Originally posted by BigMackCam I think you might be surprised. There's a big following here on the forums for older glass, including Takumar, M, A, F, and FA, and third party models - and not just from those who find current lenses too costly. I have quite a few older manual focus lenses, and while it's true that the wider angle models can be trickier to focus manually, it's not essential to change the focusing screen depending on the aperture you're shooting at.
Maybe, but I don't want to be guessing the focus. I mean, I want to "focus" on what matters to me: composition, light, colors, picking an interesting viewpoint. And I want my camera to take other worries away so that I can improve those skills. Of course you can say, "use liveview and focus highlighting". But I prefer using the viewfinder, for a number of reasons.
Originally posted by BigMackCam WIth entry-level users, I absolutely agree with you. Seasoned photographers, though, are likely to know that Pentax has backward compatibility for lenses like no other brand, and for many that will be an additional - if not primary - attraction.
But seasoned photographers most likely already have a brand of camera and a lot of lenses. If that brand is Pentax, you don't need to attract them anymore. If that brand is another brand, I don't think you'll convince them to jump ship by saying "look, all these old lenses still work". Besides, the F-mount is pretty old too, I think? So if they're using Nikon, they could be using legacy glass too.
I remember an interview at PMA or Photokina about a certain Pentax body a number of years ago. The interviewer asked a very logical question, "what's new and exciting about this camera?" The Pentax rep (I think it was John Carlson) responded "I'll tell you what's old and exciting about this camera" and then continued on about support for all those old lenses. To me that kind of sounds like he was evading the question. I don't think that sells particularly well.
Of course, you do want to keep existing users. But in the end, Pentax is also a company and needs to make money to exist. So again, maybe from a commercial POV, dropping support for older lenses may be acceptable when you can attract new users that will spend money on your product and may eventually grow into enthusiasts or even pros. But then, I don't know how many seasoned photographers still use old manual glass.
Just to be clear: I don't advocate Pentax drops the aperture lever right now, and certainly not on higher-end bodies. But I just don't think the backward compatibility argument on its own is a valid reason for not doing it. You have to consider that keeping old stuff in your mount can make it more difficult to add features in the long run, for various reasons (it may not physically fit, or by having kept a certain feature there are now more users that depend on that feature). So there's "forward" or "future" compatibility to be considered as well.
Originally posted by BigMackCam I guess the question I'd ask is, what else do you currently think is missing from Pentax that Ricoh could resolve by modernising the mount further still, or by removing the mechanical aperture control? I can't think of anything obvious - at least, not from a stills photography perspective... so why remove it?
The aperture lever was the last mechanical control (if you assume lenses with built-in motors). If you have everything electrical, it allows more flexibility. E.g. you can implement focus, aperture, etc. how you want it, based on the intended use of that lens. It's the ability to abstract away the implementation of e.g. focusing that matters.
OTOH I'm hardly an expert. On another forum, I mentioned that I thought Pentax might be aiming to offer better video than Nikon, and closer to Canon, with this new mount, PLM motor and EM aperture control. But then someone else said the rest of the video specs on the K-70 are really not that great and Pentax is just trying to be good enough for parents wanting to take videos of their kids. So... that shows how much I know.