For the purposes of discussion, let's assume that the Russian Pentax tweet about "nine" press release announcements coming in the next few days/weeks are going to cover Pentax (and Ricoh's) combined product announcements prior to unveiling them at Photokina.
I think the 560mm telephoto and the 24MP APS-C K-3 are in the "for sure" category. That leaves us with 7 more announcements (and they could be for anything from flash to accessory to lens to camera). If I were placing odds I would put them in the following order (from most likely to least likely) The Pentax K to Q adapter shown at CPP+ A new flash unit Pentax 645Dii The "DA High Magnification Zoom lens" on the roadmap for 2012 (this language sounds a lot like the lens on the X-5 bridge camera, only to cover an APS-C image circle, so I'm guessing a 16-250mm superzoom) A fast wide lens for the Q... a 5mm f1.8 would be perfect. A K-mount module for the Ricoh GXR (sells more lenses to another installed base)* A K-z entry level (I have my doubts about this even happening... I think Pentax is abandoning the low-entry DSLR arena, but I think that would be a mistake) *does this count as a Pentax announcement? Is the Pentax booth combined with Ricoh at Photokina this year? I think the one thing that Pentax may do that will surprise some people is to make more cameras with/without the anti-aliasing filter (ala Nikon D800/D800E) giving people the choice of which they want. The Pentax Q has no anti-alias filter, which is part of the reason that it out-performs people's expectations. I think we are seeing a trend away from anti-alias filters being used and the moire Bogeyman being relegated to the dust bin. So, those are my 7, but I'll add a wildcard. I'm sure that at least ONE of my 7 is incorrect (probably a lot more than one). So to replace one, I think that Pentax is going to finally *announce* that they are working on a FF camera, but that it won't ship until next year. I think that if they are working on one then they almost have to announce that it is coming to freeze their constituency (or at least MORE of them) from jumping ship. But I don't think they will even show a prototype because they will have enough "real" products to show and they wouldn't want the FF to steal those products thunder. Comments? Your conjecture? Last Photokina thread before Photokina! -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
