On Sun, Mar 01, 2009 at 10:05:50AM -0600, William Robb scripsit: > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Graydon" > Subject: Re: DA* 55/1.4 vs 50/1.2 >> So I expect that a 31 replacement is going to be preferred by Pentax in >> terms of "the best lens we can build". > > Now if we can only talk them into building a camera in the same terms.
Well, it's really "best lens we can afford to build" or "best camera we can afford to build"; I strongly suspect the K10D was a serious gamble in that respect. There's also the problem that cameras are now consumer electronic devices; total product lifetimes around 18 months. The engineering cultural change to deal with that is a drastic thing to get through, and not every organization that attempts this manages to do so. (Just the increase in parts count can kill you.) If total worldwide sales of the K10D and K20D are, oh, 100,000, Pentax can expect to sell about 15,000 KxDs; that, whatever the real numbers are, may simply not be enough. One interpretation of their effort to expand their customer base generally arises from this; they don't have one that's large enough for the best camera they can afford to build to be any much better than the K20D, and they want to change that. I am nearly certain I would prefer the Pentax take on that best camera to the Samsung take on it, but I am also quite sure that Samsung already knows how to do the consumer electronics product life cycle and that if Pentax goes under no one else will ever make lenses like that again. So I really really *don't* want Pentax making something they can't sell enough of. -- Graydon -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
