I could write my e-books about them. I also have a  singed  NDA agreement with them but I haven't heard anything from them when the K-50/K-500 were announced. lately, all my emails have been ignored and I will have to purchase the cameras to write e-books."

Well, if guy like Bourque who is a loyal, die-hard and persistent Pentax promoter and merchant is being ignored like this, the Public Relation job of Pentax Ricoh* does really suck! >:-o And, after all, I guess no one will promote the brand more for them any further, at the Internet or not, except me?! ;-p Or, do Ricoh really hope particular brand fanboys who seldom buy to do the job for them for free? :-o (Frankly, those fanboys always only make things worse!)

As for the e-books from Bourque, I think they maybe good for the Pentax new-comers and beginners, but may not be so useful for those more experienced users with longer experiences, IMHO. But at the same time, it is obvious that Ricoh now targets at the entry level market more than Pentax used to be and thus beginners are yet more important than ever before! So, WTF for what Ricoh is doing?!

Last but not least, the good thing that I can still see is that Bourque does have the heart to write his books and he does love the brand as it appears, nonetheless, which I do appreciate his heart and huge effort paid! :-) Albeit he is also earning money at the same time from it and thus there might exist some conflicts for what he writes, especially when he might need to write about the bad things of the Pentax gear or even about he brand - but now it's all over, anyway!

*N.B. For what I have just checked, Pentax Ricoh companies are still named PR as on today, as the soon-to-disappear names containing the word "Pentax" are still shown at their global website page, below:

http://www.pentax.jp/english/globalsites/


Related:

Reactions of Pentaxians for the Deletion of the "Pentax" Name from Companies!

Ten Things that I Want Ricoh to Do for Pentax

Pentax "Spotmatic Digital" Concept / Imagination

Source:
http://www.esveldtphoto.com/collected_works/cooperations/asahi_pentax_spotmatic_d_concept

Via: A PF post here.

The concept is not bad IMO, but it lacks at least one e-dial and a set of 4+1 way buttons! :-D And well, just imagine if it is even a Full Frame body! :-o


Old Related:

My Idea of a K1000D

Customize and Colorize the Ricoh GR, Pentax Q7 and K-50!

http://www.pentax.jp/japan/support/customize.html
(in Japanese)

Update (8-5): The above picture link is dead because Ricoh has changed the domain name of their website. I just won't bother to correct that as it's the sole fault of Ricoh!

Well, the main point of those RP cameras is now colours, not the colours of the images they produce, but the colours of the camera shells! Well done, Ricoh! >:-(

Recent Pentax Tidbits

1. An original Leica-made Pentax 645 lenses to S body adaptor:



Via: http://info.xitek.com/news/201307/17-128176.html (in Chinese)

Now those FA 645D lenses can be operated on the Leica S body with AE and AF, for compatible lens models, my beloved FA120/4 Macro lens is excluded, though! :-(

2. An original lens case for the Pentax Q 02 and 06 zoom lenses:



Via: http://www.yaotomi.co.jp/blog/used/2013/06/pentax-q-o-cc1332.html (in Japanese)

According to this Japanese shopping site, the price of this lens case is about $44 US Dollars equivalent, in average.

Speaking of buying Pentax accessories at Japan, the official Japanese Pentax online shop contains some of the old Pentax accessories that you would never imagine before that something are still available and could be purchased!


For instance, this little rubber cap for covering the cable release socket of my MZ-S (and also for the 645NII, but not the 645D, which uses the cheap CS-205 which is just the Canon RS-60 clone) melted over time and deformed, I think I would need to buy a new one!

3. New Ricoh GR Review at the IR:

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/ricoh-gr/ricoh-grA.HTM

Well, it can be noted that the Image Quality of the camera is not really that good, note the red colour smear and loss of details of all the test samples and crops, even at the lowest ISO speed of 100! :-o

4. New DxOMark results for the K-50:

http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Publications/DxOMark-Reviews/Pentax-K-50-review-attractive-performance-but-is-there-any-improvement-on-earlier-iterations/Pentax-K-50-versus-competition

Well, it is proven that the K-50 is just the K-30 inside. As we all knew, the K-50 is simply a repackaged K-30 with a stereo microphone but nothing more! >:-(

When Did Pentax Forget about a Compact DSLR Body?!

