I have to agree with Steve here. Companies only survive by selling new things. A follow on used market doesn't really make them much money. So, if most of us are happy with older gear, Pentax would have nothing to sell and would have to fold. They could have followed Olympus to the grave by continuing to make and sell basically the MX/E and LX type cameras, tried to compete head on with Canon and Nikon (PZ-1p) or find some other niche. Not a particularly fun place to be as a company. The niche is sort of working. It allows them to be number 4 in a market of 4 players.
The future digital world may have some changes in store - how they capitalize on it remains to be seen. Anyway, the glory days of the mechanical world are pretty much gone...and not just for cameras. Bruce Wednesday, December 18, 2002, 5:50:25 AM, you wrote: SD> Since my usage went from an sp500 to an MV to ZX-7 to an MZ-S I'm not SD> really knowledgeable enough to compare. I didn't use many of the older SD> cameras folks here rave about. I do like the feel of the SP500 over the SD> ZX-7 but not the MZ-S. SD> My question is this: Could Pentax actually use this list for advice SD> and stay in business? We may be too eclectic a group to be a good SD> source of market research. We still argue over the PZ-1p vs the MZ-S. SD> Many here don't even want autofocus. I think if Pentax had made "good" SD> marketing/economic decisions the F100 would have "Pentax" on the prism SD> housing. SD> Steven Desjardins SD> Department of Chemistry SD> Washington and Lee University SD> Lexington, VA 24450 SD> (540) 458-8873 SD> FAX: (540) 458-8878 SD> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
