Yet another merger

[joey]

Pentax is to be purchased by Hoya in 2007.

[Glen]

Quite amazing news. I didn't realise Hoya was so big till reading the article

[Yi-P]

Wow, didnt realise that Hoya has this amount of power

[adam]

Wow, didnt realise that Hoya has this amount of power

Me too, whenever I think Hoya, I think filters, then I think, nah, I'll get B+W instead...
The cameras will still be Pentax-branded, perhaps the new lenses may employ hoya-optical-technologies

[Ivanerrol]

IMHO

As noted on some of the comments on that article, It's my long term forecast that the Pentax camera division will probably slide off to Samsung and the Pentax name will become just another division of the Hoya conglomerate.
Pentax was originally a brand name for the Asahi Optical Company line of SLR cameras. Asahi made telescopes, binoculars, microscopes, scientific optical instruments and much other glass lens products. The company got into developing a camera business, for an offshoot byproduct for their lenses. Pure Optical companies such as Asahi and Nikon developed their own cameras (stolen from European ideas) in the age when relatively simple mechanical (albeit with high design tolerances) units could be produced.

My guess is that the huge sums of money required for the R&D of Electronic hardware and software to develop more and more DSLR’s with the latest and greatest features and then release them every 18 months will be beyond second tier companies such as Pentax. Lets hope that Nikon doesn't suffer the same fate.

Here is my original SLR from 1970. Note the Pentaglr logo above the Asahi Pentax label on the Prism housing AOCo - Asahi Optical Company.



For those Pentax aficionados. This Takumar Lens is the later 8 bladed Aperture SMC 50mm 1.4. with one free radioactive Thorium coated Lens. A cult favorite.

For those Australians with spectacles whose lenses are glass and not plastic - probably 80% of those spectacle lenses are Hoya glass. Pentax will go back to an Optical company

[DaveB]

A couple of bits of background info:

I gather that Tokina and Kenko are also part of the Hoya group.

Pentax's factory in Japan (actually, this is about _a_ factory: I'm not sure how many they have) shares a common wall with Sigma, complete with rollerdoor and tracks for equipment carts...

The Japanese camera manufacturer "scene" certainly seems convoluted from our outside view!