You read that right. The era of the DSLR is not dead.
There is no arguing that the era of mirrorless has taken hold, but one company, Ricoh (Pentax), said a few years ago that they would continue making DSLRs. Ricoh's Hiroki Sugahara (General Manager of the Marketing Communication Department, Global Sales and Marketing Center, Smart Vision Business Unit) even went so far as to say that they expected users to return to DSLRs after a few years. This has left them as the only major company still making DSLRs, and it seems like another is on the way later this month.
Rumor has it the company will release the update to the K-70 DSLR later this month. Information is scarce at the moment, but it appears the camera will come in black and two specialty colors, crystal white and crystal blue, which will be limited to 700 units each. The price will likely be set at ¥119,800 (about $800).
While most of the photography industry has moved on from DSLRs, there are undoubtedly users who will always prefer them over mirrorless, and it will be interesting to see if Ricoh Pentax cameras can carve out a niche as the only new option for cameras with mirrors. Their fans are already quite loyal to the brand. I very nearly switched myself years ago due to how much I loved the K-1, with only the lack of lens selection holding me back. Hopefully, we'll see the new camera soon.
Is it a new camera, or just the K-70 in new colors? Either way, 2100 units total? Yikes. Ricoh really is just draining the last little bit of blood out of Pentax before they dispose of the husk
Edit: for those who stumble across this, the camera has been announced. It’s quite literally just the K-70 from 2016. With a new name because they had to get a new lcd due to the old panel no longer being available.
Because it was from 2016
Just the blue and white are limited. Black is not.
Is it a new camera though, or just new colours of the K-70?
Get Real! DSLRs are Dead! There are so many advantages ICLM cameras have over DSLRs in comparison it's stupid to go backward. Plus, most of the advantages are not just fluff, they are very usable LoL!
DSLRs also have a few advantages over mirrorless cameras - it's not a one-way street.
Some people prefer an OVF and incredibly long battery life. Some people LIKE the bulkier bodies.
Instead of competing in the mirrorless world, Pentax is carving out their own (tiny) niche to settle into.
I bought a Pentax DSLR this summer so I could enjoy a good pentaprism OVF again... and discovered all the advantages in the world couldn't overcome the fact that the camera can't focus to save its life.
Live view? 100% of photos perfectly focused.
OVF? 40% of photos way out of focus, 60% nearly in focus, 0% as perfectly focused as every single live view photo.
An hour of AF adjustments later, 90% of photos from a couple to many feet away were nearly in focus, and 5% were perfectly in focus.
Going outside the next day, maybe 50% of photos at infinity were nearly in focus. Further AF adjustment got that to around 80%, but messed up close focusing.
Through this all, live view was 100% perfect.
That's when I realized DSLRs are well and truly dead. Not having 100% of your photos perfectly in focus was fine when resolutions were lower - as were expectations - but mirrorless raised the bar too high for DSLRs to ever cross.
I have four Pentax DSLRs in my current active rotation and none of them are that bad, it sounds like your phase detection module is physically out of calibration.
Bulkier bodies? Not always true.
Canon 5D Mk4 116mm tall by 150 wide. Weight 800 grams.
Panasonic S1H 114mm tall by 151 wide. Weight 1164 grams.
As for OVF vs EVF - There are niches that favour one over the other. For example, street photography in bright sunlight favours EVF. Depending on the manufacturer and settings, OVF "may" be better in low light (but not dark).
Personally, I couldn't live without an EVF any more. Peaking and exposim are super valuable, as is always seeing the real DoF without having to press a button and squint really hard to see anything.
Battery life is definitely a point in favour of DSLRs but only for some. Even when I shot with a DSLR I still carried spare batteries. Shooting on Sony I carry a spare battery too, or if the shoot allows, USB power bank connected to the camera. So really, nothing has changed for me in that regard.
So instead of a newer KP they do this? Smh
If they start up making film cameras again maybe they will survive. I would like a Spotmatic F myself. On of the most iconic cameras ever, in my opinion.
Surprisingly I think this is likely... Not quite the Spotmatic F, but the restarting of 35mm SLR production.
Nikon and Canon still make DSLRSs.
