So let's speculate on a future, (relitively near future, say two years
in the future), Pentax SLR lineup.
Professional:
645D: 30~40mp: 2-3 FPS takes 1.1~1.3x Crop on 645 lenses
Price ~$10,000 US
Semi-Professional/Advanced Amateur
K-7 Successor/Upgrade: ~12-20MP 6-10 FPS/High Def Movies 24x36mm
on 35mm lenses
Price $1500.00 US
Entry/Advanced Amature
K-x Successor (K-7 Downgrade?) 12~16MP 4~6 FPS/High Def Movies
~16x24mm sensor 1.5x Crop on 35mm lenses.
Price $600.00 US
The two K mount cameras have feature sets that cover 90% of what other
manufactures have in their lines of 4-8 bodies, and sell for prices at
the lower middle prices. That's what Pentax seems to be doing today so
I expect it to continue. I don't expect to see more than three bodies
from Pentax actually available at any one time and one will probably not
actually be in production while stocks sell out and the factory is
retooling for it's successor.
There's a very large gap in price between the semi professional K mount
and the professional 645, much larger than there was between say the LX
and the original 6x7.
On 2/24/2010 2:42 PM, Mark Roberts wrote:
I don't think it's so much a matter of Pentax moving up to full-frame
as full-frame coming down to Pentax's current demographic. Right now
the entry point for full-frame is $2000 (U.S.) but absolutely no one
believes it's going to remain that high.
What's interesting to me is the question of which direction Pentax
eventually takes with full-frame: High-megapixel and high resolution
(like the Sony A850) or big-pixel-size and low-noise (like the Nikon
D700). I'm thinking it might be the latter...
The 645D is interesting, but it still leaves a ridiculous gap between
a $1000 body like the K7 and an approximately-$10,000 medium format
camera. Hoya probably made the decision to revive the 645D because
development was so far along that didn't make sense to leave it
dormant, and the MF market seems to have started leveling out around
40-50 megapixels (they'd have had problems if they'd introduced it at
the originally-planned 18 megapixels).
--
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\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 I've just upgraded to Thunderbird 3.0 and the
interface subtly weird.\par
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