Bruce wrote:
>Yes, there were millions of Pentax >lenses made, but of the K mount MF lenses sold in NA, >probably over 90% were 50mm. Pentax was a value camera >here, and few people invested in a lot of OEM lenes. What does my post have to do with North America? I was refering to production numbers which of course reflect global sales. I was also saying that Pentax lenses aren't rare; not that they aren't necessarily hard to find. By 20 years ago, Pentax have sold more SLR cameras than any other camera manufacturer. In some European markets, Pentax had more than 50% of the OEM lens sale; that's more than all the others put together. If you go further back to the 60's/early 70's Pentax cameras and lenses were among the most sold. In the 80's, based on production volume and assuming that bulk of the A-series lenses sales happened in the period from 1983-1987, Pentax sold yearly about 65-75% of the volume Canon have achieved during the 90's, hardly low by any standards. I doubt Pentax only sold 50mm lenses. It isn't until the 90's that Pentax lens sales starts to drop significantly below Nikon and Canon. Why some Pentax lenses are rare in North America may be that Pentax didn't sell many there and/or that people simply don't offer them for sale. I'm also sure that the Pentax lens population may look different from the Nikon lens population but even a rare lens as the A 300/3.8 is so abundant that some major second hand retailers (in North America mind you) saw the need to dump them. Sure, some lenses are made in small volumes but this hold true for exotic Nikon lenses as well; some of them were only made in volumes as low as 60. I'm not denying that Pentax lenses in general may be harder to find than Nikon lenses, but I'm denying that pentax lenses in general are rare. P�l - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