Still produce or still sell old remaining stock? I suspect it's the latter
They're emptying stock and development of new models has stopped completely. Nikon still actively manufactures D500s and something else if I recall correctly, but that's likely just to get rid of the parts they already had on-hand.
Again, conjecture.
I am not disputing that the industry is focusing on mirrorless.
But compared to DSLRs at their peak mirrorless cameras are selling very poorly. That isn’t conjecture, that is a cold, hard fact.
Not everyone wants to change technology and be forced to buy the heavy, expensive lenses that are a centerpiece of mirrorless systems.
It’s also a cold hard fact that Pentax isn’t even a line item on Ricoh’s revenue reports. Enjoy it while you can.
Pentax was a niche brand before I started with them eight years ago. I don’t view their being a niche brand as a negative. I like and enjoy their products.
Also all the predictions of their demise have had a 100% failure rate.
I hope everyone enjoys the gear they own, I really do.
I just think people wanting DSLRs and Pentax in particular to die is a bizarre emotion to have.
Pentax used to be the biggest player in the entire camera industry, and via a series of misfortunes and fumbles is now barely a whisper away from being a ghost.
If you don’t think Ricoh is letting Pentax die a slow death while making sure it doesn’t dip into the red, well, not everyone has worked in business I guess. They’ve got their hand over Pentax’s face and are slowly laying it into a grave, taking care not to rush as long as there’s some profit left to drain. In many ways Ricoh is as bad or worse for Pentax as Hoya was.
You can gauge the level of profit Pentax is generating for them via the level of investment they’re interested in putting into it. From product development to marketing it doesn’t even qualify as a trickle. You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to agree, but even the most optimistically hopeful Pentaxian can hardly make the case that Pentax is thriving.
Your comment about marketing pointed to a sore spot with me. Like most of the people reading these comments, I have a stream of photography related articles coming into my devices. Marketing includes getting the name and product out there in reviews and it's almost impossible to find the name Pentax in reviews of cameras, lenses, or accessories.
When I was looking for my second Pentax DSLR I could not find a local dealer anywhere near the medium sized city I live in. To tie in to this discussion, my preference- which is for a DSLR- I recognize that it will just take one decision from one high level executive or a so-called team, to fold Pentax into history. However, has someone above said, I like the products.
I started off with a Pentax Spotmatic F and when I carried it around with me all of the time, it became a part of my body essentially. I could swing it up frame, focus, shoot in 1 to 2 seconds and almost always get a good exposure. The tactile experience of a heavier device in my hand, the rings, the knobs, the buttons, from the film cameras and of course, the more complex DSLR, all give me a sensory experience when I'm taking a photo. Touch, sight, sound. Eventually followed by- if it's a decent shot - the visual creativity of digital editing, but that's a different process at a different time.
Yesterday I watched a co-worker shoot with a large, silent, mirrorless camera. Professional grade, professional shooter. In the roughly 15 minutes he was shooting, he silently gathered hundreds of images. Still had to deal with back lighting and awkward angles but of course he was not at all disruptive with the noise of shutter. It was an ideal device to gather images of a room full of VIPs at a ceremony. The images were shot and will soon be forgot. His engagement with the camera and the process was 90% tapping a button.
I get a very similar experience when pulling out my phone to take a snapshot.
Market is also very different compared to 10 years ago when DSLRs reigned supreme. The dedicated camera market as a whole is shrinking.
Indeed. There’s also a trend towards lower unit sales and higher unit value. This is fairly apparent if you look at product lines as well. The varied tiers of more entry-level consumer cameras like Rebels/D3000s have given way to multiple tiers of pro- or enthusiast-level products.
The days of plentiful sales of cheap cameras is in the past.
The D500 was officially announced as discontinued back in February so it's highly unlikely they are making more of them. That would be the opposite of discontinued, right?
This is called conjecture.
I for one think it's good they'll keep their focus on DSLRs.
Mirrorless market is too crowded, and Pentax are no longer the big player they once were.
If they were to join M4/3 or L-mount I could see them doing OK, but this is probably the best way forward for them.
Do I think they're correct in assuming people will move back to DSLRs? Not in the way they expect.
