[volley]

That sentence would get you immediately fired is you'd be working on nuclear or aerospace controls. After one year of re-qualification, I guess the 70-200 can withstand the chicken test: Bird Ingestion Test - YouTube.

May I respectfully disagree?
For more than 20 years I have been involved in and responsible for the engineering of critical components for nuclear and naval applications (like components for the reactor primary cooling or propulsion of non-nuclear submarines).
In these applications everybody must be aware that no matter how hard you try (and how much money you spend) mistakes or bugs will happen.
Yes, of course you work very hard to minimize the risk of failures. But still something may go wrong.
But the goal is to achieve a robust and fail safe design making sure that no single failure or bug will results in a desaster.

[normhead]

That sentence would get you immediately fired is you'd be working on nuclear or aerospace controls. After one year of re-qualification, I guess the 70-200 can withstand the chicken test:

I guess all the guys who worked on Apollo 13 were immediately fired.

Those guys who designed the shuttles probably never worked again, they now populate soup kitchens.

[D1N0]

failure is necessary in order to succeed

[starbase218]

exactly 3rd party product being incompatible is a plus feature for the OEM manufacturer - Caveat Emptor

I'm sure all OEMs would do it both Canon and Nikon have changed their mount protocols to stop all Sigma lens working in the past.
And Pentax adding GPS data to flash protocol broke most non field up-gradable 3rd party flashes.

Err... how does it help Canon or Nikon when some users will not choose that brand due to the body being incompatible with a certain 3rd party lens that that user wants to use? I'm pretty sure that changing the protocol was not done because that broke compatibility, but because breaking compatibility was seen as less important than what could be gained.

---------- Post added 12-19-2015 at 02:36 PM ----------

Pentax bears responsibility for proper operation of Yongnuo flashes? That's hilarious, man. Thanks for the laugh.

No, they don't "bear responsibility". But the job that Pentax has to do is to keep their users happy. Everything else is a means to an end. So yeah, they might want to consider not breaking compatibility with 3rd party products.

[normhead]

Err... how does it help Canon or Nikon when some users will not choose that brand due to the body being incompatible with a certain 3rd party lens that that user wants to use? I'm pretty sure that changing the protocol was not done because that broke compatibility, but because breaking compatibility was seen as less important than what could be gained.

---------- Post added 12-19-2015 at 02:36 PM ----------



No, they don't "bear responsibility". But the job that Pentax has to do is to keep their users happy. Everything else is a means to an end. So yeah, they might want to consider not breaking compatibility with 3rd party products.

A reasonable assumption. But it's the third party guys that want to make money selling to Pentax customers.

Pentax wants us to buy Pentax accessories.

I doubt very much that it would be worth Pentax's while to investigate compatibility with every photo product out there. That would be costly, and of no value to 99% of Pentax's customers. We always have the 1% wanting Pentax to pander to them, and for all of the rest of us to pay for it.

[Rondec]

Err... how does it help Canon or Nikon when some users will not choose that brand due to the body being incompatible with a certain 3rd party lens that that user wants to use? I'm pretty sure that changing the protocol was not done because that broke compatibility, but because breaking compatibility was seen as less important than what could be gained.

---------- Post added 12-19-2015 at 02:36 PM ----------



No, they don't "bear responsibility". But the job that Pentax has to do is to keep their users happy. Everything else is a means to an end. So yeah, they might want to consider not breaking compatibility with 3rd party products.

If you buy an off brand flash or lens, you do risk the possibility that it won't work forever in the future. But you are paying less money. Everything is at least a little bit of a risk. I have chosen to go with Pentax brand items, even if their are cheaper options out there -- flash, grip, lenses -- but I think most users wouldn't blame Pentax if Sigma lenses suddenly didn't work as advertised. It is incumbent on Sigma in such a situation to fix it, not Pentax. If Sigma was actually paying Pentax a licensing fee, they would be abreast of changes coming to the firmware and their lenses would work better.

[starbase218]

I doubt very much that it would be worth Pentax's while to investigate compatibility with every photo product out there. That would be costly, and of no value to 99% of Pentax's customers. We always have the 1% wanting Pentax to pander to them, and for all of the rest of us to pay for it.

I'm not saying they should avoid breaking compatibility at all costs. I'm saying they should consider the impact of doing so. If the impact is small, the benefits may outweigh the drawbacks, in which case they should break compatibility.

[beholder3]

Err... how does it help Canon or Nikon when some users will not choose that brand due to the body being incompatible with a certain 3rd party lens that that user wants to use? I'm pretty sure that changing the protocol was not done because that broke compatibility, but because breaking compatibility was seen as less important than what could be gained.

Even though you have a right to believe in Santa's existence these days, that it beyond naive.

Their marketing zombies put every effort in stopping users from using same quality cheaper batteries from 3rd parties.
They try every way of FUD on buyers of better value = grey market imports.
They absolutely deliberately break compatibility to stop users buying competition products. It's not different from ink jet printers. That is basic business logic.
While you might not understand it - they do.

