As someone who has more than a passing interest in "branding" this is an interesting subject to me. Think of the naming conventions for automobiles (a subject near and dear to many on this list). Auto manufacturers take slightly different tacks, but a model name (such as the Chevrolet "Impala" existed for many years. According to Wikipedia, it existed from 1958 to 1985, 1994 to 1996, and 2000 to present. Of course the differentiator was the model year. For some reason, camera makers have not seen the sensibleness of using the model YEAR in their naming convention. It would be rather easy to say: "I have the Pentax Flagship APS-C" by simply calling it the 2001 Kz as opposed to the 2014 Kz. But no, Pentax needs to change the K-whatever part for each and every revision. Eventually you run out of letters (or your numbers approach ZERO and then need to go into the negative numbers... or perhaps the arena of irrational numbers like the "K-square-root-of-three"
Microsoft sucked at this game, giving us things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions Apple had system 7, system 8, then finally decided the "X" made a cool symbol and has been stuck at OS X for many years, but giving each a cool animal name that started with a bear, detoured into Big Cats and after a detour into the Wild West, is currently lost somewhere in Yosemite National Park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X If the Big Dogs of American Business can't get their act together in this regard, it should be of little surprise to us that a Japanese country would have problems with a strategy that would TRANSLATE well into english. However, P.J.'s point is taken with regard to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). They seem rather clueless at how Google works, which is sort of a Big Deal in this age of the InterWeb. The asterisk is a particularly aggregious sin, since it often refers to a "wildcard" character in computer search engines.. They would do much better to have chosen to use Model Years or Animals, or perhaps Books of the Bible in naming their camera models. Who wouldn't want to own a collectible Pentax Genesis or Pentax Exodus - now long superceded by the Pentax Lamentations or the Pentax Song of Solomon? The original Pentax 1st John would be superceded by the 2nd John and 3rd John models. All of this leading to what we all knew was coming: The Pentax Apocalypse (or Pentax Revelations) depending upon your market area? On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 9:13 PM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: > > > P.J. Alling wrote: >> >> So now that the K-1 has been announced I figured to hit Google for more >> information. What do I get but 99% of the hits are on the K-01 >> mirrorless. First they name their first production DSLR *ist-D an >> unsearchable name, (leave of the * and count the German language sites). >> then they use the most logical name for their first full frame on their >> first and probably only mirrorless K mount camera. Could they be any >> worse at this? > > > > I haven't a clue as to what any of the film bodies map out to. But, I think > all company's naming conventions for cameras simply suck. With Canon, the > same model will have different names on different continents. Nikon, > actually sort of makes sense for their DSLRs. >> >> > > -- > Larry Colen [email protected] (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc > > > > -- > 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. -- “The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness ” ― Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Earth from Above -- 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.
