Originally posted by Clavius The main reason to get into Pentax is (was?) the nice lenses... If those lenses would be available in other mounts too, then wouldn't that have an adverse effect for Pentax?
I don't see why, actually it might have the opposite effect. It would generate another (potentially large) revenue stream, increase their public profile and perceived value, add recognition to the brand name.
All for the price of enabling users of brands like Canon to do what they're already doing, without any 'chop'.
So there would be other Pentax lenses around, perhaps many of them, in mounts besides PK. How does that hurt us? More income for R + D, more employees, larger distributorship, product placement in venues that now don't stock any Ricoh/Pentax product. Where's the downside?
Unless, of course, someone is so enamored with the unsullied Pentax line they can't bear the thought of anyone else having a Pentax-branded lens on their non-Pentax camera? And certainly not obtaining it in a way that actually generated PROFIT for Pentax! Horrors!
There is ample precedent for lens (only) makers having a small camera-body line, to go with their lenses. Sigma, Vivitar, even Ricoh themselves with the Rikenon line, all released bodies after establishing themselves as third-party lensmakers. Before anyone reminds us that most of these bodies are no longer in production, it wasn't the quality or volume that killed the camera body production, it was auto-focus. AF technology and licensing fees doomed many of the 1970's and 1980's SLR makers and changed the 35mm camera landscape entirely. It even catapulted Canon ahead of Nikon!
I'd guess it's never going to happen anyway, but see no reason to worry if it did. It doesn't mean Pentax has to cease making DSLR bodies, quite the opposite. The resources to do that would merely increase. They could even reserve a specialty lens line (Ltd?), only in PK mount, for the absolute pure of heart.
JMO,
Ron