That said, there are many people out there who don't want a mirrorless body, and if Pentax will be the only remaining choice for a new DSLR body, they might gain a good footing in that tiny market segment.
They'd really need to update their camera line with modern features though, which is what I hope they're doing with this release.
I do still hope they try their hand at mirrorless by joining L-mount or M4/3 - they would fail if they were to go it alone
I'm just on here to read the comments.
Doesn't seem like a smart move by Ricoh. Maybe they did a survey and found there are still some people who like really loud shutters and the sound of a mirror slapping around.
There are, and I am one of them. Us Aspies have too much attention to minute details to put up with a 100% silent camera that gives no haptic feedback either. And we want the real thing, produced by actual moving parts, not a simulation coming from a speaker and what amounts to a cell phone vibrator.
And an OVF will always be better than nasty pulsed LED light. Always. This isn't even up for debate - it doesn't matter that your EVF shows you "exactly what you're going to get" (nevermind that it doesn't, it's a much lower resolution approximation on a screen with different color quality than the one you'll view the final image on to process it) natural light is better than pulsed LED light and that is a fact. And yes it's pulsed, that's how the brightness of LEDs is regulated. Even at "full brightness" it is still pulsed.
@Alex What lenses were you missing in the Pentax line up? I struggle to think of a lens I'd use which is not available.
Well that was a nothing sandwich. The KF is essentially a K70 with some components updated or replaced since the originals are not available anymore. Understandable that a new name might be necessary to mask the price increase. My GUESS is they aren't wasting resources in developing two totally new bodies at the same time, with the emphasis on getting the hardware sourced and the software optimized for their FF replacement K1-III
Pentax is delusional.
All companies that held onto film when digital took over, went bankrupt. What makes you think it'll be different with DSLRs? The DSLR will be be dead and buried by 2025. Same that happened to film almost exactly 20 years ago in 2005 when Canon EOS 5D was released.
Maybe there will be a bunch of hipster kiddies rediscovering old DLSRs in the year 2040, but by that time Pentax already will have bitten the dust.
Have you been living under a rock? Film is still being produced, and can even still be purchased at most retail pharmacies (e.g. CVS, Walgreens, Rite-Aid, etc) at least here in the US. Digital failed to kill it off. The mirrorless paradigm shift is driving a new film resurgence (have you seen prices lately? Insanity, demand is through the roof.)
Likewise, CDs and MP3s have failed to kill off vinyl records, a market segment which is currently strong as ever.
For those of us who are not *only* photographers, but also camera enthusiasts, DSLRs give you something that mirrorless simply cannot, despite all of the latter's techincal superiority. No different with vinyl records vs. digital audio (CDs/MP3s) or, more recently, EVs vs. ICE cars, or, much less recently, diesel-electric locomotives vs. steam locomotives. The older technology almost universally has a heart and soul that the newer technology almost universally loses.
Alas, nothing is dead until there is no one left who likes it, and there are plenty of people who still like DSLRs; that will not change. I repeat: That. Will. Not. Change.
Why so many of you are foaming at the mouth for their death that is simply not going to happen is truly baffling, I chalk it up to the fact that corporate behemoths including but not limited to Sony, et. al., have literal psychologists on their marketing teams, and have literally programmed you through marketing to think that a still-perfectly-viable technology, that hasn't even reached maturity, mind you - is somehow totally obsolete and dead.
They want mirrorless cameras to supplant DSLRs because the former is cheaper to build than the latter, that's all. Then they turn around and sell that device that is cheaper to build for more money than they sold the older tech. You're being taken for a ride and they're laughing all the way to the bank.
meh
Bought my 5D Mk4 last year for a bargain from Panamoz, offering all I presently want. I could have comfortably afforded Canon's top mirrorless, but happy to wait for (a) early adopters to iron out the hardware bugs (e.g.>10mins 8k video without overheating), and (b) introduction of new differentiating features in a competitive marketplace.
At the bargain price of the present DSLR, I'd expect less fashionable future pricing to offset the cost of going this route anyway, along with deferring the cost of mirrorless lenses and accessories that will also have advanced at such a time.