Originally posted by Tesla I find it strange that Pentax didn't have a camera ready for this year; their 100th year. The least they could have done was release a special edition of the K-1 II. Their strategy has never made sense to me. Pentax has been lacking in advertising and little presence at stores and now shows. IMO, fan only sales doesn't seem smart. I wish they would make a bigger effort at reaching new customers.
I don't find it odd, it's what they've been doing for 5+ years.
The bodies are fine, cool features like WR and SR, big OVF, but they aren't showing a good presence to people outside the Pentax bubble. They can't remain competitive selling the same iterative cameras to the same flock of people that bought into Pentax 40, 30, 15 years ago.
I've taken some photo courses the past year+ here in Missoula, and people are honestly shocked that Pentax does digital. They remember the K1000, and past that,
They don't advertise and people don't know about them.
People want fast AF, they want video, they want quiet/silent shutters, they want lenses. Granted, it's a shrinking market for everybody, and mirrorless isn't necessarily saving the ship, but if they don't offer what the market wants...smartphones will eat them alive from the bottom up too, auto HDR, computational photography, instant sharing. The K3 replacement I thought was going to happen looks like 2020, which seems a bit short, with the Tokyo Olympics in the summer.