Hints about future Pentax products (plus the original Pentax K-1 from 2000)

By admin | Published: December 17, 2018

Yaotomi Camera, a large camera store located in Osaka, organized on Saturday a meeting with Pentaxians together with the heads of sales, cameras and lenses from Ricoh Imaging/Pentax.

The guys from Ricoh Imaging brought with them a prototype of the HD Pentax-DA★ 11-18mm f/2.8 ED DC AW and the K-1 from 2000 (see attached pictures above), this camera which is identical (apart from the logo) to the MZ-D/ME52 prototype of a 24×36 digital camera with a MP Philips sensor (the same as the one in the Contax N Digital) showcased by Pentax at Photokina 2000 but which surfaced for the first time in Tokyo on the 16th of July 2011 for a ‘touch and try’ event organized to promote the Pentax Q:

They freely discussed some of the Pentax products to come but these discussions were mostly off the records.

Yaotomi Camera made several tweets on the event and retweeted some participants tweets:

Tweets by yaotomicamera

JPT, an American guy who lives in Japan, has made a summary of the pieces of information conveyed by the various tweets on Pentax Forums:

Hints about future products on Twitter

There has been some interesting talk on Twitter this weekend about upcoming Ricoh/Pentax products.

I should explain the context first. The Osaka camera store Yaotomi hosted an evening with Mr. Wakadai, of the Ricoh Imaging Product Planning Dept. and some of their loyal customers. The Tweets are exchanged between Yaotomi and the people who attended. There are clearly a lot of things they heard that they are not at liberty to mention, but still there is some interesting information.

Upcoming products
– The first thing to come will be a lens or lenses (not clear if referring to one or multiple)
– K-3 Evolved camera is under heavy development (they have used this “evolved” phrasing before – it’s clear they don’t want it to be seen as a mere K-3 III)
– Two other products that were discussed specifically, but cannot be mentioned. I assume these are not things on the roadmap, and it’s just my speculation but I think they are cameras
– He loves the idea of an LX Digital, but I don’t see any indication that it is actually coming
– When asked whether anything would come out for the centenary, he hinted at something silver (just a k-1 II limited edition?)

DA* 11-18
– The rep brought a prototype of the DA* 11-18. It looks basically complete.
– It has an indentation for attaching a “lens heater for shooting stars”.
– It doesn’t seem to be confirmed that the heater will be released.

Other[
– He also brought along one of the original, never-produced K-1s. You can see it in the photos.
– When they develop cameras, they don’t ask themselves “What will sell?”, they ask “Will it be interesting to use?”
– They sold loads of Qs in Japan, but overseas was a different story (not such a surprise)
– The GXR A12 was selling well right up until the end (this is interesting to me)

Overall, it sounds like there is lots to look forward to next year.