First look at my old *ist DL2:



Do note that the above is already loaded with batteries and memory card and is ready to shoot.

And then a K-5 with the same compact DA pancake lens of mine, also loaded and ready:



In fact, the K-5 body alone is just heavier than the DL2 with the 21mm pancake lens! :-(



Yet I bet Pentax fanboys will again defend that the K-5 is not a low-end body and thus it should be larger and heavier. But let's compare further the following:

1. K-5IIs Vs Canon 6D Full Frame:

http://camerasize.com/compare/#373,380

Well, it is measured that "Pentax K-5 IIs [760 g] weights 1% (10 grams) less than Canon EOS 6D [770 g] (*inc. batteries and memory card)."! I can't believe that a FF body is lower end than the cropped APS-C K-5 by all means! And also:

2. K-50 Vs K-5:

http://camerasize.com/compare/#462,372

The K-50 also weighs 650g loaded and ready, which is just 20g lighter than my *ist DL2 with the DA21 pancake lens mounted with the metal lens hood attached as shown above! For what I have also measured, the lens hood weighs 12g. So, the weight of the K-50 body alone is just about equal to that of the DL2 together with the DA21 lens without the lens hood!

After all, I think Ricoh has completely lost direction for what to make and market and the brains of their heads were and are yet non-functioning, completely! When the new entry level cameras created by them is so big and heavy, what's the point? Have they also forgot about their really compact and lightweight line of the DA pancake lenses? Do they still really want to sell more of these?! >:-(

At the end of the day, I bet over 90% of the potential entry-level DSLR buyers would want a compact plus lightweight body like the Canon's EOS100D rather than a bulky and heavy K-50/K-500 with a so-marketed 100% coverage viewfinder, which they really don't care much about or just even don't know what it is! :-o

New K-50/500 Review at C|Net

Read here:

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/pentax-k-50-with/4505-6501_7-35792160.html

Some performance and timing measurements were done and sample photos are posted. In short, whilst the reviewer thinks that the K-50 is feature-rich, the Image Quality of it does fall behind the competition, below are some comments that he writes, for instance:

"Image quality
Overall, the image and video quality disappoint, especially on the default color settings. Following a long Pentax consumer tradition, Custom Image still defaults to Bright, a setting that indiscriminately pumps up color saturation and increases contrast, resulting in serious hue shifts and clipped shadow detail. Switching to the Natural setting or shooting raw helps somewhat. If you're not worried about color accuracy, the occasionally surreal colors might appeal."

"For JPEGs I wouldn't recommend going higher than ISO 800. The K-50's images generally look pretty soft, and that gets worse as the noise reduction really kicks in. It also looks like the camera adds some sharpening at ISO 400, as there's a noticeable jump in sharpness at that point."

"It renders a respectable tonal range, with a reasonable amount of recoverable shadow detail, though like the rest of its class it doesn't retain a lot of highlight detail."

In fact, I felt much the same as the CNet reviewer does, when some of the very first K-50 samples were posted.

Ricoh Starts to Sell Off Pentax' Old Patents? (But Yet Another New "Ricoh" Patent Submitted)

See what is recently reported in this PF thread:

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-news-rumors/231593-ricoh-selling-off-licensing-pentax-designs-patents.html

The previous Pentax Ricoh patented design now becomes a Vixen's!

If it is true, it is really too bad! And Pentax is doomed!!

Btw, Ricoh has yet submitted a new patent application for a stupid and useless design and thing like this:

http://egami.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2013-07-10
(in Japanese)

So, what is this then? If I understand correctly, it is an automatic flash bounce head which will rotate by itself according to the holding position of the camera, horizontally and vertically! :-o Just imagine while the user composes the picture, the flash head has its motor moving, and driving / changing the position of the bounce head..! =_="

Colour Rendition Shootout: 6M CCD Vs 16M CMOS - *ist DL2 Vs K-5

It has been almost ten years since Pentax launched their first DSLR, the *ist D, almost ten years ago. I did buy my *ist D very shortly after it hit the streets and it may be interesting to read back my old textural review of it which was first published back to fall 2003.

