Originally posted by Blue Cranking out mega-tons of plasti-crap isn't going to create a place for Pentax nor sustain market share. There are different angles of sustainability. If they have to grow physically in order to mass produce a million 18-55 or 18-135mm type lenses every year at marginal profit, is that really a good sustainability model. The also need some diversity in the catalog or they may as well put all their resources into the p&s market. I am referring to some f1.4 lenses though and not too many faster except may an updated A50/1.2.
Just because a lens is popular doesn't mean that it's "plasti-crap". One of the very big holes in the Pentax lens line up is a decent WR wide angle prime. The shortest WR prime is now the DA* 55mm F/1.4. It would be really nice to have something wider in the WR lineup, either a DA* prime like the 55mm or just a reasonably fast (F/2.0, F/2.5 or even F/2.8) wide angle, either 24mm or even 28mm WR. That particular lens is easily the most popular of all the lenses in Ron H's poll,
clicky pulling more than 10 percentage points higher than the 50mm F/1.0. That superfast lens is polling in the middle of the pack with only (as of right now) a fraction over 15%.
My point is that I would rather, and according to the poll, most other people would rather see a moderately fast wide angle WR than a super fast 50.
NaCl(it's a hole that should be filled)H2O