Dear Pentax.
This thread is now 5 years old and there are a lot of suggestions of things reasonable and not so reasonable (biometric sensors on a camera?), and since the question of "jumping ship" has been on my own mind a lot lately I though I'd contribute.
I've been a long time Pentaxian, from my first film camera given as a gift from my dad (Pentax P30T and some lenses) to the *ist-D back in the early days of "affordable DSLRs", to my current workhorse of a K20D. Pentax is an enigma to me, in some ways far ahead of the curve, in some ways far behind. Knowing that for what I do (non-pro portraits) I don't "need" any more of a camera than what I have, here are some thoughts on the pros and cons of Pentax.
Pros:
- High end features in sub-$2000 bodies such as
- In-body IS
- Optical preview
- Great ergonomics (no idea how someone adjusts ISO easily on the D800 without taking the camera off their eye)
- Built in intervalometer (a $40+ option in other brands)
- 5 shot bracketing
- Digital level
- Great image quality
- Backwards compatibility with every K mount lens ever. Plus screw mounts and anything else you can adapt to a bayonet mount. You don't realize how nice this is until you try to navigate the fx/dx/eos/etc lens mazes from Canon and Nikon
- Built in DNG
There are also cons (these are things that affect me personally, not a blue sky wishlist of features I'd want to see):
- Flash sync speed still restricted to 1/180 compared to the 1/250 that most (not all, the D600 being an odd exception) other higher end DSRLs have. High speed sync is available with Pentax Flashes, but the fact that there are only two or three, all over 5 years old at this point (the 540 and 360 anyway), this is distressing to a strobist shooter such as myself.
- Low selection of new lenses. I know I can use old lenses, but confidence in the overall system is from seeing new products come out, and the Pentax Lens roadmap hasn't gotten much new added or filled in for years.
- Few product lines, at least in the DSLR range. You have the K30 (mid-range/mom-with-camera) and the prosumer K5, but no "pro" camera (ie: D4 equivalent). This isn't an issue for me (again, I don't "need" new gear), but it adds to the impression that Pentax isn't that dedicated to the DSLR lines.
- Full Frame, which everyone seems to want, isn't a huge deal to me and Pentax has done a great job with the DA50-135/2.8 which my FF friends are constantly annoyed that I can carry around with one hand all day. However "affordable full frame" seems like where the market is going and as affordable FF models from Nikon and Canon move from pro level down to mom-with-camera level and Pentax is the only company without a full frame offering, they'll be seen as behind the curve.
- Higher megapixels would be nice. The 14 from the K20 are great and the 16 will be nice, but another jump up against the competition like you had with the K10 and K20 would be nice.
- Autofocus speed and AF points. I recently played with a 4 year old D90 and found it's AF speed and ability to be far faster and more accurate (in what it locked on to) than my K20 from the same age. The number of focus points on the K5ii is 11, the D600 (FF 24mp) and D7000 (aps-c 16mp) have 39. Shooting a marathon last weekend I found the AF speed and accuracy of the K20 affected my performance as a shooter.
The issues for me personally are less features that are missing and more about uncertainty about the future. Pentax has been bought and sold twice in the last few years, and the only DSLR camera that has come out in the last 2 years is the K5ii, which is admittedly an upgrade to an already great camera, but it's a literal copy of a camera that came out in 2010 with (as far as people have seen/been told at this point) a better AF system. There have been minimal new lenses released. The flash units from Pentax are from 2006. Other than (constant) rumors about upcoming full frame offerings nothing seems to have happened.
Most importantly we, as loyal Pentaxians
don't know what is happening. I know that companies don't like to tip their hands for upcoming products, but when a company like apple does this you know that a new iPhone will be coming out each year, but with Pentax we could see no new DSLR products for years and years.
I am happy with my gear. I don't need new gear. I do however hesitate to put more money into more Pentax gear because I don't know if it's putting money into a system that isn't moving forward. I don't need more megapixels or more FPS
now, but if and when I turn pro and do need to shoot portraits that can be blown up to billboard size or sports where I need 11 FPS and Pentax doesn't have the gear available... that's where my hesitation comes in. The decision I, and other Pentax fans are asking ourselves right now is should we put more money into Pentax now and hope that new and improved gear arrives or should we save that money and move to Canon or Nikon, which appear to have more vibrant ecosystems of gear, even if we lose some of the awesomeness that Pentax has (see the above "Pros" list).
Love,
Alan