A surprise announcement from Pentax delivered on YouTube
Pentax made a rather unusual product development announcement that seemed a little impromptu, announcing that it plans to develop a range of new film cameras targeted at the younger market
Full episode transcript
In this episode — Pentax has announced intentions to re-enter the film camera market.
Intro
Welcome back to just a short episode of the Fine Art Photography Podcast… consider it a supplement or addendum to my film photography episode published recently. In that episode, I mentioned the recent release of the new Leica M6 film camera and wondered out loud if perhaps other camera manufacturers might follow suit.
Pentax has answered the call — announcing today with a couple of videos on YouTube that they intend to offer not one, but a series of new film cameras, starting with a compact film camera and progressing from there, with a high-end compact, followed by an SLR and perhaps even a fully mechanical SLR.
Pentax said in the video that it’s taking this step because young people have been enthusiastic about film photography, but they struggle with buying film cameras that are increasingly expensive yet also prone to breakage and lack of spare parts. And of course, they struggle with the cost of film. Because of these forces, the video emphasizes that Pentax will provide affordable options targeted at young people.
The spokesperson said that another goal of this film camera project is to pull together all the remaining legacy engineers they could find from Pentax’s film era and ensure a transfer of knowledge to younger engineers before it’s too late and the knowledge is lost forever.
So it sounds like Pentax does not intend to revive the K1000 or other legacy brand, but will make new cameras that are affordable, reliable, and fun to use. They also made no mention of a medium-format camera.
Of course, Pentax is notoriously slow to market. This announcement doesn’t mean a shiny new Pentax SLR will be on the market by next Christmas.
They were also careful to say that they will continue digital camera development as well, and that these will both be priorities for the company.
Well that’s all I’ve got for this episode, thanks for listening.
I’ll talk to you again real soon.