Mark Newson Interview (designer of the Pentax K-01)

[wolfnowl]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrXKDrg-xy8

Mike.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

LEGO!!!

[donbga]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrXKDrg-xy8

Mike.

This camera is DOA. More '*ist', marketing I'm afraid.

[mediumcool]

Beaten with the ugly stick. And the fake pentaprism?

[Peter Mellis]

I got the impression that the designer had no feel for cameras ("I like taking pictures....) and this was another disconnected design "object". Personally, I find it unappealing both design wise and as something that might suit my needs/wants. I have a fondness for Pentax cameras and have been using them since the '60's; hope that this doesn't turn out to be a flop and jaundice Ricoh"s view of the acquisition.

[JBerardi]

In fairness to the designer, he's probably not the one who decided the K-01 needed to be compatible with K-mount lenses right out of the box (because K-mount compatibility has been such a boon to them in the digital era). There's no mirror in there, and yet they decided it needed to be think enough to accommodate a mirror! So the guy was starting with something that was unnecessarily blocky to begin with.

That said, it's not he started making good decisions at that point. It just looks like any old camera that's been lego-ized a bit. Why bother? Petax is perfectly capable of producing solid conventional camera designs in house. If they're going to bring in some outside designer, they should do so with the idea of producing something truly novel and/or outside the current status quo of the camera industry. I don't see anything like that here.

[mediumcool]

So the guy was starting with something that was unnecessarily blocky to begin with.

No, it is necessarily blocky because of the need to maintain the Pentax K register of 45.46mm. Otherwise, every picture is an OOF blur! 

[BJL]

If only he had had the freedom to design the camera with a removable "nose" (perhaps in a choice of contrasting primary colors, to enhance the Lego theme) which upon removal reveals a roughly 20mm deep "micro-K" mount that accepts modern, compact lenses designed to work well with CDAF. Backward and forward compatibility can be combined!

[mediumcool]

If only he had had the freedom to design the camera with a removable "nose" (perhaps in a choice of contrasting primary colors, to enhance the Lego theme) which upon removal reveals a roughly 20mm deep "micro-K" mount that accepts modern, compact lenses designed to work well with CDAF. Backward and forward compatibility can be combined!

Not a bad idea, and I’ll bet it was considered; cf. 4/3 and m4/3.

[Pingang]

This is may be one of the wish-have-done-otherwise designs Marc Newson did.

[mediumcool]

… 20mm deep "micro-K" mount …

Better apply for the trademark! With a lower-case m! 

[JBerardi]

No, it is necessarily blocky because of the need to maintain the Pentax K register of 45.46mm. Otherwise, every picture is an OOF blur! 

I know. But it never should have been K-mount to begin with. That's the unnecessary part. And it's incongruous on a camera that's supposed to be about style. And if it's not about style, why'd they bring in some kind of famous designer guy?

Just weird. Hopefully someone with an actual plan can start running Pentax at some point in the future.