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?
Those luckies who’s been at PMA saw the new Pentax branding campaign and probably were able to get the T-shirt at the Pentax booth with the words “I’m a Pentaxian. A loyalist. A diehard…” on it. For all others Ned Bunnell has posted the new ads in his blog.
On the bus:
You can’t put more than six words on a bus and expect people to read it. You can’t build a digital SLR with shake reduction housed in the body of the camera that works with 24 million existing Pentax lenses. You can’t put a man on the Moon. You can’t make a camera that’s both technically advanced and intuitive. You can’t make a seies of absurdly small lenses and call them “pancakes.” You can’t weatherproof an SLR with 72 seals to keep moisture, dust and everything else out. You can’t build a city in the middle of the desert. You can’t buy a digital SLR from anyone other than the big two.
Two-page print:
We’re lousy at marketing. Never been much for self-promotion. Here’s the thing: we’re a bunch of photography nerds. We’d rather be using our cameras than blathering on about them. And we’re always working to make them better. What’s that marketing word everyone uses? Innovation? Yeah, that applies to us. Although we’d prefer a word that’s more, well, innovative. Of course, to us innovation means building DSLRs with in-camera shake reduction that’s compatible with 24 million existing Pentax lenses. No marketing-obsessed corporate bean counter is going to green light this program. But despite our lack of horn tooting, our cameras always seem to find their way to the people we make them for. The K1000 was the best-selling SLR ever (toot!). And people are already talking about the K100D and K10D. We hear that’s called “Buzz.” Well, given that we’ve just talked about ourselves way more than we ever have in our lives, we’re going to get back to making cameras now. Happy shooting.
Japanese website Impress Watch have interviewed Pentax Chief Engineer Hisashi Tatamiya and SEO Ko Torigoe. Pentax Forums user Katsura has translated this very interesting interview. The most important things that Tatamiya and Torigoe made public are:
This correlates with the prediction given by Benjamin Kanarek in our forum: 12Mpix sensor in the entry level cameras, 100-3200 ISO range, 6 FPS, semi-pro body (K10D equivalent) with 12.8Mpix 1.25x crop sensor and some later full-frame high-end DSLR.
I doubt that Pentax will step up from the 1.5x crop till 2010 - to much “cropped” DA lenses on the market today. But the move towards 12 megapixel sensors with the good high sensitivity performance and impressive burst mode is the natural way. In any case, things will change very quickly.
Brian Ayling from Australia found his own way to repair old screw-mount Takumar 50mm F1.4 normal prime that was heavily affected by the glass yellowing. Fast and easy. Ouch!
Photo courtesy by Brian Ayling and Myles Harris-Ayling
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.
While Pentax Norway gives away K10D branded red wine Pentax Japan also offers a bonus for K10D buyers - nice and stylish SD card carrying case and 1Gb SD memory card. If you haven’t bought your K10D yet, it’s time to plan a trip to Tokyo.
Stig Vidar Hovland posted on the DPreview forums this interesting picture (click it to see larger image) with the note that Pentax sent him a bottle of wine. I can’t find any information about wine giveaway at Pentax, so this picture could be photoshoped (very nice work anyway). “For your precious moments” slogan looks quite pertinent here.
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.
Hello, my fellow readers. Let me invite you to our new PentaxLife Forum.
I’ve tried to make it easy to use yet still pretty powerful, feature rich and highly ergonomic. It lacks all the bells and whistles but equipped with “tag cloud” for easy searching and topics filtering; every theme, every topic has their own RSS feed; you can make any number of topics you favorite and subscribe to consolidated RSS feed to keep track of the new posts in the interesting discussions. You can post as much images as you wish - the only limit is common sense. Links to other websites are allowed in posts. In fact, they are encouraged. Use <a href=""></a> HTML construction to insert long URL into your post.
Registration is free and easy. All you need is click here and enter your username and email (this is the only time when you will be asked to enter your email). Minute later you will receive a letter with your new password inside.
Ken Takeshita have translated recent interview with Hisashi Tatamiya, Pentax Chief Engineer. Many words have been spoken already in the previous interviews but there is still something interesting. First of all Mr. Tatamiya describes situation with the unexpected K10D popularity:
We thought it was going to be popular, but not as popular as K100D, because K10D was still a sub $1,000 camera. However, although we cannot give you any specific figures, we were overwhelmed by far more than twice the pre-booking order qty of k100D. For example, a big chain store who pre-booked 300 units of K100D now gave us a pre-booking order of over 1,000 units. This is just in Japan but the market reaction in overseas market is much larger than that… …in Europe, it (Pentax brand) was not particularly well recognized. However, the pre-release reception was excellent, and in certain country, Order of 1,000 units came in when we forecasted 50 units initial order based on the history there.
The second part of the interview dedicated to reorganizations inside the Pentax team and the history of the new K10D specific features like sensitivity priority mode, RAW button and weatherproofing.
Pentax’s development staff all love cameras and photography and these engineers have been constantly suggesting a number of innovative features. But they were not particularly well adopted into new products in the past. However, aforementioned organizational change enabled those development staff having frequent discussions directly with core staff of product planning and marketing, which in turn encouraged submission of new ideas.
