Originally posted by Zewrak I really doubt your first point. But I hope you are right. I do agree with your second point. However, what choices do people have? The DA/DA* is what people wants now and thats where Pentax spend their research and development it seem. There are not enough second hand lenses to go around and prices will be insane if everyone went for the older lenses.
If Pentax really had plans for a FF camera, I don't think they would hide it as well as they do, by just releasing DA* lenses, but also plan ahead and make room in their lenspark for fullframes.
*cough* Nikon *cough* Nikon is still releasing DX lenses. The consumer market is where the money is at right now. All of these people that buy a dlsr and want a cheap one lens fits all solution. These people don't care what size chip is in the camera, they just want to have an auto function and an onboard flash to fire. So for pentax to sit there and spend the money on redoing their full frame lens lineup is not in the stars. Thats not to say they arn't spending some R&D to revamp their old lineup with currect specs/technology on paper (or in the computers now), but its not a high priority. (which I think agrees with you)
Another point is that, even if they release a full frame camera, its not going to be at the consumer / prosumer level. It might be another 10 years before there are more people on the full frame sensor then the smaller sensor. So they might release some of their high grade optics from years past as an FA2 and then re-do some of the FA lenses for the launch of the full frame camera.
All I'm trying to say is that why not make sure your purchase today will still work 5-10-20 years down the road?