RICOH launches the GR IV HDF
Best of Pentax Forums Newsletter December 17, 2025
Editor’s Note: The next two Wednesdays are Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, so we’re going to take a break. Here’s hoping everyone has a happy and healthy holiday season. The Best of PentaxForums Newsletter will return January 8, 2026.
GR IV HDF available next month for $1,599.95
The Ricoh GR IV HDF with a built-in Highlight Diffusion Filter will be showcased at GR SPACEs in Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing and Brisbane beginning December 17th, Ricoh Imaging Americas announced Dec. 16. The GR IV HDF will be available in late January for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $1,599.95. More details in this week’s PentaxForums story.
The end of the year is naturally a time for retrospection. So! Did you meet your photographic goals in 2025? Add keepers to your portfolio? Was this year a bust? Or was it Just Another Year? Vote in this week’s poll, and tell you how you did that voodoo you do so well in the comments!
Elsewhere in this week’s newsletter, Forum Member Angus_M89 reviews the SMC Pentax-A 645 120mm F4 Macro; Site Supporter Seventh Monkey sings the praises of the SMC Pentax 50mm F1.2; and New Member Asherax takes a long look at the Tele-Takumar 300mm F6.3.
If you’ve been forwarded this newsletter, please take a moment to join the more than 1,500 Pentaxians who have subscribed to our free curated compendium of the hundreds of great images and post shared each week in our Pentax community. Please let us know your thoughts here in the comments and on our Pentax Forums, and have a perfect Pentaxian week!
Threads of the Week:
December 13, 2025 • Pentax K-1 & K-1 II • 19 replies • 462 views
Seventh Monkey said — Today my first new camera in 32 years will show up on my doorstep. It’s also the first digital camera outside of my iPhone. My initial interest was a digital camera I could use to scan my slides and negatives from years gone by. Many of these are old enough that the world I took them in no longer exists so are irreplaceable and want to do everything “in house” to ensure no loss or damage. Read more »
December 10, 2025 • Welcomes and Introductions • 3 replies • 87 views
Miki said — Hi Pentaxers! Greeting to all of you! Now, Poland in my new place of residence ... (hopefully, not for too long). Among many passions I go thru all my lifetime ... the art of photography is one of them. Self learned, and self explored field of over 10 years. Read more »
December 14, 2025 • Pentax K-3 III Monochrome • 21 replies • 297 views
togeorge said — Please forgive me if this has been previously covered elsewhere on the forum. However software does get updated and I am trying to keep a current view on what works best. Right now I use a mixture of Exposure 7, On1 2025, and Adobe Elements 2000. Exposure works very well with the K3 Mkiii, but not the K3 Monochrome. I find that I have less flexible control over highlights and darks. Read more »
Pentaxian User Reviews
Pentax Lenses
SMC Pentax-A 645 120mm F4 Macro
Reviewed by Forum Member Angus_M89
Review Date: December 15, 2025 Recommended | Rating: 10
Pros: IQ Cons:
I started shooting a lot more medium format lately and also picked up the three piece extension tubes as I enjoy macrophotography. This lens is great. As a portrait and macro lens, it meets every need. Is it heavy, yes but it’s medium format so to be expected. Build quality is to be expected, very good, as is handling. Clean bokeh, very nice focusing but I highly recommend swapping out the stock focusing screen if doing macro work with extension tubes and no external light source such as a ring flash. Below is shot on Kodak Gold 200 using just the summer sun. I focused on the closer middle area but even stopped down clearly missed it. The split prism was almost entirely blacked out for it.
SMC Pentax 50mm F1.2
Reviewed by Site Supporter Seventh Monkey
Review Date: December 10, 2025 Recommended | Rating: 10
Pros: Super fast and performs well at all apertures. Extremely well made and smooth. Cons: Weight, but it’s worth it
Sharpness: 10 Aberrations: 9 Bokeh: 10 Handling: 10 Value: 9 Camera Used: K2. MX, LX
The first lens I bought in 1977 along with My K2, mail order from B&H Photo all the way to Oregon. I wanted a fast lens auto exposure setup as a journalism and yearbook student that photographed everything from group photos to sports. The lens turned out to have few compromises other than being a little heavy as my photography improved and shifted focus (no pun intended). That I still have it and it’s one of my three lens “do it all” says a lot. Paired with a 28mm prime and a medium telephoto zoom, say 80~200mm ish covers most of my needs in a small relatively compact package for backpacking or travel. A few have noted that the shallow depth of field makes it difficult to focus. I’ve always set my initial focus wide open, but then do my final focus using the depth of field preview. This way I select the exact depth of field I want for that particular photograph adjusting aperture as I focus. This method even works well with the matte SG screens I use in my MX and LX cameras.
