I am sorry to inform you but high quality photographic lenses are NOT typical products. They have usable life spans in the decades not years so all your posts are irrelavant because you have no evidence to suggest that its true that "nobody wants or uses these anymore". I have a whole bunch of 30-35 year old pentax SCREW lenses which are even older than K lenses that are still in excellent shape and still very desireble to own and use. You basis is flawed. You must be a teenager or something that thinks everything made is disposable and new is always better so nobody wants or uses old..
Secondly you say there is no reason to support anything 30 years old. WHY? If there are still lots of them IN USE and they are good pentax lenses, what does age matter? There is no reason in this case to NOT support them if the support can be continued at low cost to pentax or even a profit to pentax. jco -----Original Message----- From: Pål Jensen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 4:54 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Camera engineering (was Re: Rename request) ----- Original Message ----- From: "J. C. O'Connell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > The first one is funny -if more people want > to buy something than want to sell it - > the price goes up. and since the supply > is fixed AND known to be large, that means theres more > DEMAND than before the prices went up. > How can you say that "lots" of people don't > want them? That could only be true if > these lenses were rare but they are not > as about half of all PK lenses ever made are K/M type > which is very important data provided by YOU. > This is basic economics... There are 9 400 000 KM and M lenses manufactured. There are not 9 400 000 in use. Hardly anything made 30 years ago in current use. In addition to this fact, almost all K and M lenses are focal length and lens types hardly anyone want or buys these days. I'm afraid that 135mm, 28mm, 35mm and even 24mm lenses, aren't very popular unless they are very fast. At best compatibility with K and M lenses is a fringe benefit for the odd Pentax users who happens to have a K lens laying around. Everything else is too small a market to even consider. If Pentax will support K and M lenses they will do it in a body that cost some money. There are in fact more Canon FD lenses made than Pentax K and M lenses. In addition they are more "desireable" because Canon sold more to the pros. Still, theres zero demand for an FD mount Canon DSLR. God, these Canon people must be stupid! You do the fatal mistake of equaling you estotetric, (lunatic) fringe interest with interest of the average buyers. > You think thousands of dollars or even hundreds of > thosands of dollars FOR THE COMPANY is expensive > for a very valuable feature THEY CAN SELL - not give > away. The cost per body to implement is far less > than the income dollars per body they can sell it for > IMHO. That's not unreasonable, that's how companies > make money. Develop features that cost less to develop > than they generate in revenue. This is basic business economics. There is no revenue for supporting obsolete equipment made 30 years ago. They make 120 000 DSLR's a year. If the feature cost $10 a body then its 1 200 000 out of the window. It is not a valuable feature as you claim. Pentax can still claim the best backwards compatibility in the business. Thats probably good enough for the marketing people. > Your last comment is unsupported. What leads you > to believe this is the case? The exact number of K/M lenses sitting > around in closets unused is unknown except for the fact we know its > somewhere between zero and roughly 9 million....But you are claiming > MOST of them are, WHY are you making that claim? Because hardly anyone is using 30 year old stuff. Just like hardly anyone are using 30 year old hi-fi equipment. Those who do, do it BECAUSE it is old and they have rarely any interest in compatibility with new equipment. Pål
