Originally posted by Raylon That's exactly what I said earlier, the normal new customer doesn't make an educated choice, and heads straight for Canon and Nikon without ever looking at Pentax. I came to that conclusion by simply looking at the number of Canon's and Nikon's sold vs. the number of Pentax cameras sold. Just go to an airshow and count the cameras you see. Last one I was at I counted about 40 CaNikons and 2 Pentax, including myself.
OK, the normal new customer may be minimally educated WRT dslrs. Or they even may be well educated in it (I feel I was fairly educated about SLR and DSLR) when I went looking. So, they walk into their local Costco, WalMart, Best Buy...and see what? Nikon and Canon. They hear Paul Simon singing "I got a Nikon camera..." The problem isn't that they're heading straight for Canon or Nikon, it's that it's all they can see and play around with. And if the store doesn't carry Pentax, what employee (who is probably barely trained in anything photographic) will even know about Pentax and where to send the customer to look at them?
I had the advantage in that my film SLR days made me know at least a starting point in what I wanted feature-wise. That, and I used a Ricoh back then with the K-mount system. So, when I did my research and found out about body-based IS, and backwards compatibilty with lenses, my mind was made up. I still had to order my K20D w/o ever getting a chance to play with it, but when it did arrive, it felt so much better than the Canons and Nikons I'd tried in the stores. It just felt right and intuitive.
That is my only problem with Pentax...the lack of shelf presence. If the consumer actually had a chance to do a hands-on comparison of Pentax vs the competition, I think Pentax would have a much larger share of the market than they do now. Think about the state of the coffee business in the US. Until Starbucks brought the average coffee drinker the taste of something better (or at least what they thought they remembered coffee tasting like when they went to Europe or elsewhere) the average consumer was content with Folgers and Maxwell House, preground, from a tin can that was many months old. (I don't like Starbucks BTW, too charred, so I roast my own).
Originally posted by Raylon I chose a Pentax as my first dSLR because the K200d at the time was cheap and had awesome features. In body IS and WR for under $500. But now, Pentax is still awesome in my opinion, but I am only 20, and I have a long life ahead of me and wanted to buy into a system I could really grow into. Pentax, while has some excellent primes, I simply am not a prime person. I like my big zooms. I also like doing videos. Pentax doesn't really have a huge selection of big zooms. Also, I will probably be getting a 5D mark 3 when they arrive sometime next year. I will be able to have excellent reach with the 7D at 1.6x crop but also have the wideness of FF. Maybe one day I will pick up a APS-H also, and have the full lineup. I like Pentax, but I can't see myself growing into them.
You say Pentax is still awesome, but because you're young, you'll probably switch. No one's stopping you. Remember though, a long life is not guaranteed, so whatever system you choose to shoot with, be happy with it. Griping and complaining about cost or features will only rob you of joy. As an aside, I think too many people feel "if only I had the latest this or that, then I'll be happy and..." That's exactly what businesses want you to feel, so they can keep feeding people more and more stuff. It may be cliche, but money and stuff can't buy happiness.