Okay, nine years something has elapsed and now the new Pentax cameras have climbed up to 16 megapixels in pixel count and resolution. Yet, as we all know, they are all equipped with an APS-C sized cropped (still!) sensor in 16M. The noise level of the new CMOS sensor is undoubtedly lower and they are video capable. But how about the image quality besides resolution? What have we gained, or, actually lost?

So, I decided to do a shootout test myself, side-by-side and head-to-head for my two old and newer Pentax DSLRs, namely, the *ist DL2, which is the last *ist body actually, and the K-5, which is the first Pentax DSLR using the same never-upgraded but ever recycled Sony 16M CMOS sensor or its variant in all the newer Pentax DSLRs up till now! :-o

Test Conditions:

Both cameras set in RAW mode, manual white balance in daylight, fixed at ISO 200, the same lens of DA21/3.2 was used in Av mode, the same scene was then shot consecutively in pairs;

Custom image mode was set to "Natural" with all centre/zero/default settings except sharpness was set at +1. Pictures were then all converted from RAW to 6M Jpegs without any adjustment (using camera settings) with original Pentax Digital Camera Utility (Laboratory) Version 4.3, for both the *ist DL2 and K-5 pictures. The results are posted in the following album of mine:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/RiceHigh/library/K-5/Colour_Test_Vs_DL2?sort=9&page=1

Full size original images are available for downloading per popped-up picture page in the above.

What I can tell is that the *ist DL2 images are far more natural and faithful to the actual scene in real world than all those made with the K-5! The K-5 images are yet whiter than the DL2's, though, despite that both cameras were actually set to daylight preset manual white balance already.

If you look at the leaves of the trees, the green colours of the K-5 pics are actually looking rather fake and odd. Ditto for the brown colours of the trunks of the trees. In fact, the flower I shot is in orange red, but not that red colour that K-5 has produced and rendered!

Besides, to my surprise, the dynamic range of the *ist DL2 pics is shown to be yet better than that of the K-5 despite that the DR mark measured by DxO is far higher for the K-5 and its 16M CMOS sensor! Just observe the shadow details.. :-o

In fact, the favourable colour rendition was top one big reason why I still stayed with Pentax system regardless of the low performance of the Pentax bodies plus all the various technical and quality issues that were associated with the Pentax system and Pentax themselves. Now, it seems that this main point and reason has also gone with the later and latest Pentax bodies! >:-[

At the end of the day, I am afraid that now putting those excellent Pentax glass on a Canon body do produce much more favourable results even in term of colour rendition, see my this set of recent examples here.

After all, you may have a different opinion than me, but I think my pictures have clearly spoken for themselves! And, this test should be scientific enough as I have already tried to keep all the possible variables and affecting factors to minimal, FWIW.

A K-50 Unboxing + Quick Review with Tests on the New Kit Lenses (DAL WR Zooms)

http://www.monox.jp/digitalcamera-sp-pentaxricoh-k50.html
(in Japanese)

The above is the index page, click on the links to see different test pages. In particular:

1. This is the ISO test for the K-50:

http://www.monox.jp/digitalcamera-sp-pentaxricoh-k50-04.html

The NR setting from left to right is weak, medium and strong, respectively.

2. These are the lens tests for the new DAL WR kit zooms:

http://www.monox.jp/digitalcamera-sp-pentaxricoh-da1855alwr.html

http://www.monox.jp/digitalcamera-sp-pentaxricoh-da50200edwr.html

Distortion, both uncorrected and corrected, and resolution at different apertures were measured.

On the other hand, the other lens tests for the DA18-135, DA50 and DA40XS were made with other Pentax bodies namely the K-30 and the K-01.