Kent G. wrote: > Why did just about every other maker also stop making most pr all of their > manual bodies. Because they can't make enough from selling them to break > even. Hardly anybody buys new ones when there are plenty of used ones > around. Even though the last K1000 bodies were made in China they still cost > more than they made from them.
Another important point that a lot of people don't remember: in the heyday of the metal SLR, it was before the advent of the "point-and-shoot" or "Ph.D" (push here, dummy) cameras, and buying an SLR was close to the ONLY option (certainly the most common one) for people who wanted a nice camera to take family and vacation snaps with. As it was expensive, it was also a status product.* Correspondingly, MANY times more SLRs were sold in those days than are sold now. I think the peak of the metal SLR was around six million a year, and now all SLRs account for somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 sales annually. Given the fact that most consumers who choose SLRs also choose autofocus, and hence buy Wunderplastik, and it means that the all-metal, manual-focus SLR market is a tiny fraction of what it used to be. The most popular SLR up to its time was the Canon AE-1. Canon sold almost 4 million of them. Know why? It cost less. Know why? Its top plate, one of the most expensive pieces on an all-metal SLR to manufacture, was made of plastic *plated with metal* and cost Canon very little. Nobody buying the camera knew this. Therefore Canon could sell it for less and still make a good profit margin. Things have been going downhill ever since. <gg> --Mike * In the 1950s, a camera typically cost 2 months salary for a well-paid factory worker. That would be, today, about $6,400. Only rich people could afford Zeiss cameras or their "Avis"-status runner-ups, Leicas. So cameras inherited status from their recent past. The effect probably lasted, in ever-diminishing degrees, probably until the late '80s early '90s. - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
