Originally posted by Fogel70 Kit lenses with silent AF don't cost more than Pentax screw-drive kit lenses. Pentax even use silent AF motors in all Q AF lenses
Originally posted by Unsinkable II As Fogel has said above, the Canon and Nikon kit 18-55 lenses are retailing for at or lower than the price of the Pentax 18-55.
The silent motors convey a level of smoothness and sophistication missing with the Pentax crude-sounding screw-driven kit lens. New buyers always seem to pick up on this. Only later as they learn more about ILC cameras do they realise that their Nikon 5100 won't autofocus older lenses.
I'm just suggesting Pentax cover both bases. It's a competitive advantage and Canikon have left it open.
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So you are telling me that Pentax can engineer from the ground up lenses that have silent ring motors in them - in every single lens - having not amortized the R&D and Plant and Equipment costs over many years of selling many thousands of more expensive lenses as CaNikon have - and offer that to us in a brand new $100 kit zoom lens that is intended to work with a boxy point and shoot camera that doesn't even have a viewfinder and is destined to fail before anyone has ever even seen one?
And design the electronics and algorithm to control the new CDAF 81 point focus system with a lens mounted focus motor. And also incur the expense of retaining the body motor, screw drive and gearing in the K-01 for those that demand it so the camera can be used with their precious FA Limiteds, without introducing cost-prohibitive complexity? And while they're at it, how about they un-cripple the KAF2 mount so we can properly meter our 50-year-old Takumars - I mean, c'mon, Pentax - backward compatibility should mean something!!
And keep the lenses characteristically small, sharp and contrasty in the Pentax tradition? And as a side benefit, allow the lenses to protrude into the (former) mirror box so they are really cool and flat? But keep them useable on the legacy Pentax bodies
with mirror boxes we all already own.
This all to be magically created by a company that can't make HSM that works, and can't service it when it breaks? That has retired all its best lens engineers, can't do proper quality control, moved its manufacturing base to Southeast Asia (who wants an FA Limited or A50/1.2 manufactured in Vietnam)?
In a company whose total sale price to Ricoh was something like $100,000,000 5 months ago (pocket change to Ricoh, BTW)?
Oh, and keep the price at $849 for the zoom kit. (I'll buy it after the street price drops to $599)
Give Pentax Ricoh Imaging an effing break! Sophisticated my hind end. Hipsters will buy that Fuji thing for $2300. Or wear a Leica dangling from a neckstrap on the subway.
This is supposed to be a fun camera that does lots of things nearly as well as a dSLR. That's the gap to plug - K5 sensor in a $750 camera. Edge technology video in
the same $750 camera. It is not intended to be a smooth, sophisticated dSLR in a compact body. Its a one-off, or maybe the start of a new line (emphasis on start) that appeals to a different generation.
Now I suppose someone will say if they really wanted to add something Pentax should add native 4G and an InstaGram button.
We're such gear snobs.
</rant>
Last edited by monochrome; 02-05-2012 at 10:26 AM.