Pentaxians... Any out there?

Freakscene said:
I don’t think you understand how quickly knowledge and technology can be lost from companies, …
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Yeah, I admit my comment was a bomb-thrower, but I just couldn’t take all the spritual drama over film winding.

Over the last 40+ years I’ve worked for electronics-instrumentation companies which started with products that became legendary. Fortunately, firmware, software, EE, and ME engineers did archive their designs and used these designs as a foundation for future products.

BUT THEN, they decided all the old geezers needed to go. They’d hire new graduates that would try to start from nothing and then they’d leave anyway in 6 months because the work wasn’t as glamorous and a “meager“ 5% pay raise (where others got zero) didn’t excite them as much as the prospect of working for Meta, Microsoft, or Google, or Twitter. So they leave. More get hired, more leave. Knowledge disappears. Companies won’t hire the geezers back, even at the pay rate of a lowly intern.

But really - if they find the geared, ratcheted, and clutch-controlled film winding too much for their budget or expertise, then just do the simple knob-wind of a 127-format film camera. Otherwise, how can they offer anything any better than Lomography offers?
 
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I have a Pentax-M 50mm/1.4 in Leica M mount. It does well also with digital cameras. Have you seen any issues when using such a lens on digital cameras?
I need to check my Pentax lenses to see if I have a 28/2 SMC or not.
 
Freakscene said:
I don’t think you understand how quickly knowledge and technology can be lost from companies, and without being there you have no idea what the residual depth of knowledge and skill in Ricoh-Pentax is like. Of course there are pre-existing designs for winding mechanisms. But that is different to designing one from scratch to fit in a set of design parameters. Can you do that? I can’t.

Kodak had to teach themselves how to make E6 again when E100 was reintroduced. This is analogous. Be grateful that they are giving it a go at all, if you are interested; it is much garder than you think.
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This is what I don't understand -- they can get ahold of a Spotmatic pretty easily (or a K1000 -- there are tons of those out there) and take it apart and reverse engineer it. Can these parts not be 3D printed with current technology? (And I think there are a number of "geezers" on this forum -- making assumptions about ages here, but I think I'm right! -- who have the technical knowhow just from working on their own vintage Pentaxes to be able to advise this project, maybe even gratis.)

So I'm in Pal K's camp here (sorry, I can't do the accent on the "a").
 
raid said:
I have a Pentax-M 50mm/1.4 in Leica M mount. It does well also with digital cameras. Have you seen any issues when using such a lens on digital cameras?
I need to check my Pentax lenses to see if I have a 28/2 SMC or not.
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The SMC 28/2 is a rare and costly beast. It’s be very surprised (impressed?) if you had one lying around and didn’t know about it!
 
I have the 28mm f/2 SMCP-M which I think is the later compact one, not the same as Raid mentioned. Eight elements in 7 groups, weighs 215 gr. It was new in Oct 1981 from Frank's Highland Park Camera in LA, a good source then for Pentax gear. My wife used it on a ME Super for her theatre photography and treated it roughly.
I look forward with curiosity to what Pentax will come up with, more power to 'em!
 
KoNickon said:
This is what I don't understand -- they can get ahold of a Spotmatic pretty easily (or a K1000 -- there are tons of those out there) and take it apart and reverse engineer it. Can these parts not be 3D printed with current technology? (And I think there are a number of "geezers" on this forum -- making assumptions about ages here, but I think I'm right! -- who have the technical knowhow just from working on their own vintage Pentaxes to be able to advise this project, maybe even gratis.)

So I'm in Pal K's camp here (sorry, I can't do the accent on the "a").
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The context is a bit different obviously, but it’s worth reading about Nikon’s attempts to develop the S3 reissue, and how difficult it turned out to be… Turns out it’s not as simple as pulling out an old set of drawings and dusting off a few machines.
 
KoNickon said:
This is what I don't understand -- they can get ahold of a Spotmatic pretty easily (or a K1000 -- there are tons of those out there) and take it apart and reverse engineer it. Can these parts not be 3D printed with current technology? (And I think there are a number of "geezers" on this forum -- making assumptions about ages here, but I think I'm right! -- who have the technical knowhow just from working on their own vintage Pentaxes to be able to advise this project, maybe even gratis.)

