Pentax CANNOT go mirrorless says CEO

PetaPixel: Pentax 'Cannot' Go Mirrorless: Ricoh Imaging CEO. https://petapixel.com/2020/12/28/pentax-cannot-go-mirrorless-ricoh-imaging-ceo/

 

The title is a little misleading in that it says Pentax CANNOT go mirrorless, when it really means Pentax WILL not. The fact is Pentax is a niche brand and it knows it. It has always been a niche brand. Mirrors don't really harm photography. There are definitely some advantages to mirrorless, but there are not many things a mirror truly prevents. Sure, someone will argue that statement with great skill, and kudos to that. Still, there will always be people that want a mirror. That want a DOF scale. That want physical controls. That want a camera and not a glorified cell phone. Pentax sees that niche. Will it work? It has for a long time.

 

 

Pentax sees that niche. Will it work?

I understand what Shinobu Takahashi is saying, but before critiquing I would like to consider a very quick whistle-stop tour of success and failure.

 

Brand loyalty burns into the human psyche quickly and is then very difficult to dislodge. This is why SONY targets young people. It is why BMW can sell a 7-series to a retiring executive who fondly remembers his first company 3-series. It is why Microsoft sold every one of its original X-BOX consoles at a loss, and why SEGA is now defunct. The strategy used by winners is to always have a product that wins the heart of young customers, immediately burns brand loyalty into them, and sets up repeat purchases over a lifetime. These CEO games play out over decades and speculating success is hard, but discovering the formula for failure is really very quick.

 

History shows that focussing all efforts on a group of loyalists is the beginning of the end, for any company, in any industry. The "cling to a niche" case study crops up in every business school syllabus. KODAK, after inventing the digital camera, refused to compete against its own 35mm film business - filed bankrupt in 2012. NOKIA, after inventing the touchscreen phone, instead focussed on its established niche - they are now defunct. There are many more examples, and my point is only that the recipe for failure is very well known.

 

The observation is that the winner in this camera industry will be the company that places an affordable quality camera in the hands of first-time photographers, and maintains an upgrade path, thereby reaping the rewards of life-long repeat customers.

 

I agree with Shinobu Takahashi that PENTAX should not compete in the pre-photography market space. The world of throw-away low quality snaps created with built-in miniature hidden devices is not a place where any company can build life-long customer loyalty. I also strongly disagree with Shinobu Takahashi that DSLR is the way forward because mirrorless has the customer first, and the upgrade path starts there.

 

My view is that the PENTAX K-01 mirrorless camera with K mount was a near miss. The K-01 had some design weaknesses, and it was too expensive for beginner photographers, but it was a good weight for youngsters and it had a clear upgrade path. An improved K-01 could take photographers on a journey from humble beginnings to a flagship PENTAX K-1 II. PENTAX needs to try again and try to avoid repeating KODAK's mistake.

Its also possible what seems like a recipe for failure is actually a deliberate plan to slowly, gracefully exit an unprofitable business sector while maintaining as much brand value as possible for later re-purposing or resurrection.

 

The pandemic has accelerated existing trends toward reduced use of traditional still cameras by everyone but pros and enthusiasts: sales have just about cratered for all vendors. Consumers have nearly abandoned "real cameras", so industry contraction continues apace. I hesitate to say the camera industry is "dying", because it isn't quite there yet and none of us wants it to be. But things got very grim this past year, leaving big players like Nikon in untenable cash flow positions. Fuji has passed its peak with APS-C mirrorless and faces an uncertain future: the larger corporation has subsidized the camera division for years for plaudits & giggles & prestige, but throwing huge sums away just to get off on good publicity suddenly doesn't seem so compelling to the board as it did in 2015. As usual, Canon and Sony (with their internal sensor capabilities) are the only camera brands hanging on with any real success, but that edge diminished sharply for the first time this year and may not recover.

