Originally posted by mtgmansf Wow, besides being condescending, you make many projections and opinions based on zero knowledge on who I am, my experience, real purchase data, and what money I will, and have, spent on photographic equipment, as well as my friends who are serious birders and animal photographers! Fact -Ricoh/Pentax has either dropped or never made the ultra-wide 25mm and 28-45mm zoom for the 645 system, ultra-wide primes for the K1, as well as super tele lenses for FX and 645 digital cameras. That all super telephoto lenses - lenses over 500mm in focal length by most definitions- have to cost $10-15K is not supported, with many current zooms that go to 600mm (Tamron and Sigma), the Sigma 300-800mm, the Sigma 800mm, etc. Since Tamron likely makes the 15-30mm, 24-70mm, and maybe the current 70-200mm for Pentax shows that the possibility exists for at least a very reasonable, up to 600mm zoom lens. Lastly, please let me know, when and where I am telling people to move to other systems and ditch Pentax, and also please answer the question - who is making the attempt to sound knowledgeable by introducing irrelevant information, conjecture, and speculative sales data that that makes no difference to most people...
The DFA *70-200 is a Pentax designed and manufactured lens. Furthermore, if Pentax was interested in having Tamron designs, we wouldn't have waited for the last couple of years for the DFA * primes. Clearly those are from the Pentax lens designers too.
To defend Norm just a bit, his post specifically referenced a 600mm f4 lens, not a consumer 150-600 zoom lens. We've had 50-500 lenses available for ages from Sigma and they have longer lenses now. They are decent lenses, but also quite a bit cheaper than f4 super-telephotos.
I will say that I too, fall into the camp of thinking that lenses that aren't for me aren't particularly important. I seldom shoot longer than 200mm on crop and don't spend much time in the wildlife threads/super telephoto threads. I don't suppose Pentax would have any problem with Tamron releasing a 150-600 lens in a K mount, but they aren't going to rebrand it as they have the 150-450 (which was designed by Pentax) and obviously they think that is adequate for the time being.
---------- Post added 02-11-18 at 05:33 AM ----------
Originally posted by Ian Stuart Forsyth We will more than likely see some prime lenses in the 400mm , 500mm and 600mm from Nikon that will be under $6000 in the next coming years
I doubt they would be of the f4 variety. Nikon has been raising prices, not lowering them over time and now, with them looking into mirrorless, they are going to be slowly moving away from the F mount and creating lenses for their new mirrorless cameras. I guess we'll see, but Nikon is seriously looking at changing course, as the last couple of years have not been kind to them, either from a market share or a revenue standpoint.