--- P�l Jensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The LX a failure? Well, the LX failed to generate cash flow and failed to compete with Canon F-1 & Nikon F3. What made the LX successful? I would not even go into the on-going reliability issue. It has however become a cult where many fans love to brag about (well, before the DSLRs hit the market anyway), while most F-1 & F3 users have moved forward and never looked back long ago.
> However, Pentax dire > situation at present is due to the fact that the company had no presence in > the > upper segments during the AF era, and hence lost most their customer base. I could be wrong, but I think Pentax have been detached from reality since the A series. They put all their eggs in the A series and Minolta caught them by surprise with 7000. When they introduced the SF series, the F lens line looked ridiculous. With P/PZ series, they decided to offer the either super cheap zooms or super expensive * lenses, nothing in between for the real consumers. They have always seem to produce products that they wanted, instead of what consumers needed; a very poor business practice. They had all the time to introduce high quality f4 zooms (especially tele-zooms) at much lower price than FA* lenses, but they ignore the demand. They kept pumping out their super expensive FA* lenses and finally collapsed. And the self-destructed FA 28-70/4 just didn't cut it. > Nowadays you can read on the net about > Pentax lenses of Leica quality, both by users and prhotography writers (eg. > Mike > Johnston); Pentax outperforming Zeiss lenses for the Hasselblad and Contax (by > Hasselblad and Contax owners); and even magazines now treat Pentax as a brand > for > knowledgeable fundamentalist appreciating unsurpassed optical and mechanical > quality. Five years ago such notion would be laughed at (some may still do) > and > Pentax was strictly considerd also ran for those who couldn't afford the real > thing. Theres a lot of Pentax mystique going around at present and considering > that other mythical brands are virtually dead (Contax and Leica), there > should be > market for an oddball company if they play their cards right. LOL. It is because there is nothing else to brag about. I don't want to name names, but I think the whole "Pentax lenses have Zeiss or Leica like quality" is just a myth. Most people like to idealize the products they are using, Pentax fans are no different. And I think it's the LIMITED lenses that trick people into this idealism. Did I mention the FA43/1.9 Limited has horrible corner sharpness even stopped way down? I would be surprised if top Zeiss or Leica lenses were like that (okay, FA31 is a very fine lens, but floating elements + glass AL are very very very rare in the Pentax history). Alan Chan http://www.pbase.com/wlachan __________________________________ Discover Yahoo! Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM and more. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html
