Originally posted by weverka If Pentax is the only SLR maker, there will be no third party lenses. Pentax will have to follow suit.
Nikon and Canon are getting out of SLRs. The mirrorless cameras have a smaller distance between the lens and the sensor. Lens designers use that space when they can.
No new lenses will be designed with sufficient back focal length to accommodate the mirror of an SLR.
With no new third party lenses, won't Pentax fall behind?
You are starting with something of a false premise and then building on wet sand. Pentax is, primarily, a lens maker. They always have been. If you look around, you will find very few third party lenses made for Pentax compared to the big three camera makers.
One of the reasons for this is because people who know stuff come to Pentax for the lenses. If they want to use a Stigma lens, for example, they will more often than not buy a camera from Canikony as they are higher performance bodies, and people, for some reason, think high frame rates are important.
Do you think Pentax fell behind with the superb DFA50/1.4 or DFA85/1.4? Those two lenses are at the very top of the quality pile.
Expect a lot of new lenses from all manufacturers to be a refried SLR lens with an empty tube behind the rear element. It's cheaper and easier to do that than it is to develop new lens designs, and honestly, the average person doesn't know enough of care enough to consider that. All they are going to look at is number of megapixels (obviously more is better, the admen tell us so), higher frame rate (obviously more is better, the admen tell us so), bigger buffer (obviously more is better, the admen tell us so), etc.
They will also be told that the SLR is so last century, mirrorless is the way of the future. And many will buy into this and become just another sheep in the fold. Some of those will discover that looking at an EVF is akin to having someone poke a pencil into their eye and will look for any alternative that doesn't hurt. They will find Pentax, or they will take up a different hobby.
Pentax is in the fortunate position of having a market niche handed to them on a silver platter. History repeats itself in this case, as Leica found themselves in the same position some 60 years ago, and they did just fine.
---------- Post added Jul 27th, 2022 at 09:11 AM ----------
Originally posted by biz-engineer It's not the end of the SLR, it's the new beginning with Pentax
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSvtdcWfVsI
---------- Post added 27-07-22 at 07:32 ----------
It's a bit too simplistic. Third party lens makers don't complete on cameras, they compete on lenses but not quite exactly because the third party lenses are cheaper but often not as good quality as OEM. The proof is in the pudding, take the Sony FE mount, it's the most widely supported by third party manufacturers, Sony FE climbed the ranking to the level of Canon, Sony now being number 1 MILC supplier in the USA. Third party lens support helps sell more cameras!
The problem with this theory is that cameras historically have been sold for very low margins. The money is in the lenses. Proof of this is how there isn't a Third Party lens maker in the world who has sold camera bodies to fit their lenses. If cameras were profitable, Sigma would be selling bodies to mount their SLR lenses on, not just the orphan that is the Merrill (are they even still making that camera series?).
If Third Party lenses help sell cameras, while at the same time pirating lens sales from camera makers, they are not helping the camera maker, they are costing the camera maker money. They are costing them in profitable lens sales while at the same time forcing low margin or even negative margin camera body sales.
They are the bloodsuckers of this industry.