Pentax Life

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:

• Pentax will update their DSLR line-up every year. Till the end of 2007 at least two new DSLRs will be announced. High-end camera (Pentax K1D or whatever) is in development now as well as K100D successor.
• 8 new lenses will be released this year.
• Company is solving production dificulties in order to provide enough cameras and lenses at the launch.
• Pentax is listening. R&D guys looking forward to satisfy all the pentaxian’s needs
• 20% of the market (or 1 - 1.5 million digital SLR bodies) in two years - that’s the goal.

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.