Off Topic: Pentax has officially ended production on all of their DSLRs

[Snapshot]

This might be of interest to some of you. Ricoh has just shut down production on all of their Pentax DSLRs. As someone who has used Pentax for 40+ years, this makes me sad.

Ricoh says they're developing a "new concept" of DSLRs based on the K-Mount, but nobody quite knows what that is. They have previously said they are committed to DSLR over mirrorless.

Switching to Sony two years ago was a good move on my part.

 

[iamdlewis]

After the A9 was release I was convinced that everything was going to need to move to mirrorless as the feature set of the A9 was just too impressive for a relatively young technology compared to the DSLR. When Pentax said that they were not going to move to mirrorless I figured that was them announcing their funeral. Sad to lose historic names in industries.

 

[Richard A]

Yes. I used Pentax cameras for nearly 50 years before I moved to Sony about 3 years ago. I did buy an RX100M3 in 2015 though. It's a pity Pentax was acquired by Hoya many years ago to be honest. They did nothing. At least Ricoh have had a bit of a go but they are so slow to develop anything new (and their own branded cameras are selling like hotcakes). Personally, I think this is the end for Pentax, which is a pity, but I don't think this new camera will eventuate.

 

[Snapshot]

In the sixties, Pentax was the king of SLRs. The Spotmatic sold like hotcakes. The brand was not stewarded well. As soon as Canon introduced the AE-1, the landscape changed, and Pentax never kept up.