Originally posted by Pål Jensen I think it is realistic if talk about 1-2 year away. The coming spring with may see the high end APS K-3 and the rest of the APS roadmapped lenses in 2013. Then the APS line-up will be the best in business both regarding cameras and lenses. Also next year will see the two roadmapped zooms for the 645D and hopefully an updated 645 body. If lucky, we will see the FF camera late next year for 2014 release along with a handfull of new FF lenses.
What makes a 'high end' camera? My definition of 'high end' is what a professional photographer would use, as opposed to gadgets or tacked on features. So my simple question is 'Is there any reasonable chance that Pentax will release a camera that will seriously impact that market, APSC or FF, in the next couple of years?' My answer is no.
Echoing many people here, I can't lay hands on Pentax gear locally. I live in the third largest metro area of a northeastern US state, within an hour of the first and fiifth most populous metro areas of the
country. And I have to drive every bit of that hour to touch a Pentax product in person. No matter how great an individual camera Pentax can make, they have almost zero presence on the ground. And that's the prep work they'd be doing if they were planning on releasing a 'high-end' anything. Retail, rental, and repair. Professional services. Accessories. The bodies are the end of a very long chain of the overall system. And as toe to toe as Pentax might make a body, what sells 'high end' Canikon is actually the system, and the halo from that, and the clear upgrade path it provides, translates to consumer sales. Pentax Ricoh would need to have that in place regardless of what new products they might offer. I'm a) assuming that they're smart people that realize this, and b) it's not accidental that we're not seeing this trajectory change. You need lead-time on this stuff. If anything serious were on the drawing board we'd be seeing precursor products and services, in new outlets, with new marketing.
Therefore the logical conclusion is Pentax will continue to release marginally improved iterations of familiar products, fine in their own right, but with a system that lags behind their competitors. That's probably fine for the existing user base, but it's death for a small market share company to not be making moves that bring in new customers. And I can't imagine picking Pentax if I were starting from scratch tomorrow. The lack of announcements mean that Pentax doesn't even believe internally that they have any case to make/product on the board that would compel someone to hold off on another purchase. Maybe it's different in the home market, but from a US prospective there doesn't appear to be any real movement.