[Kryscendo]

Means the hardware is most likely precisely the same.

If so, it would be amazing how two different cameras can fare so differently.

It looks like the K30 will be selling well from the initial responses. The K-01 though... not so hot. Not cold, but not hot. That being said, take the same guts and throw in an optical viewfinder and a non-marc newson design and lo and behold, we have a winner.

[Kunzite]

Pentax expects the K-30 to sell better than the K-01 - the latter not being designed to be an entry level sold in huge quantities.

[Aristophanes]

Pentax expects the K-30 to sell better than the K-01 - the latter not being designed to be an entry level sold in huge quantities.

I spoke with a rep from a major Canadian retailer who said quite bluntly the K-01 is "not selling". A bit of discussion and it's a price/design/features thing holding it back. He also said Pentax sales are down because of no advertising and poor pricing. He'd like more competition for Canikon.

[D0n]

A retailer in my area said k-01 is not selling either... also noteworthy is that most of their staff are canikon fanboys anyways.... couldn't answer any intelligent questions... just "This one's popular" and "This is what the pros use" and "this one is highly rated"....... while handing you non pentax cameras.... only one guy on staff who used to work at a high end pro shop that went under knew anything about photography or Pentax and all he has to say is Pentax are "really underrated" and "high quality"...
too bad really... it is a nice camera... I could sell it easily....

Pentax really needs to get these tools out there, even if they need to get their own staff or users like myself to offer free training to store clerks or even better, to potential customers.... get a Pentax expert teaching photography at major retailers, once a month or so...
and a large flat panel display with video showcasing Pentax features in stores.

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Last edited by D0n; 06-01-2012 at 05:04 AM.

[eddie1960]

A retailer in my area said k-01 is not selling either... also noteworthy is that most of their staff are canikon fanboys anyways.... couldn't answer any intelligent questions... just "This one's popular" and "This is what the pros use" and "this one is highly rated"....... while handing you non pentax cameras.... only one guy on staff who used to work at a high end pro shop that went under knew anything about photography or Pentax and all he has to say is Pentax are "really underrated" and "high quality"...
too bad really... it is a nice camera... I could sell it easily....

Pentax really needs to get these tools out there, even if they need to get their own staff or users like myself to offer free training to store clerks or even better, to potential customers.... get a Pentax expert teaching photography at major retailers, once a month or so...
and a large flat panel display with video showcasing Pentax features in stores.

the lack of staff education is a massive drawback for anyone who is not a market leader. essentially they just move boxes and it's easier to move canikon boxes just because of market awareness. For a long time Pentax marketing has really lacked in North America anyway, and having been a Pentax retailer I can say hat the rep support was very low, we saw him maybe once a year. This is a bigger challenge than getting the product out. It will be interesting to see how it is addressed over the next year - I don't expect massive change in Canada we are just too small a market spread over too great an area
the one identifiable Pentax marketing piece here is this one reflected in the Don River. It's been there as long as I can remember (and I've lived around the corner for 23 years. pre hoya there was a billboard for the ds that was up still 6 months after it was discontinued

[Aristophanes]

the lack of staff education is a massive drawback for anyone who is not a market leader.

Well, in most brick and mortar retailers of the photographic speciality, I find Pentax has a good rep for solid cameras and lenses. In fact, staff usually like their DSLR's.

Big Box retailers are a completely different story, where Pentax is pretty much invisible.

The big issue for Pentax is lousy distribution, poor pricing strategies, incomplete product line-up and gaps (tethering?), and most of all....non-existent marketing.

In the last Henry's flyer I counted 22 separate brands, and no Pentax. Nothing.

So no wonder the K-01 is not selling. The internet thing is not going to do the dirty work for Pentax's ineffective marketing. All they ned is a little corner to say their piece and let the design and hands-on work at the counter. Solid ergonomics, good design, AA batteries, WR, all make an impression, but not if they are not in the flyer.

Boneheaded marketing = the K30 being a WR body, but the WR 18-55 kit lens is not an option. This is just plain idiotic. The Canadian rep mad a point of telling me that that was just jaw-droppingly poor decision-making. The Olympus OM-D has no such limitation. guess which one gets the in-store staff attention?

Ned...you're staff are doing a very poor job.

