Originally posted by Clavius Depends if the FF Pentax will still use the K-mount or not.
There's a lot of hoarders counting on the FF introduction to increase the prices.
I have pondered this issue for some time and have concluded that the K mount will be preserved. Why?
Well the Pentax brand is built on its legacy - the best form of marketing. Why rubbish that with a change in mount (hence destroy the legacy).
Moreover, Pentax has a suite of patents and optical knowledge that does not need re-inventing. Sure a tweek here and there within the bounds of the patent is needed for digital sensors but ultimately the optical knowledge is well worth preserving from a business perspective.
The fact that there is a hoard of high quality legacy glass out there is a MASSIVE advantage to the Ricoh marketing strategy. All they have to do is pump out a sensational camera body and bang - gazillions of pentax lovers clamor for their fill. What follows is a wave of high quality photography and reviews fueling 'new' entrants into the Pentax brand (if they got their camera body right). Next, these newbies buy the modern lenses further adding to the Pentax profit. Ultimately these newbies mature and start buying some legacy glass, thus completing the lifestyle of a Pentaxian ....
As far as resale goes, the price can only go up (if Pentax preserve the optics formula in new lenses). There will always be minor differences but these will be minor and somewhat negligible (coatings for example). The reason why I say this is simply because the cost of remanurfacturing legacy glass to the historical build standards would cost a bomb. Take my FA* 80-200mm - sending that beast by mail order international would cost over $50 alone ....... it weighs a lot because of the glass and metal finish.
The FF debate is another one entirely - if Pentax do produce one (which from a marketing perspective I think they should - re-affirm their legacy) then the process is probably a complex one. To re-affirm their legacy I suspect that they are systematically testing sensor performance with legacy glass so that the 'lifecycle' mentioned above can actually happen ...... it would not surprise me that producing sensor performance at the FF scale using legacy glass is not that simple.