So I'm in Pal K's camp here (sorry, I can't do the accent on the "a").
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What if the K1000 mechanism won't fit in the proposed body? What if modifying it simply to fit stops it from working? What are the specs for the bearings? The shafts, all the different parts? What if there are no records of the grade of material used for each part? What are the acceptable tolerances, and how much wear will they withstand before the mechanism fails? Is this consistent with the design specification? Bringing a product to market is much more difficult than most people imagine, and whenever I see this sort of thread, this sort of comment is inevitably from people who have never had anything to do with developing and bringing an engineered product to market.

Has anyone on this forum done any camera design work? I doubt it. You certainly learn almost nothing about design from repair work.
 
Freakscene said:
I don’t think you understand how quickly knowledge and technology can be lost from companies, and without being there you have no idea what the residual depth of knowledge and skill in Ricoh-Pentax is like. Of course there are pre-existing designs for winding mechanisms. But that is different to designing one from scratch to fit in a set of design parameters. Can you do that? I can’t.

Kodak had to teach themselves how to make E6 again when E100 was reintroduced. This is analogous. Be grateful that they are giving it a go at all, if you are interested; it is much garder than you think.
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Really? They didn't bothered to contract knowledgeable specialist, like average film camera repair person. Nor they looked at manufacturing documents from their own cameras. The reality is - they see the film interest among young mobile phones users. Those will spend thousand dollars of parents money for new phone each year, but they won't buy copy of some old SLR. It has to be as simple as phone, so forget focus, shutter, aperture, but rewind lever for experience.
 
Freakscene said:
What if the K1000 mechanism won't fit in the proposed body? What if modifying it simply to fit stops it from working? What are the specs for the bearings? The shafts, all the different parts? What if there are no records of the grade of material used for each part? What are the acceptable tolerances, and how much wear will they withstand before the mechanism fails? Is this consistent with the design specification? Bringing a product to market is much more difficult than most people imagine, and whenever I see this sort of thread, this sort of comment is inevitably from people who have never had anything to do with developing and bringing an engineered product to market.

Has anyone on this forum done any camera design work? I doubt it. You certainly learn almost nothing about design from repair work.
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Before design, you need to know how it works. Those current tools at Pentax were trying to design without understanding how it works. Average repair person could fix camera, lens only after understanding how it works. How many cameras, lenses you have repaired. I did dozens.
 
I'm confident Ricoh has sufficient institutional knowledge to design, manufacture and market a new Pentax film camera.
I don't expect it will satisfy any of the camera experts. That's okay with me, as long as it is merely the first in a new line.

Chris
 
Retro-Grouch said:
Agreed. Although their dedication to the manual wind lever is admirable, other aspects of the "film experience" are, in my opinion, more important. Manual focusing with some kind of rangefinder would be key, or at the very least, zone focusing with a good depth of field scale. Also key is the ability to set exposure manually. Again, personal preference, but I won't be bothered trying to use any camera that doesn't offer me these two capabilities.
I think it would do a disservice to first-time film users if they were locked into automation (a feature you can't turn off is a bug). With the ability to expand into the use of manual controls, the camera could be a gateway into greater control of the medium, and new markets for more sophisticated cameras.
I'm leery of the emphasis on "fun" as it's expressed in these videos. It's redolent of the kind of mindless stuff that "Lomography" promotes. For myself, I have a great deal of "fun" shooting with a view camera and utilizing all its controls, but then I'm a snob and a grouch, of course. Nevertheless, a camera that allows new users to push further, beyond owning a toy, growing their vision and craft, is what's needed.
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I suspect that neither you nor me are the target market for this camera and I agree that I wouldn't be interested in this camera if it doesn't have the option of full manual control of all functions. The fact that they are going for manual film advance is encouraging in that regard. The hard part will be that late 35 mm film era cameras were almost entirely auto everything with limited over ride for intelligent users--the notorious "soccer mom" cameras. And digital cameras followed that methodology, leaving the production of manual everything cameras behind. It is likely that the production lines for older cameras have long since been scrapped in the same way that Polaroid's factories were mostly obliterated along with their supply chain. Starting from scratch for a project like this will have to be costly, and I found it interesting that they are expecting the film wind mechanism for the first camera will be reused in a 35 mm SLR if they get that far.
 
ChrisPlatt said:
I'm confident Ricoh has sufficient institutional knowledge to design, manufacture and market a new Pentax film camera.
I don't expect it will satisfy any of the camera experts. That's okay with me, as long as it is merely the first in a new line.

Chris
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I wish I shared your confidence. Twenty years is a long time in the corporate world. Who knows what records were kept or discarded? As the digital tsunami obliterated the film camera market two decades ago, it may have been that the possibility of a film resurgence was unthinkable, and those records of film cameras may have been deemed chaff. They might well be starting from scratch.
 
