William Robb wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Toralf Lund"
Subject: Re: Camera engineering (was Re: Rename request)
I still want to take the "image" view on this, though (surely image
is more important to photo companies than most others ;-)) The
question is not (only) if people actually want to use these old
lenses, but how the lens compatibility issue affects Pentax'es image,
i.e. the way people look at Pentax as a brand, or more specifically,
whether or not it affects their opinion of the company enough to have
a real influence on their selection of brand.
Not having full compatability, but full usability with lenses 20 years
and more old is better than the competition.
Yup. It may well be good enough. The point is just that knowing that you
can *in theory* use old lenses might affect your buying decision even if
you won't ever do it in real life, and if Pentax comes across as the
brand that always offer users a full upgrade path, that will surely have
some influence, too.
Canon doesn't seem to have any image issues, and they dropped all
support for the FD line less than 20 years ago, Minolta dropped
support for the MD line some time ago, and Nikon has been kind of
spotty regarding lens compatability since the late 70s.
But image and/or branding (nope, I don't like that word...) is about
what makes you stand out from the crowd, isn't it? Lens compatibility
may be important to Pentax precisely because Canon/Nikon/Minolta don't
offer it.
- T