No, they don't "bear responsibility". But the job that Pentax has to do is to keep their users happy.

Only they would be utterly stupid to worry about users of competitor flashes - regardless of those users coincidently being users of their own products as well.

[starbase218]

If you buy an off brand flash or lens, you do risk the possibility that it won't work forever in the future. But you are paying less money. Everything is at least a little bit of a risk. I have chosen to go with Pentax brand items, even if their are cheaper options out there -- flash, grip, lenses -- but I think most users wouldn't blame Pentax if Sigma lenses suddenly didn't work as advertised. It is incumbent on Sigma in such a situation to fix it, not Pentax. If Sigma was actually paying Pentax a licensing fee, they would be abreast of changes coming to the firmware and their lenses would work better.

Well, Sigma sells their dock by which you can upgrade most of the modern Sigma lenses yourself, so it probably wouldn't be too much of a problem in that particular case, assuming Sigma has proper support for the Pentax platform.

But you are right, of course, that it is a risk and you should know that before buying a 3rd party accessory. But reading some comments, some people seem to think Pentax wants to break compatibility, just for the sake of breaking compatibility.

---------- Post added 12-19-2015 at 03:08 PM ----------

[COLOR=Silver][COLOR=Black]
Even though you have a right to believe in Santa's existence these days, that it beyond naive.

Great. If you have a less insulting comment to make, send me a PM and I might consider posting here again. You are breaking compatibility with my protocols, thereby making me unhappy and causing me to not contribute here anymore.

[Rondec]

Well, Sigma sells their dock by which you can upgrade most of the modern Sigma lenses yourself, so it probably wouldn't be too much of a problem in that particular case, assuming Sigma has proper support for the Pentax platform.

But you are right, of course, that it is a risk and you should know that before buying a 3rd party accessory. But reading some comments, some people seem to think Pentax wants to break compatibility, just for the sake of breaking compatibility.

I haven't seen that. The Sigma 18-35 f1.8 has not, from all accounts, worked well from the beginning. My guess this has to do with Sigma's reverse engineering Pentax's auto focus protocols incorrectly, but I'm not an expert. People are constantly requesting improved auto focus and tracking and if Pentax works on it and third party lenses don't work as well as a consequence, that doesn't mean that there is a deliberate effort to break the third party lenses. Often in the past, folks have been able to send in their Sigma lenses for chip updates to fix things. Takes some effort, but I doubt that Pentax has a lot of concern about this one way or the other.

[normhead]

But you are right, of course, that it is a risk and you should know that before buying a 3rd party accessory. But reading some comments, some people seem to think Pentax wants to break compatibility, just for the sake of breaking compatibility.

Funny, that's what PC manufacturers who didn't want to meet Apple's technical and performance standards used to say about Apple. Just because they sold crappy product to PC users, they seemed to think they should be able to sell to Apple users as well. And it was Apple's job to reduce their standards to meet their inferior standards.

Most of the people who make those kinds of charges, just want to buy something cheap, and often things are not "good value" cheap, they are cheaply designed and cheaply manufactured. The whole idea of a "brand" is that whatever you buy from them, the quality will be consistent. If you want cheap, buy a cheap brand, you can have all kinds of cheap. Your choice. But that has nothing to do with Pentax.

[beholder3]

causing me to not contribute here anymore.

I will monitor your credibility to keep your word on this.

[rawr]

Sheesh.

With the Pentax hotshoe issue I raised, the issue was just a simple matter of the physical location of the hotshoe being too close to the pentaprism hump on the K-3 II for some third party devices. As some Pentax users have reported themselves.

If you look around at any other DSLR of any brand - Nikon, Canon, even Sony or Sigma - they all give the hotshoe more room forward of the foot, or have the hotshoe elevated (just like the K-1 now does) to help whatever may be attached to the hotshoe clear the pentaprism hump a bit. It is kind of the industry default layout for hotshoes - nothing specific about supporting 3rd party flashes/ microphones/flash triggers etc by anyone.

I don't see the need for drama about this observation.

[Mistral75]

Sheesh.

With the Pentax hotshoe issue I raised, the issue was just a simple matter of the physical location of the hotshoe being too close to the pentaprism hump on the K-3 II for some third party devices. As some Pentax users have reported themselves.

If you look around at any other DSLR of any brand - Nikon, Canon, even Sony or Sigma - they all give the hotshoe more room forward of the foot, or have the hotshoe elevated (just like the K-1 now does) to help whatever may be attached to the hotshoe clear the pentaprism hump a bit. It is kind of the industry default layout for hotshoes - nothing specific about supporting 3rd party flashes/ microphones/flash triggers etc by anyone.

I don't see the need for drama about this observation.

Are you new around here?

[D1N0]

I guess pentax figured since they didn't need to fit an O-gps1 on it they could do it this way. As long as Yongnuo doesn't offer pttl I won't care much. Sigma, and Metz will fit.