I just love it. I agree with you on this principle Patrick, that if a lens is advertised as being produced, it should be available.
I know I'm expecting a little much, but I find the following just absolutely hilarious. I go to the Pentax Imaging website. I pull up the 1200/8 telephoto lens which I could never afford and which B&H doesn't list anymore. From that page, I'm allowed to "Find a Store Near You". So I type in my zip and search radius. Up comes a long list of stores including Circuit City! Really? Like I could ever ever ever walk into a Circuit City and find this lens. There's a good chance I could walk into my local Circuit City and not find a Pentax DSLR at all on display. I know, I'm expecting a lot, but the navigation implies that I could find a store near me where I could purchase the lens. In fact B&H only lists 9 Pentax brand 35mm/digital form factor lenses on their entire site, 5 of which appear to be out of stock. What's more, I can go to the Pentax Imaging USA website, which has 10 lenses listed for purchase directly from Pentax. I can "Add them to my Cart", if I'm dumb enough to pay mfrs. list price. Why does Pentax even waste time and money building a site like this and why can't (assumption here) the #1 Photography Online Retailer in America keep lenses in stock? If it's because they are selling like hotcakes, they just need to place more on order sooner, right? So they don't run out before the next order arrives, right? It's that simple right? Tom C. >From: "Patrick Genovese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List <[email protected]> >To: "Pentax-Discuss Mail List" <[email protected]> >Subject: Re: Hoya-Pentax Future - News >Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:41:37 +0200 > > > It seems to me that people are confusing out of production with > > discontinued. As far as I understand, all camera companies produce their > > lenses in batches to a certain degree, and just because a lens is not > > being produced right now, you should not assume it's not in the line-up > > anymore. It may well be that production was temporarily halted because > > there is already stock to last for a long time. > >The pentax japan web site does not list any of the old FA* lenses... >All gone... bar the 300 f/2.8 and the 600 f/4 .. The problem is there >are no replacements. I'm no expert on lens production etc but how >hard can it be to update an already excellent lens design such as the >80-200 f/2.8 and bring it in line with current digital requirements >and maybe even add an SDM motor. Im sure it is quicker than designing >the 50-135 from scratch and they would have had a much more desirable >product. Other manufacturers seem to be able to do this quite quickly. > >Patrick Genovese > >-- >PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >[email protected] >http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
