Pentax Life

One of our fellow readers suggested that Pentax could roll out fixed lens entry level DSLR in the nearest future. Something very compact with built-in DA 40mm Limited pancake.

Well, ultra-compact DSLR undoubtedly will face a warm welcome at the market, and one of the upcoming Pentax cameras will be pretty compact (not “ultra” though), but:

1. Even if it will be fixed prime lens digital SLR, it more likely will be built on 21mm lens rather than closer to short telephoto on the 1.5x sensor 40mm.

2. Back to the 80’s, Pentax released world’s first fully automatic zoom compact camera - Pentax IQ Zoom. Since that time, almost all Pentax point & shoots were equipped with zoom lenses. So, if Pentax will decide to make fixed lens SLR, it will be equipped with zoom lens too.

3. Not so long ago Pentax have showing interchangeable lens point & shoots prototypes. Also, DA and DFA lenses line-up is growing fast. So, it’s not likely that Pentax will make digital SLRs with fixed lenses, even if it will help to built something really small.

The rumors about upcoming Nikon D3 with a Sony’s 1.13x crop 18.7 Megapixels sensor are spreading over the Internet. Rumors says that some D3 engineering samples are already exists, Nikon have the exclusive rights to use this sensor for a one year and there is another 1.5x 12 Megapixels CMOS sensor from Sony soon to be announced. To prove that these rumors are not groundless there is publication at C|NET Newsblog. Also Benjamin Kanarek has confirmed that Pentax France guys knows about it.

What does it means for Pentax? First of all, no 18 Mpix 1.1x K-next-D till the end of 2008 at least. Second, two upcoming Pentax DSLRs could be built on 12 Mpix 1.5x CMOS sensor. Nikon D3 was promised to be released in the end of this June, so it’s not much time to wait for the mystery to be revealed.

What do you think about it? Share your thoughts on our forum.

Andy Caer, a hobbyist photographer and Pentax enthusiast from Liverpool, UK has made a tattoo on his shoulder in the shape of legendary Pentax FA 77mm Limited lens optical scheme. (discussion on DPR forum) It’s far better than LBA bumper sticker, isn’t it?

According to Hoya’s spokespersons, Japan’s biggest optical glass manufacturer expect to hear the final decision from Pentax at the meeting on May 31. After the takeover agreement Pentax will become a full subsidiary of Hoya Corp. till the end of the year. Also TOB decision will mean the end of the short presidency of Takashi Watanuki as he and seven more Pentax board of directors members are planning to resign after the takeover.

The new board will consist of five members: one outside director, two representatives from Hoya and two from Pentax. According to Bloomberg, the major Pentax shareholder Sparx Group Co. promotes Nobuaki Tanishima from the Pentax’s corporate planning department and Ko Torigoe from the Imaging Division to be two new board members.

Assignment of Ko Torigoe, who has given interviews about K10D at the last year live shows in Japan (along with Hisashi Tatamiya), as a board member is undoubtedly a good sign. As well as answers that were received by Benjamin Kanarek, Don Douglas and, I guess a lot of other Pentaxians who have sent their concerned emails to Hoya. Here’s some very optimistic quotes:

As you already know, Pentax is one of Japan’s best-known camera makers with worldwide brand recognition and a nealy 90-year history, and HOYA respects it very much. We appreciate Pentax’s excellent technology, products and brand. We believe that two companies are the best partners and by integrating both companies’ skills and technologies, we can grow much bigger. That’s the reason why we are offering tender offer.

Hoya is a manufacuturer, not investors or fund managers. We do M&A in order to strengthen our business, not to chop them up and sell. HOYA believes Pentax will be able to continue inventing excellent products to meet its customer needs, and we can support in many ways.

After a week of dismal rumors we will finally figure out the real Hoya’s intentions. According to Nikkei Net Interactive, post-acquisition management will be the focus of the meeting Monday, May 21 between the leaders of the two companies.

If you feel alarmed at the possibility of Pentax imaging division dropping, you can support Benjamin Kanarek’s initiative:

Let’s get the e-mail address of Hoya, Japan and compose a letter stating how disappointed we would be if they were to discontinue the Pentax brand and how that would affect our perception of Hoya and all brands associated with them.