 

All of which to say, what incentive does Ricoh have to make the investment required to shift Pentax into competitive mirrorless? Sadly, the brand means absolutely nothing to newbies, and sales to loyalists are stagnant at best. The long-anticipated full frame K-1 went nowhere. The K-01 was a non-starter: improving it isn't going to boost sales volume significantly. Mirrorless is a double edged sword for most mfrs: its a competitive necessity, yet one of the key attractions for younger photographers is ability to experiment with legacy lenses of multiple brands (which doesn't promote new lens sales). Nikon, Canon and to a lesser extent Sony counter this by jacking up the price of new premium-class mirrorless lenses, but Pentax probably can't get away with that tactic (note the K-1 again).

 

Ricoh likely does not want to invest in a completely new mirrorless mount, short flange optimized lenses, and new AF paradigm, which leaves only the DSLR option on the table. Mirrorless K-mount doesn't offer the off-brand lens flexibility the youth enthusiast market wants, and can't compete in the same level playing field as Canon/Sony/Nikon in terms of compact, retracting or high performance glass. Realistically, if Nikon is burning thru money with a blow torch developing pricey yet unprofitable Z lenses, what chance does Ricoh have of turning a profit with Pentax? The market for niche brands beyond the big three is rapidly collapsing: with Fuji and Olympus suffering despite unique products, the window of opportunity for Pentax must be close to nil.

Edited January 26, 2021 by orsetto

The K-01 was a non-starter: improving it isn't going to boost sales volume significantly ... one of the key attractions for younger photographers is ability to experiment with legacy lenses of multiple brands (which doesn't promote new lens sales).

 

The ability to experiment with legacy lenses was the K-01's unique product offering. The K-01 was a product failure because of unrelated oversights such as its unprofessional body. History of Apple shows what happens when the body is wrong - Apple had its brush with bankruptcy between Steve Jobs leaving and Steve Jobs returning. The lesson from Steve Jobs was that the "body", across all products, is the packaging and therefore the marketing. The K-01 had possibly the worst packaging, and hence the worst marketing, of any recent camera - the body was not ergonomic, and it was not familiar. The K-01's market failure is a reflection of flawed implementation, not a flawed idea.

 

Nikon is burning thru money with a blow torch developing pricey yet unprofitable Z lenses' date=' what chance does Ricoh have of turning a profit with Pentax?[/quote']

If Pentax will not respond then it has no chance, much like Microsoft X-BOX vs SEGA in my earlier example. If Pentax will not respond to Nikon, then Pentax will face a different challenger in Sigma.

 

Ricoh likely does not want to invest in a completely new mirrorless mount' date=' short flange optimized lenses, and new AF paradigm, which leaves only the DSLR option on the table.[/quote']

Sigma has withdrawn support for the K-mount, and is shifting its focus to supporting mirrorless systems that it believes are the future. Pentax lenses are more expensive than Sigma lenses. Sigma arguably represent the beginner and hobbyist market and long-time ally of Pentax. Is setting Pentax up to compete against Sigma in the established lens market a wiser plan than competing against Nikon in the emerging mirrorless camera market?

The pandemic has accelerated existing trends toward reduced use of traditional still cameras by everyone but pros and enthusiasts

The pandemic may have decimated sales of use-once family holiday cameras. I speculate that pandemic deaths may impact short-term used camera sales as many of the best camera collections are long-life collections. These factors may help explain why Nikon is now flooding the market and strengthening the foundations of its future.

 

The pandemic creates a situation where many of us have a fresh chance to walk in isolation and take pictures of undisturbed wildlife - this is why I dusted off my old Samsung/Pentax DSLR. There is no immediate sale for Pentax, but focussing on "now" is a short-sighted view. The truth is that I am currently wedded to K-mount lenses and I may soon have a reason to pair those lenses with a new body, but only if there is an upgrade path.

 

If it appears to me that a new Pentax body will be unsupported by third-party lens makers then I am going to recalculate the long-term value of keeping my existing collection.

