The cameras being made now, and the market that shrank around them.
01Section
The Pentax bodies Ricoh has shipped since 2021 — K-3 III, Monochrome, KF, K-1 II — and the K-mount they all share.
Pieces 07Code 01Set in Spline Sans Mono
01.1 · Lead piece
A new DSLR arrived the year Canon and Nikon declared the mirror era over. Here is what Ricoh put in it, and why.
The K-3 III Monochrome is not a black-and-white mode or a software conversion. It is the K-3 III's APS-C sensor with its Bayer mosaic physically absent — a deliberate subtraction that changes what every photosite does.
A single GPS coordinate, fed into an existing stabilisation mechanism, turns a still camera into a slow-motion tracking mount.
The KF is a K-mount body without weather sealing and with an articulating screen — two decisions that define its place in the line.
Ricoh publishes a seal count; it does not publish a test standard. Those are different things.
One fixed number has governed half a century of lens and body compatibility across the entire K-mount line.
When the maker is the only party on the roadmap, the roadmap tells you everything about what that maker actually believes.