Mike, In terms of using this group for Market Research, we would be more of an Expert Panel than a typical focus group. Sometimes consumer products companies recruit groups of 8-10 people for a 2 hour discussion of some issues. Product management/marketing folks sit behind the one way mirror and watch the discussion. This list would not be an average group of users, but a special group of very experienced, knowledgeable product users. Sometimes consumer products companies will recruit these kinds of groups.
Your hypothetical questions/conclusions regarding too many of us liking old, manual focus cameras and lenses seems incorrect to me. Cameras are a lifetime purchase for most consumers, maybe twice or three times a lifetime, but not more often. People bought a 'good' 35mm camera, and then treated it carefully. Pentax is in a difficult business. In the last 40 years, it has gone from producing high quality instruments to quality cameras for the mass market (think ME, ME Super), to Point-n-shoot stuff for Walmart or Boots the Chemist. The high end of this business is full of folks who expect top quality optical and mechanical products as the minimum. Old Spotmatic or Super Program or LX users if you will. Meanwhile, the profits on new sales are being made on the large, mass market cheap zoom cameras. How to revive the high end business?... it's not easy. Look at what we like. High quality optics with a quality feel when handling. Oh, and the task is complicated by the fact that you have 30 years of old lenses exported to the world when the Yen was cheap. These old, high quality lenses are available at a significant discount to their cost to reproduce today. Much the same is true for camera bodies. Japan has responded to the cost pressures by going from 100's of parts in a K1000 to 10's of parts in a point-n-shoot zoom. And we yearn for the good old cameras... If I put on my Marketing/Product Manager hat, I'd say this. If you want to sell some more high end Pentax camera gear, you've got to give the consumer something they haven't got now. Autofocus is a potential benefit/feature which will get some of these folks to switch. (But don't introduce a fine camera like the PZ-1 combined with a poor optical/mechanical 28-80 power zoom!) Image stabilization lenses and digital are two more potential hooks to draw the customer in. Medium format is another. So yes, I do like old gear but I could be made to switch. Just remember, we are a price conscious group of users. If you want me to buy something new, you've got to give me the kind of price/performance I can get in the used market. ...and I do own 2 limited lenses, a PZ-1 and PZ-p, and 4-5 more FA lenses. Regards, Bob S. In a message dated 12/18/02 9:22:55 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > This is pretty much what I was wondering about when I wrote the original > "Hypothetical Question." People here wonder whether Pentax monitors this > list (they do), and whether they listen to our advice when advising Japan > about product development...I don't know whether they do that or not, but I > have to wonder if it would be productive if they did. > > I know that one Pentax person has told me privately that despite all the > gushing and lauding of the LX on this list, even diehards weren't buying new > LX's at the end of its lifespan. Most were buying used, or were using LXen > purchased many years previously. >