[bobmaxja]

Ned have nothing to do in Canada

[eddie1960]

Ned have nothing to do in Canada

exactly, but I imagine Pentax US decisions on how an item is stocked impacts what is available to us

[bobmaxja]

Ned probably dont know were Canada is ? Is better that way

[FerocityK5]

I've always thought Pentax don't advertise enough... meaning at all. I can't understand why, because I think they'd dominate the market if they could show people how much better they're APSC slrs are for the same money as CanNikon.

[panoguy]

The matte silver looks like a Limited version... Most of the glossy colors look like car finishes. Reminds me of Nikon's D3100 with its shiny metallic colors, but with the K-30's rugged, masculine design the Nikon paint starts to look like nail polish.

I've seen and handled both the shiny ("Crystal") and matte ("Silky") K-30s, and by far the matte looks better in person. It softens the angles and looks a lot less "cheap" than the shiny plastic. Lucky Asia gets to choose between the finishes as well as the colors, while in NA our only matte choice is black... that matte khaki or matte silver would rock!

[Brangdon]

On a phone or a small point and shoot it makes perfect sense but on a dSLR (and a car) you absolutely need physical buttons. That tactile response ensure a much better shooting experience, keeping your attention on the subject. You can't be constantly looking at a screen to adjust your shutter speed or aperture. And since you already have the buttons why do you need the touch screen?

You can have physical buttons for the frequently used features in addition to having a touch screen for the less common ones. A touch screen doesn't take any more space than a non-touch one; it doesn't take space away from physical buttons.

The benefit of touch is a more direct UI. There's a limit to how many physical buttons we can have. The rest of the interface uses menus. Being able to select menu items by touching them is more direct than having to use left/right up/down keys to scroll until the option is highlighted and then hit OK. "More direct" means quicker and with fewer abstractions getting between you and the camera. You see it, you touch it; you don't have to work out how to navigate a cursor around to get to it. A big part of why tablets are so successful is that they are simpler and easier to use than notebooks. Photography doesn't need to be made harder than it is.

Touch is especially good on images for setting the focus point exactly where you want it, for pinch-to-zoom or tap-to-zoom exactly where you want instead of into the centre; and for on-screen keyboards.

Touch screens are needed for typing without a keyboard and graphical interface browsing, 2 things that never should be on a camera.

I disagree. One of the things I am looking for in my next camera is better ways of getting the photos out. Specifically, onto a tablet or laptop so I can review them on a large(ish) screen in the field. Using cables is clunky and means you have to carry a cable. Using SD cards is better but few tablets have full-sized ones and few cameras have micro-sized ones. Wireless is the way to go, and a qwerty keyboard would be a big help in setting it up. It could also be used to annotate in the field (I don't like talking to my camera), add copyright info etc.

Being able to use wireless to upload directly to the internet would be a bonus. Sometimes it'd be valuable, eg, if there is a risk of the camera getting broken or confiscated. (I'm in the UK. Without getting into the politics, the police here sometimes overstep their authority where photographers are concerned.)

[Clicker]

Ned probably dont know were Canada is ? Is better that way

Greg Hall whom no "Pentax Joe" has ever seen, not sure if he ever was at any Henry's or Vistek public events?
Hope one day he shows announced to a Toronto meet maybe a better Pentax base will magically appear . Ned of course is always welcomed

The only time i've seen heavy advertising here in Toronto was during the K200D era, i was a proud owner having seen those Ads displayed almost every where i looked.

[mee]

I spoke with a rep from a major Canadian retailer who said quite bluntly the K-01 is "not selling". A bit of discussion and it's a price/design/features thing holding it back. He also said Pentax sales are down because of no advertising and poor pricing. He'd like more competition for Canikon.

reminds me of...

After 1983, all Yashica brand cameras were marketed by Kyocera (Kyoto Ceramics), which also made newer Contax cameras. By 1985, the company was facing intense market competition from other manufacturers, especially Minolta, which had introduced a competitively priced and advanced autofocus 35mm SLR camera. Yashica eventually introduced its own autofocus 35mm SLR camera line that was overpriced and poorly marketed in comparison to its competition. In response, Kyocera gradually repositioned the brand as a budget-priced 'point & shoot' line, moving production from Japan to Hong Kong, and discontinuing all high-end SLR camera production.

gulp.

[Jirig]

K-30 technically look's nice but body design is a bit strange.........