Who else feals like a...

[BrendanPK]

Proverbial beaten spouse. I mean the "he/she may hurt me, but I love them so when they are not beating me" Over the whole Pentax Lens price increase...
Its like they want to drive LOYAL customers away to get just a few rich ones in.
We love the brand, we adore, free-advertise, live/breath/eat the k-mount brand, but when it comes down to it they just keep hurting us in little ways.

Does anyone have a 12-step out of LBA instead of this sudden cold turkey that is being forces upon many of us non-rich folks just as the light of new DA and DA* lenses loom on the horizon.


The following is re-posted from my comments over at dpreview on the same subject:
Those who know me know that I am a BIG pusher/supporter of Pentax stuff. I have loved their stuff for years, have had work displayed in their trade-show booths, Plastered Pentax branding on my person whenever I am covering a big game etc. I love them and their product but I fear this is out of bounds.

For the past 5+ years I have bought nothing but 100% Pentax (except for 1 metz flash, a promaster flash-cord and tamron teli-converter) because of reasonable pricing, quality and later the weather sealing. I too fear that I no-more will be buying Pentax glass if these prices hold true.

At the workshop this past weekend I got to try out some nice Sigma glass and WOW they really have improved over the years along with all the new HSM. Tamron too is producing nice stuff. Both companies may be hoping for this big chance to get K-mount market share again. Heck Zeise "M" lenses are more reasonable than this (in perspective)

This is 100% a BAD move esp right now with the world wide economic downturn. They have just become the Lexmark of Camera makers (cheep great body, but the glass is way over priced... like lexmark with cheep printers but ink thats like 2x the cost of the unit)

We all understand the need to make money and the "expensive = good" image they are talking about but a $300 price increase overnight? WTF. I could see maybe $100 on their highest things, maybe as much as $50 on their lower (sub $300) lenses. Cost of production, materials, labor, ACTUALLY MOVING BACK TO JAPAN TO PRODUCE LENSES, but a overnight price hike of 20%+ and were still getting lenses made by low-wage workers in "3rd world countries" I hope they see a raise in pay too.

Its like Pentax wants to kill themselves. I really wonder what Samsung prices will go up to, if any... Maybe I will start getting them instead, along with Sigmas etc!

Ned, JohnC, etc. I hope you guys address this sudden massive raise in prices and non of this "its from japan/hoya/etc" We know its hoya/japan/the parent/boss-corp., but WHY? Anything less is just a stock answer... Thats just passing the buck and doing both us LOYAL users and new customers a MASSIVE DISSERVICE.

Please Hoya, if you want to kill the Pentax Brand just do it and chop off our K-mounts, don't shove us in a small room and wait for the air to run out.

So much for Brand Loyalty... and my dream of a 31mm limited!

But Hey look on the bright side, our used lenses have not lost a cent when comp. to these prices now, so now is a great time to dump system if you have ever thought about it. Too bad that K7 is just so nice of a camera, or I just might.