I think that by looking back only to 1990 you miss the sea state change started by Minolta with the first fully integrated AF in 1985. Not only did the Minolta 7000 start the AF revolution (yes I know about the Pentax ME- F and the Nikon F3-AF), but also introduced a whole new interface. Since the controls only worked electronics, designers weren't tied to mechanical controls: everything was switches and encoders. That camera didn't have a single knob on it, everything was a push button. (The whole world had gone "digital" crazy. This was also the era of numeric displays on car dashboards.) It was also close to the begining of "plastic blob" cameras. Ever since that time camera makers have been refining the camera interfaces to make them more efficent to use and support new capabilities. Canon was one of the first to have a fairly standard control interface across their models (the Rebels, and everyone elses bottom of the line entry level cameras, differ by only having a single control dial). Nikon wandered around, with different controls on different models, until the F5. The F100 and N80 are very similar to it, particularly in the way that AF sensors are selected. Everyone liked that control concept so much they copied it (Canon, Minolta and Contax). Now, Minolta started this off by being on the leading edge of new technology. They got so carried away with this that they became loaded down with fluff (remember function/personality cards?). When Canon introduced the EOS line, they not only took the technology lead from Minota, but finally had a chance to make big inroads into Nikon's pro market. (AF leveled the playing field. Nikon was burnt by this so bad that when digital photography looked like the next hot thing they jumped on it ahead of Canon and had a DSLR a couple of years ahead of them.) Judging Canon's technology by the Rebel, sort of misses everything they've done. Most of the entry level SLRs are the same: the maker recycles the last model with a fresh look and some new feature, but they don't change much. Those cameras are driven by low cost and a fancy looking spec sheet. So what did Pentax do? They made cameras that seemed a lot like everyone elses with a feature or two they could call their own: power zoom & Hyper Programs for instance. All the market progress they made in the 70's, they lost in the late 80's and early 90's. Pentax took good advantage of the analog retro backlash with the ZX- 5. The problem is though, that it's hard to be retro and contemporary at the same time. By keeping the controls 1960's simple you just can't support all the newer types of controls. Right after the ZX-5 came out everyone else had gone back to dials and knobs, where it made sense, and most of the modern SLRs are pretty straight forward to use. Now, in the areas that Pentax is different than other makers, they are in sort of a retro-niche. If DSLR's turn out to be big in amature photography, will get whacked as hard as they did when AF redefined SLRs.
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