Malcolm wrote: It seems a bizarre way to market any of their products to manufacture loss leaders, without some 'in your face' advertising for the range of camera products available in store to the general public. How are you going to recoup money invested in R & D, without some form of high volume sales from either point and shoot cameras/film cameras, when - and I make this comment from experience of stores near me in the UK - the Pentax range is conspicuous by it's absence/or no stock or demonstration models in store, plus the public are confronted by masses of advertising from every competitor in the market. You aren't going to sell cameras to people who don't know that the product exists, particularly when the competition is so heavily hyped in stores that they may never look (or be shown) as far as a Pentax alternative.
REPLY: True, and thats why I think the *ist D function is to prevent the excisting customer base to flee. To signalize to excisting customers that Pentax will make DSLR's. The next installment of DSLR's from Pentax are likely to be the first they actively market. The baby *ist D is almost certainly the first Pentax DSLR that has the potential to sell in such quantities that they can actually make money on it. The MZ-S costed $ 20 000 000 to develop. It is almost certain that the camera is a complete loss leader. Another loss leader was the LX in spite of selling well considering its price. Rumors claim that Pentax lost money on the 67 as well but I have not gotten it confirmed by reliable sources. P�l
