No competition, but little demand if the price is sufficient to make their investment back off the body alone. That's what essentially killed the Epson RD-1, the $3000 pricepoint that was necessary to earn back R&D costs meant that it was not a good seller even when it was the only M-mount RF on the market (and a darned spiffy little camera too). Note that it shared its sensor with a bevy of inexpensive DSLR's (Including all the 6MP Pentaxes). The idea in the camera business is to sell bodies on low margins and make money off lenses and accessories (Particularly the latter in the case of most DSLR's, LiIon batteries have markups in the 4-800% range over manufacturing costs and essentially no R&D cost). Building a body specifically for old lenses which essentially nobody sells new will only be viable with a body price high enough to make the body uncompetitive against similar bodies to which M42 lenses could be adapted. I'd rather spend $1500 on a 5D and not get Auto Aperture with M42 lenses than spend $3500 on an otherwise identical body with the Auto Aperture plate added.
-Adam On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 12:47 PM, JC OConnell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Not when there's no competition. Whoever puts out the > first M42 DSLR will have no competition, so that gives > them at least some leeway on pricing. > > JC O'Connell > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > John Francis > Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 12:25 PM > To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List > Subject: Re: ANY M42 DSLR rumors (yet)? > > > On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 08:23:11PM -0800, John Poirier wrote: >> I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a "digital Bessaflex". Cosina >> has >> already demonstrated their cleverness in reworking basic bodies in >> interesting ways. > > [ . . . ] > >> The potential user base of classic lenses would be enormous. > > That last sentence is probably the biggest argument against any such > thing (just as in the case of the putative M42 DSLR in the title of this > thread). > > If the body isn't going to lead to additional sales of lenses (which are > usually significantly more profitable than the body) that means that the > way for the manufacturer to make money is by charging more for the body. > But the more the body costs the fewer people are likely to buy it. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
