[creampuff]

Wheatfield, I take your point but I also think people need to take a realistic perspective of where Pentax is at.

Pentax is still trying to reverse the legacy of the severe decline many years ago when they kept producing crappy AF film cameras that were simply flops in the retail arena. Declining sales led to factory closures within Japan and relocation of production facilities outside Japan and the forced discontinuation of many lenses in the FA series line-up simply because nobody were buying their unimaginative film cameras in a declining film market. Thankfully Hoya's takeover has kicked out the unimaginative bums on the Pentax board but the damage in terms of brand awareness, market share, equipment availability, tech know-how plus the financial position of the company has already left it's negative mark.

Is it any wonder that Pentax was late to catch the DSLR wave, and always playing catch-up in product development and product introductions. I think Pentax has made great strides in camera development. The ist series were just incremental improvements while the K series has helped restore the company's fortunes somewhat. The user base has increased but it also means new challenges to meet. I'd cut them some slack because they have a long way to go to gain mainstream recognition what more product roll-out and having a pervasive retail presence.

As I said previously, if one is of the opinion that other offerings from the market leaders are demonstrably better, then as the saying goes, put your money where your mouth is and make the change. I'm sure the folks at Pentax are doing their utmost best but I think bitching about shortcomings is counterproductive.