IR's Interview with Ricoh Japanse Official of Product Planning

http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2014/03/14/ricoh-qa-ricoh-tech-into-pentax-cameras-whither-pentax-full-frame

Old sales talks as usual and there is nothing new. Of course there is no exciting news of any at all. Things have become boring and even more boring, as time goes by! >:(

K-3 Mirror Flapping and Locking Up Issues

"This is my second K3 body... first one was exchanged because of this problem."

Via: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3638230

Again, that RICOH logo is really disgusting! >:-(

K-3 Flash Issues

1. Unacceptable prolonged shutter delay in P-TTL mode:

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/172-pentax-k-3/242556-k-3-delay-when-using-flash.html

Some K-3 users reported that the delay was particularly long, noticeably much longer than that of the K-5, which was not that noticeable.

Another thread at the Taiwanese PFC Pentax forum also states the same thing:

http://www.pentaxfans.net/thread-143957-1-1.html
(in Traditional Chinese)

A petition is being raised.

2. EXIF is not stored correctly for whether the flash is turned on or off:

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/172-pentax-k-3/241800-k-3-flash-issue.html

K-3 and Mac/iPad RAW Support

I received an email from a reader of this Blog and you may find the information he shared and the trick provided useful, as a K-3 user:

You may be aware that K-3 RAW images (both PEF and DNG) are not readable by Apple’s software such as iPhoto and Aperture, neither on the iPad with the Camera Connection Kit. There was no problem with my K-20D and K-5 before, but this time Apple and Ricoh seem to be out of touch, there is no fix in sight.

Now, I’ve done some research and found that it all comes down to a single byte: The DNG files have a “minimum version” field that tells the software that it needs to support this version in order to understand the data in the file. In K3’s DNGs this version is set to 2 while all previous Pentax DSLRs did put a 1 in there. And, alas, Apple’s software can’t deal with that.

Now, here’s the funny part: I wrote a little tool that changes this version field from 2 to 1. And with that, Apple’s software and the iPad can suddenly read and show those DNGs!

Now, it may still be that the DNGs contain some new information that Apple’s software can’t decypher, but I cannot see that the images suffer from it. Maybe it’s just some meta data that’s getting lost in this transition, but I could care less. All I care about is getting the raw data image out of it and that works just fine with that little fix.

I’ve made this tool and information available on pentaxforums.org, but didn’t get much response yet (http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/120-general-technical-troubleshooting/252732-k-3-mac-ipad-users-help-me-test-fix-raw-files.html). I’d like to get some more opinions on this, and see if others find any issues with this method. If not, I’d like to see if we can’t get Ricoh to issue a firmware update that changes this version number to solve this damm issue with Apple product.

Note: While there’s currently an “official” work-around, i.e. using Adobe’s DNG converter, this is not a solution on the iPad, as it can’t run this software. That’s why I like to get this solved properly, as I rather carry my lighter iPad than a Macbook around to review my images when I’m on the road.

Thomas

New Firmwares for Pentax Cameras

http://news.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/rim_info2/support/

To support the new 1.4X Tele Converter.. But as I said before, this method of updating firmwares to support every new lens is actually plain stupid. They should consider to do it in the Canon's way, i.e., to update the software utility that can be used to load the new lens' data into different bodies, of various models.

This is What the Limited Lenses Should be Put Onto 2!

http://forum.xitek.com/thread-1275234-2-1-1.html
(in Simplified Chinese)


Last Related:

This is What the Limited Lenses Should be Put Onto!

Adapt "All" Lenses onto a Pentax K-mount DSLR

http://www.pentaxforums.com/news/pentax-k-multi-mount-pkmm-giveaway.html

I think this camera hack is wonderful if it really works! :-o However, the most unfortunate thing is that there is no Full Frame body of any in K-mount, implying all adapted lenses will be cropped, defeating all their original designed purposes.