Bye bye Hoya...and now what next? The sale of Pentax

I was never happy about the Hoya purchase after hearing about the negative attitudes from within Hoya about Pentax. I was always worried that Pentax will go the way of Minolta.   Hoya never seemed very enthusiastic about the acquisition of Pentax and reports seemed to point that they were more interested in gaining the long time ties with the optical business that was part of Asahi optical.  Sure, the K7 and K5 were under Hoya, but the question might be more of what didn't make the cut.  The 645D was just barely released and could have marked a time for great excitement for things that should follow.  Instead, not much and the recent release of the Q system was more a puff of smoke compare to the other things that should have followed the 645D or the K5.  Momentum was what Pentax needed after question of its future came up and promised lenses that should have appeared sooner were hampered by cost cutting steps that I've heard were prescribed by Hoya.  I own Hoya filters and they are good, but I've noticed that finding them has been a bit of a blind quest.  Confusion over Kenko and a few others seemed to have eroded Hoya's identity in this market and it seems that they didn't care.

I do hope Ricoh does a better job with Pentax.  Another old name in Japanese camera technology, it seemed to fade into other markets such as photocopiers and certainly, I recognize Ricoh as copiers.  They have a good track record for taking chances on cutting edge products.  Maybe they will have true vision to steer Pentax to where it needs to be as it seems to have the heart to be a tech leader, it just needs the brain.  I just hope they don't call it Ricoh-Pentax...that didn't work for Konica-Minolta.