These are of course valid concerns, but perhaps of varying significance depending on the individual photographer. While the situation is rather more stark for Pentax enthusiasts than other brands, it should be kept in mind that just because a DSLR brand eventually fields a mirrorless option doesn't necessarily mean they also provide a seamless painless upgrade path. One need look no further than Nikon for proof of this: the Z cameras are fantastic, the new Z lenses are fantastic, but using existing F mount lenses adapted to the Z body is not fantastic at all. Functionality of even the latest F lenses is altered noticeably, AF performance varies from tolerable to shaky to none at all, Nikon's own adapter is crippled in some ways and about as goofy looking as the Pentax K-01.

 

Canon suffers this to a somewhat lesser extent, as their entire DSLR lens lineup is of consistent electro-mechanical design vs the crazy-quilt hodgepodge of Nikon lenses that you need a spreadsheet and GPS to sort out. So the Canon EOS lenses adapt more readily and consistently to their new mirrorless bodies. However, most still suffer from AF issues due to the differing lens motors and firmware required for optimal mirrorless performance.

 

Point being, someone who purchased a Pentax DSLR and lenses over the past few years is in essentially the same boat as someone in the Nikon or Canon DSLR camp re "future proofing". Existing DSLR lenses do not operate with perfect functionality on the new mirrorless bodies: if speedy AF and traditional aperture handling are desired, you end up sticking with the DSLR body or replacing everything. Thus the only advantage C or N retain over Pentax is continued DSLR support for new third party lenses like Sigma Art and Zeiss (and even that would be subject to migration trends to mirrorless).

 

If I owned a good Pentax DSLR system, was happy with the sensor and had all the lenses needed for my work, I would just continue using it until it wore it out. When and if mirrorless became more desirable, I'd make the jump and if necessary sacrifice the Pentax DSLR system in exactly the same way a Nikon owner would need to sacrifice theirs. OTOH, if you are not currently satisfied with the lens availability for Pentax, and absolutely require one of the new Sigmas, perhaps a supplemental Nikon or Canon body to host the desired lens would buy some time until a final system decision had to be made. Thus far it isn't at all clear how long Sigma et al will continue to provide new DSLR lenses for C/N. If the remaining new camera market makes a sudden mass move to mirrorless systems Sigma may prioritize newest offerings for those mounts.

 

It isn't the 1960s-70s anymore, when you bought a camera and lenses and they remained fully contemporary and desirable for 20 years. Remaining "state of the art" in digital is an endlessly moving, hideously expensive goalpost, for both mfrs and photographers. Conversely, its also rapidly approaching the "diminishing returns" point: most average people no longer even want any camera, those that do can't in all honesty justify anything higher res than a Nikon D850 or Sony A7RIV. Its getting more than a little ridiculous even for hard core photographers willing to sell their unborn children. Does anyone seriously want a 70MP Sony FX sensor to become the new trickle-down standard, entailing huge new glass priced at the down payment on a house? How many of us are actually printing that large, much less selling the prints? This treadmill is gonna crash into a brick wall eventually if saner heads don't prevail.

I would not buy mirrorless with the current technology.

 

I rather viewed DSLR as the upgrade from mirrorless, but I am a male with large hands and an appetite for weather sealed bodies. If I were smaller or weaker then I might prefer mirrorless - think of the young people hiking with heavy DSLRs on their back! My view is that Pentax (or any brand) would do best to capture a person's loyalty with the first lens collection. Every new joiners to the K-mount world benefits me because more customers means lower prices, broader after-market support (e.g. Sigma), more DIY camera repair tips, and so on.

 

Your point about the technology race is a valid problem, and that is why low-volume niche is a dangerous place to go. The worst place is trying to sell the "straggler" technology that can be cheaply replicated.

Pentax was 3 or 4 years too late with the K-1, which is too bad since it did have some interesting features at a favorable price point. I've been happy enough with my K-3 bodies and my collection of Pentax and third party lenses (mostly Sigma with a Tamron and a Tokina thrown in). A K-1 would be nice to have, and a lot of my current lenses would work well with it but as I am approaching retirement in the commercial world I can't see making the investment now. I think that a successful Pentax mirrorless is unlikely for the reasons mentioned in previous posts--a huge investment for a diminishing market coupled with likely marginal convenience for current K mount lenses, making photographers like me less likely to be interested in the new body.