This has been turning into a bit of a camera blog lately, which I hope to rectify soon, but this just popped up and, well, look at it! Designed by Marc Newson, it makes an incredible statement about the form of the modern camera, and how much meaning this simple shape has accumulated over the years — subverting it, calling attention to its sections with dashes of bright color, and going bigger when everyone else has tried to flatten out its character.

Okay, so one of the reasons for its size is that it uses Pentax's K-mount specification, which means compatibility with decades of old SLR lenses. I imagine this legacy support was a functional decision that had to be made at Pentax: embedded baggage that a product manager struggled with, and then decided could be solved by daring design. The design innovation is not entire superficial; look closely, and you'll notice a 40mm pancake lens attached, the thinnest of its kind in the world.

Available in March for about USD$800.

 

Source: Digital Camera Info