User dmk224 from DPreview forums disassembled the old *ist film SLR and last year A20 point & shoot, and then put them together to make a descent digital SLR. I guess he’s got a lot of spare parts left over. Thus the A20’s 1/1.8″ sensor is five times smaller than 35mm film, 300mm lens becomes the 1500mm spotting scope - perfect birding tool. Here is some samples.

German Pentax users community DigitalFotoNetz collected wishes for K10D firmware updates and future Pentax cameras and lenses. Here you can download this wishlist in English (PDF).

Most wishes are directed towards solution of problems which are being widely discussed across the internet lately. Such as ability to use internal flash as wireless controller, less compression for JPEG files, 16 bit RAW and “32 sec bulb” problem.

Some wishes runs counter to the solutions already implemented by Pentax. For example, dedicated ISO button, which is unnecessary since K10D (and probably all the next Pentax DSLRs) have the special shooting modes to change the ISO settings quickly or leave it to the camera to select it automatically. Also Pentax reps stated some time ago that the image sharpness is more important for them than low noise level.

DPreview forums user Susumu have posted the thorough report from the last week Pentax Talk Live show in Tokyo, Japan.

I asked one of the Pentax staff whether or not firmware ver. 1.0 was used for these samples. He answered No. He said all the samples were from beta firmware and there was no ver. 1.0 firmware yet. I said to him their site said ver. 1.0. He said the site info was perhaps wrong.

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Release dates outside Japan are not fixed. According to them, there is no fixed release dates outside Japan though the release date in Japan is Nov. 30th. I think it probably means release dates outside Japan differ by countries, dealers and retail stores.

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They let us take pictures to print out on 2L size (5� x 7�). I set ISO at 1600 and used a DA70mmF2.4Limited. The printed photo, jpeg straight out of the camera, was beautiful though there was noise. Noise on the shadow was not so conspicuous (I mean the noise was acceptable to me), but depiction of the woman’s hair looked rough to me (it was a portrait shot). Probably it’s because of sharpness-oriented tuning of K10D. (They said they gave priority to sharpness rather than noise reduction.)

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Apart from in-body dust reduction system, they release a very convenient dust-removal tool. It’s like a cotton-tipped swab: the difference is this tool has a urethane rubber instead of cotton. According to the latest issue of _Pentax Family_ (a Japanese Pentax journal), it lets us directly remove sticky dusts on the sensor (to be correct, the low pass filter), and the dusts on the rubber can be removed with adhesive tape.

Also Susumu have posted several photos from the show: 1, 2, 3, 4; printed samples: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 (ISO 1000), 13 (comparison with the other 10 Megapixels DSLR); and the new sensor cleaning kit.

Digital Camera HQ named Optio E10 “The worst digital camera ever”. Michael Patrick Brady, DC HQ editor, wrote:

It may be because it’s a more recent camera than the others, but I’m tempted to officially name the Pentax Optio E10 the worst digital camera ever. It debuted in January of 2006 with claims of how easy to use it was and how affordable it was, and for a while it looked like the E10 might be a decent, economical 6-megapixel ultracompact for simple use. Since then, an unmitigated stream of vitriolic, hate-filled user reviews have deluged the Pentax E10’s product page. “It says 6mp but it looks like a 2mp image stretched and interpolated,” says Eli, “I have seen $20 cameras outperform this piece.” Greg offers a familiar refrain, saying “I’ll NEVER buy Pentax again, and will actively discourage anyone I know from buying one as well!” Perhaps the most succinct summation of how people feel about this camera comes from Jon, who explains that the Optio line is really an acronym for “Oh, please turn it off!”

Fellow Pentaxians all around the world inspired with recently published sample pictures of Pentax K10D DSLR camera. Here Michael G.’s review.

So, I’m thinking that the sample images were probably cherry picked to be exceptional exposures, but they really show off the camera’s capacity for generating pictures that you’d hardly need to post-process unless it served more artistic purposes. And though it would be nice to see more action shots, I’m impressed.

And a conclusion made by DPreview forums user Catc:

the first ‘immediate result’ of the samples is a confirmation of the very high lens quality needed to make FULL use of the K10D