Originally posted by turbosaturn With an adapter of course. It may be a viable, yet expensive option. Thoughts?
Do you mean, introduce a new camera and say, in effect, "We have no lenses for this camera, but you can go to the used market and buy 645 lenses"?
I don't think that they would do that. First of all, it would make them a laughing stock of the industry.
Secondly, there aren't all that many 645 lenses around. Those that are, seem to be going to people actually still using film, or to people waiting for the 645D.
A more likely scenario would be to downplay the notion that 35mm film lenses don't work well on digital. K-mount lenses would be a more logical fit. First of all, they're a lot cheaper than 645 lenses, and they're a lot more plentiful. Secondly, they don't need an adapter.
Personally, I don't think that Pentax is going to release a FF camera any time soon. That segment of the dslr market is very, very small, compared to the APS-C dslr market. Nikon and Canon have that market just about sewn up. Even Sony, with all their deep pockets, is finding it very difficult to compete against C & N in that market segment. And Sony has a reputation for not settling for anything less than second place. Right now, they're a very distant third.
I think that Pentax is more likely to release a mirrorless aps-c camera. Its possible that they might join the 4/3 consortium, but I doubt it. I think that, if they did release a mirrorless camera, they would go on their own. This is, IMHO, an easier market segment to penetrate.
Their problem is one that they would also have with FF; no lenses. A mirrorless k-mount camera would be DOA. There's little point if you don't reduce the registration distance. Some lenses, particularly the pancake lenses, could be the same optical formula, repackaged in a lens mount for the shorter registration, but then they wouldn't be quite so "pancake" and the camera/lens package wouldn't be very small.
But then, I could easily be wrong...