I have no doubt the market pressure had no influence on Pentax decision to cut the backwards mount compatibility. Mechanical aperture coupler and corresponding firmware were nothing new, P could have inherited the solutions from previous bodies just as they did with various other common SLR features.
It was a deliberate, cynical move to force owners of old lenses to buy new ones. It was also carefully planned over several years, starting with the release of the MZ-50. The timing also denotes a good analysis of the Pentax owner psychology. Just remember how many on the list cried loudly about the backwards lens compatibility, yet how many of those placed their order for *ist d and now can't wait for the delivery. Only digital could manage to break their resistance and P knows that very well indeed. Servus, Alin Mark wrote: MR> In the case of stop-down metering in the *ist-D I suspect that money MR> wasn't as much of a factor as time. Even with the lack of the aperture MR> simulator, stop-down metering certainly could have been implemented in MR> software (using the DOF preview) but would have required more software MR> coding, and the attendant debugging and hardware testing. Given the MR> lateness of the DSLR project as a whole (just look at how much MR> complaining there still is about having to wait) it was a predictable MR> corner to cut simply to get the camera to market quicker.
