I'm hoping that Pentax follows K-M in the near future with the in-body IS system (assuming that it actually works). I also suspect that the high end Pentax will still be below $2000 and aimed (really) at the advanced amateur. It will be interesting to se, however, how far Oly gets with the E-1, which is a pro systems that they just released from scratch.
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/11/04 12:24PM >>> I tend to agree. For Pentax, selling a bit downstream into the 300D market makes a lot of sense. There are many sales to be had. Going upstream from the *istD, however, seems much more difficult. Two big reasons to me. 1) Canon and Nikon have multiple models in that segment - these are very well received and very well endowed - the best Pentax would be able to do is a "me too" type of camera that would be selling into the $3000-5000 range. Not many buyers and very few Pentax buyers. 2) When moving upstream to higher end bodies, the system surrounding the camera becomes much more important. The lack of IS, USM and high speed glass, especially in the zoom category is a big weakness for Pentax and would need to be released about the same time or at least shown that these things will be available shortly. This is not going to happen. My guess is that you are going to see the next generation *istD rather than an upper model (in a sense, it will be an upper model to the current *istD spec) - probably bigger sensor (megapixels, not necessarily size), a few new/more features, fixes to problems in existing *istD, etc. The *ist D will slowly phase out as stock is depleted. -- Best regards, Bruce Tuesday, May 11, 2004, 8:10:56 AM, you wrote: SD> I bet we will have the low end camera, the High end one would be nice, SD> but that's probably further down the road. This is also probably the SD> right priority for Pentax. Aside from the business side of things, I'll SD> bet there are many on this list who want a DSLR and can't afford the SD> *ist D. SD> Also, my spell checker keeps trying to replace "Photokina" with SD> "Fettuccini"