Tele-Takumar 300mm F6.3
Reviewed by New Member Asherax
Review Date: December 5, 2025 Recommended | Rating: 8
Pros: Hand Holdable, Solid and Stable, Beautiful Colours, this is a SUNNY lens! Cons: Heavy red-green fringing, Low Contrast in gloomy weather
Sharpness: 8 Aberrations: 7 Bokeh: 8 Handling: 9 Value: 8 Camera: Olympus E-M1
I have been in the market for a decent 300mm, and whilst I shoot M43, and the Telephoto zoom options are superb in that regards, especially with Olympus and more recently, OM Systems, still I was hoping to see what Takumars could offer. As I mention I shoot M43 so this 300mm is actually a 600mm equivalent, as such, hand holding such a lens would ordinarily be considered difficult. Not so much with this lens. It is beautifully balanced, with the aperture and focus, smooth and responsive.
I took it out in both sunny and gloomy conditions. This is most definitely a sunny lens. Contrast and resolution suffers badly in less than good light, but in good light it has all the characteristics of being a beautiful addition to the Takumar collection.
I shoot M43, so I cannot speak to the rendition in full frame, where the corners may well be softer. As with most older Takumars I shoot this lens at F8 as a matter of course. Wide open it is a little soft, even in the centre, but it is acceptable dropping it down to it’s preferred aperture of F8.
Even closed down however, red-green fringing is markedly apparent. Of course this can be taken out with Post Processing easily enough, but you will need to batch process images as it is very often present. That is not to say you cannot get beautiful images from this lens, and being a super telephoto on M43’s, it offers tremendous reach for the buck.
First day out I was taking some shots in Bright autumnal light, high contrast noonday light on a canal... I was pleasantly surprised to capture a Blue Heron, which was completely invisible to the naked eye, such was the lighting, contrast and range.
Comment of the Week:
Pentaxian martin42mm on Should Pentax bring back the aperture ring? The Best of Pentax Forums Dec 10 Poll: My first SLR was an m42 mount Zenit, followed soon after by a succession of Spotmatics. And the main reason for using an SLR/DSLR is the ability to see exactly what I am photographing. Which includes taking into account depth-of-field since that can vastly affect the image produced. The Zenit was easy since it had no diaphragm actuator, so all my early lenses were manual or preset aperture, and therefore you automatically saw the depth of field before taking a shot. Ditto, to a degree, the pre-F Spotmatics since they metered at stop-down aperture . Later cameras had depth-of -field preview levers or buttons, as have most of my Pentax DSLRS. But the ability to control that via the lens has always been the easiest solution, and I would welcome the reintroduction of aperture rings, with or without the A setting, as well as focus screens that are capable of showing depth of field clearly. Most modern screens do not have this ability as a priority, hence my adoption of a modified Canon screen on my K-S1, although my current KP does have a better screen where this vital visual aid is concerned.
Did you meet your 2025 photo goals?
The Best of Pentax Forums December 17 Poll
The end of the year is naturally a time for retrospection. So! Did you meet your photographic goals in 2025? Added keepers to your portfolio? Was this year a bust? Or was it Just Another Year? Vote in this week’s poll, and tell you how you did that voodoo you do so well in the comments!
This poll closes January 7
And here are the results of last week’s poll:
Weekly Photo Challenges
Posted By: jchorst: Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen to this edition of the Weekly Challenge. As the year is coming rapidly to an end, it’s the right time to capture Time in a photograph. Or so I thought. So show me your visual interpretation of “Time”! The fine print: Every week, a new theme is picked and judged by the winner of the previous week. The Challenge will run until midnight next Monday Dec 22, whichever time zone you are in. Judging will be done the next day.
And here’s the entry from Site Supporter MiguelATF: Many nights when I look up at the night stars in the sky, I can’t help thinking of the staggering amounts of time - measured in hundreds and thousands and millions of lightyears - for the light from those distant suns and stars to reach my eyes. Sometimes I can’t quite wrap my mind around the enormity of it - and every once in awhile, I have the impression that multiple moments in time - the present one and also some ancient one when light from a distant galaxy or nebula first began traveling towards me - and all of them are all visible at the same time!
A few years ago, back in 2020, I was camping near the top of Hart Mountain in central Oregon, which was a good spot from which to view starry skies (thanks to the total absence of urban or man-made illumination) -- but it was also one of the better spots in the state from which to view the passage of the comet Neowise, which was viewable for several days (or rather nights). I put my KP on a tripod and was lucky enough to ‘capture’ this view of the comet during this 90-second exposure - yet another passage of time which is visible in this photograph.
PentaxForum Front page stories Dec 10-16:
November “Insects and Spiders” Contest Finalists Announced
Vote for the overall winner!
By PF Staff in Photo Contests on Dec 16, 2025
After the end of the nomination phase of last month’s official Insects and Spiders photo contest, we’re now ready to announce our top 15 finalists! Click on the link below to view the photos in full size and cast your vote in the poll:
Vote for your favorite photo in the poll
As usual for our monthly photo contests, voting closes in a week, and then we’ll announce the winners.
RICOH launches the GR IV HDF
The 2nd GR IV model features a built-in Highlight Diffusion Filter
By cjfeola in Pentax Announcements on Dec 17, 2025
December 16, 2025-The Ricoh GR IV HDF with a built-in Highlight Diffusion Filter will be showcased at GR SPACEs in Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing and Brisbane beginning December 17th, Ricoh Imaging Americas announced today. The GR IV HDF will be available in late January for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $1,599.95.