Freakscene said:
What if the K1000 mechanism won't fit in the proposed body? What if modifying it simply to fit stops it from working? What are the specs for the bearings? The shafts, all the different parts? What if there are no records of the grade of material used for each part? What are the acceptable tolerances, and how much wear will they withstand before the mechanism fails? Is this consistent with the design specification? Bringing a product to market is much more difficult than most people imagine, and whenever I see this sort of thread, this sort of comment is inevitably from people who have never had anything to do with developing and bringing an engineered product to market.

Has anyone on this forum done any camera design work? I doubt it. You certainly learn almost nothing about design from repair work.
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My point is, start with the K1000 and use that as your basis. Upgrade the design some (more modern features; I'm sure they would have some ideas).
 
KoNickon said:
My point is, start with the K1000 and use that as your basis. Upgrade the design some (more modern features; I'm sure they would have some ideas).
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Or the ME Super. Automation, but with easy manual override. It's cheaper to make an electronically timed shutter, and first time users would (ideally) ease into manual control as they got more comfortable with the film process. I confess to a fondness for older, fully mechanical cameras, but I doubt that new adopters of film would care too much about that. What they might care about more is cosmetics: the classic chrome and leatherette look of a 1970's SLR would, ironically, be a selling point.
 
Freakscene said:
What if the K1000 mechanism won't fit in the proposed body? …
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Have an engineering team that understands the requirements and produce what’s feasible.

Long ago there was this young engineer who designed a very small camera that had all the features of larger cameras of the era. That was successful and he led a team to design a brilliant and small SLR. Yoshihisa Maitani. The OM-1.

I know they have brilliant people They need to find the right people for the job. But film is so niche, sales won’t justify the huge development costs. So they focus on superficial items. A wind lever. But, again, a winding knob, a red window, and 120 film is simple and produces the “film experience”.

Freakscene said:
…whenever I see this sort of thread, this sort of comment is inevitably from people who have never had anything to do with developing and bringing an engineered product to market.
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Not that you’d care or I need anything to prove to anyone, but in the last 40 years I’ve worked as an engineer on the manufacturing floor, writing firmware to monitor and automate manufacturing, all the way up through all aspects of the lifecycle of product design, manufacturing, testing, and ongoing product support. I’ve worked with EE’s and ME’s for over 40 years. My team have been responsible for tens of millions — no: hundreds of millions — of electro-mechanical devices, both for business and the consumer market. I’ve got the design awards to prove it, but the real satisfaction is seeing the products out there. That is reward enough.
 
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Pál_K said:
Have an engineering team that understands the requirements and produce what’s feasible.

Long ago there was this young engineer who designed a very small camera that had all the features of larger cameras of the era. That was successful and he led a team to design a brilliant and small SLR. Yoshihisa Maitani. The OM-1.

I know they have brilliant people They need to find the right people for the job. But film is so niche, sales won’t justify the huge development costs. So they focus on superficial items. A wind lever. But, again, a winding knob, a red window, and 120 film is simple and produces the “film experience”.


Not that you’d care or I need anything to prove to anyone, but in the last 40 years I’ve worked as an engineer on the manufacturing floor, writing firmware to monitor and automate manufacturing, all the way up through all aspects of the lifecycle of product design, manufacturing, testing, and ongoing product support. I’ve worked with EE’s and ME’s for over 40 years. My team have been responsible for tens of millions — no: hundreds of millions — of electro-mechanical devices, both for business and the consumer market. I’ve got the design awards to prove it, but the real satisfaction is seeing the products out there. That is reward enough.
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Well, good. You do know, and you know how easily knowledge is lost. Even a red window is not so easy. I have designed QA/QC systems for some niche items that became much less niche during the plague. The work still disturbs my sleep.

Pentax also need something to talk about In the video, and we are interpreting a fairly straightforward translation of some socio-culturally influenced statements - there are different implications in Japanese to the straightforward English text.

I met Maitani, twice. He was very humble and emphasized that his main input was an idea and an aesthetic. The team designed the OMs, at least according to him. And the pool of knowledge around camera and opto-mechanical design at Olympus at the time was huge. But one thing he told me that is very relevant here is that of the story of the OM cameras, the only parts people are interested in are the idea and the end, the camera. He was acutely aware that the design, qa/qc and testing processes were of no interest whatsoever to the average person.
 
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