Ergonomic Roundup November 2013, Ricoh/Pentax

Rough Road Ahead, Nullarbor Plain. This was the main East-West highway across Australia in 1968. We made it from Sydney to Perth in the vehicle shown in the photo with only minor damage: one flat tyre, one broken windscreen.

 

Memories of Pentax  I used Asahi Pentax SLR cameras for many years. In the 1960's, 70's and 80's they were the most popular camera for enthusiast amateur photographers.  I started with a Spotmatic then graduated to a ME Super. Many of my favourite old photos were made with these cameras.  I still have fond memories of using them, especially in the genre of street photography, which was much more viable those days than it is today.

In the 1980's I was exploring options for improved image quality and for a time owned a Pentax 6x7 medium format film SLR. This proved to be something of a monster. A kit with 3 lenses actually weighed more than a 4x5 inch field camera with 3 lenses. It did not last long in my kit but the 4x5 field camera stayed with me for many years.

Pentax was a technology leader, introducing many features such as through the lens metering,  which we now regard as routine.

Then Came Autofocus   In the latter part of the 1980's autofocus for SLR cameras was invented. Pentax was late to catch that bus and in consequence fell behind Canon and Nikon in the market place,  never to catch up. Even today, I sometimes read posts on user forums bemoaning inaccurate AF with Pentax DSLR's.

Our family bought a Pentax film zoom compact about 25 years ago. It worked reasonably well in good light, not so well indoors.

Apart from that I have not encountered any Pentax product that I might want to buy in the last 30 years. I say that as a long time Pentax fan, so it means Pentax has not been developing products which appeal to me.

Then Came Mirrorless  Last year Pentax attempted to join the Mirrorless ILC crowd with the K-01, one of the  least well conceived and  poorly executed  cameras  in recent  history. I call it the "Knock Out One", because it sure knocked Pentax' reputation pretty badly.

The next bright idea from Pentax was the Pentax Q, an MILC with the smallest sensor of any interchangeable lens camera. Just to confuse things they changed the sensor size last year from about 7.5mm diagonal to about 9.3 mm diagonal. The precise purpose of this thing escapes me but apparently they sell reasonably well in Japan. I saw an advertisement for the Q10 in an Australian photographic magazine recently. The main selling point appeared to be that you could get it in "100 different color combinations".  Really, that was the pitch.

What about Ricoh ?  Ricoh makes office equipment, machines, printers etc. It also has a small division which has been making cameras since 1938. In recent years these have tended to be niche market products.

About 20 years ago I bought a Ricoh GR1 film compact with fixed 28mm lens. This was actually a nice camera capable of making very good pictures but the 75 degree diagonal angle of view was a bit much for my taste so it did not last long in my bag. 

In the digital era Ricoh has continued to make derivatives of the GR1, to a generally favourable reception by a loyal band of Ricoh afficionados, who like to point out the camera's good ergonomics. Which is fine except the digital ones lack an eye level viewfinder. Oops.

In 2009 Ricoh introduced the GXR camera concept, the defining feature of which was it's interchangeable "Lensor" (Lens+sensor in one module) modules. Unfortunately for Ricoh, the market generally ignored the GXR which will go down in camera history as yet another failed bright idea.

Ricoh acquired Pentax in 2011, which is the reason they are grouped together here.

The Crystal Ball  In the absence of some dramatic revitalisation of the Ricoh/Pentax camera division I think the future is bleak. Both Ricoh and Pentax are making cameras with at best limited appeal. Neither is flourishing in the marketplace. Both have tried to rescue the situation with brave new products which flopped badly. I hate to think that a camera brand which was such an important part of my early and formative photographic years is about to disappear but that does seem to be a likely outcome.