Hi all, Today I "pre-ordered" a Canon 10D for $1514.95 (with two-day delivery). The decision to go "all digital" for color dictated having to choose which company has the best long-term future in digital. Well, sorry to say, there's not much contest among the "traditional" photographic companies. Canon is emphasizing vertical integration for the digital market; when you add that it can achieve genuine economies of scale for manufacturing digital gear from chips through to bodies and lenses, you have a company that, in the end, will only have, well, who? Perhaps Fuji and Sony as competitors? (Certainly not Kodak or, for what can be seen now any Olympus/Kodak partership.)
Of course, the *ist D is more elegant than the "elegant for Canon" 10D. But the 10D is selling for $1500 right now at introduction. By the Fall selling season it will be, what? At least $300 cheaper? And by then the Rebel-based DSLR will be (how far?) under the magic $1000 mark. Pentax can't compete with that kind of marketing if it's going to announce an entry-level DSLR at the end of February but not have it on the shelf until late July. Deciding to go for the "most features in smallest package" niche is fine IF you have something genuinely innovative to offer either in aesthetically slick packaging or in features. The *ist D is cute but it's not slick enough, and the feature set while very good is not genuinely innovative. Outside of the K-lens faithful there's nothing to hold one's attention. And then there's Pentax's long history of pathetic marketing. But where "jumping ship" hurts most is lenses. The most damning part of "pre-PMA" is no new Limited, much less a body designed to the standards of the existing Limiteds. There are promises for the fall. Canon delivers now. And their AF lens line is simply superior. So: I'll hang onto a ME Super SE and a few select lenses just to keep that SMC "glow" in black and white (and sometimes in color too). But realistically, Pentax's *ist is simply not realistic enough to compete with Canon or idealistic enough to capture one's imagination. Tom
