[normhead]

Hard to contradict anything in this post.

Not really, but why bother?

To pick one of many points that could be refuted perhaps the most obvious is the current Ricoh policy to pursue more margin on the lenses they sell and to not pursue market share. It's actually a pretty good strategy in a downturn. It's odd that people take Pentax corporate policy that is keeping the company alive and trying to paint it as a negative. It comes off as being a misrepresentation of current corporate policy.

There are so many small businesses that rely on quality of product rather than market share I sometimes wonder if posts like this are a joke. But it's more a product of not understanding the company in it's current form.

All of the current DFA* lenses are better than 3rd party offerings in the same focal lengths. And more expensive. At the same time, the DA 55-300 and 16-85 are stellar lenses in the lower end of the price spectrum. Yet these lenses haven't increased Pentax's market share. There is not shred of evidence that producing top quality lenses at better prices than 3rd party vendors will increase market share. That's what Pentax sees.

People can promote these pipe dreams about low prices and market share all they want. But, it's harder to make money on inferior product with all the competition in those markets, than it is to have lenses people will buy the camera for.

How many people buy a camera so they can buy a 3rd party lens for it? And can you make money selling cameras to those people?
You can have huge market share and still lose money. The more 3rd party companies there are eating your lunch, the less you have for yourself.

You can't make money selling to people who only look at price. If you make quality gear there will always be people undercutting your price by leaving off features or by producing intentionally inferior product with design specs that wouldn't hold up in OEM manufacturers. And there will always be people who look at the focal length, and believe thy can be happy buying based on lowest price without regard to IQ , build quality or weather resistance. But catering to those folks is a mistake. Someone else will always be able to make flimsier, less optically viable product. There are people who make a living undercutting the price of those trying to make quality product. But it's not the most viable long term corporate strategy. K-tel is still alive and kicking, but are the camera K-tel worshippers really who you want to sell to?

---

Last edited by normhead; 05-30-2020 at 07:30 AM.

[btnapa]

I've migrated most of my shooting to other systems late last year,

Oddly enough, I did something similar. I did not migrate but augmented my system. I needed video, so I tried Panasonic GX8 for a short period and then committed to Fuji about two years ago. I did that for video capabilities. Although I am liking the still results very much too. For now, and for that "high end" shoot, my K1 and the Pentax glass rule. Who knows if there is one system that has all the answers at a reasonable price. It seems to me that no single brand has all the answers for top notch stills, video, super long lenses for sports, super fast autofocus for sports, tilt-shift for architectural... and the list goes on. Again the caveat is a solution for "reasonable prices." Pentax checks most of the boxes for the type of shooting I do, so Pentax it is for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps there is an "ultimate" solution or system out there from Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Nikon, Fuji etc., but is at a reasonable price? The long term "enemy" if you will, is not the other brands but the other technologies such as smart phones, drones and god knows what else is coming down the pike. Throw in a little pandemic curve-ball into the mix, then all hell breaks loose for the camera industry as whole and not for a brand specifically!

[luftfluss]

Oddly enough, I did something similar. I did not migrate but augmented my system. I needed video, so I tried Panasonic GX8 for a short period and then committed to Fuji about two years ago. I did that for video capabilities. Although I am liking the still results very much too. For now, and for that "high end" shoot, my K1 and the Pentax glass rule. Who knows if there is one system that has all the answers at a reasonable price. It seems to me that no single brand has all the answers for top notch stills, video, super long lenses for sports, super fast autofocus for sports, tilt-shift for architectural... and the list goes on. Again the caveat is a solution for "reasonable prices." Pentax checks most of the boxes for the type of shooting I do, so Pentax it is for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps there is an "ultimate" solution or system out there from Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Nikon, Fuji etc., but is at a reasonable price? The long term "enemy" if you will, is not the other brands but the other technologies such as smart phones, drones and god knows what else is coming down the pike. Throw in a little pandemic curve-ball into the mix, then all hell breaks loose for the camera industry as whole and not for a brand specifically!

I guess the question is, what is a "reasonable price"? Does "reasonable price" mean a price you (or I) can afford, or does it mean a price that is fairly in line with the rest of the industry?

[normhead]

Perhaps there is an "ultimate" solution or system out there from Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Nikon, Fuji etc., but is at a reasonable price?

It is a technically impossible task to produce a system that is best for everyone. Everyone has different needs, is comfortable with different weights and sizes, have different priorities in shooting (will they travers rough terrain to get the shots?), are they willing to carry big camera bag, or do they want an unobtrusive "tag along" camera? and treats their cameras differently.

Just for myself, I have a waterproof shock proof camera that can be dropped in a lake, a ZS100 that will provide me with a huge zoom range and a small footprint and better than K-5 resolution and 4k video, and my APS_c and FF gear that will be accompanied by at least 3, probably 4 lenses.

The laws of physics mean none of those three types camera can do what the others do. IN some weird universe, maybe they have found a camera that does everything well, technically. But for different sizes of cameras with niche abilities, there never will be just one, at least not in our life times.

Someday someone will invent a small , waterproof, shockproof 1 inch sensor camera that has fits in you pocket or on a helmet like a GoPro, 15 EV DR, an ƒ1 aperture, a 10mm to 900mm equivalent lens that fits in you pocket with blur features to create subject isolation when needed, is 30 MP ,has 10 stop shake reduction, a 10-900mm equivalent lens, takes 8K video and shows no noise up to 128,000 ISO, and has diffraction cancelling technology to keep the 1 inch sensor images at maximum sharpness sharp up to ƒ64. and costs $700.

I'll buy two, even if it's made by SoCanikon.

Sometimes you just have to look at what the ultimate camera would be, to understand how crazy it is to expect it.

---

Last edited by normhead; 05-30-2020 at 10:10 AM.

[btnapa]

I guess the question is, what is a "reasonable price"?

Good question. I was going to elaborate but did not want to make the post too long. You are absolutely right. What is reasonable. So here we go. A system with an $1,800 K1 at the heart of it is reasonable and easier on my pockets as opposed to a Sony A7RIII which was the contemporary of Pentax K1 when it first came out.

Today, I can build a two camera K1II kit with the trio of the zooms, 15-30, 24-70, 70-200 all f2.8 for about $8,000 US vs. a Sony A7RIII with the same trio of lenses is around $12,600. Go to a 7RIV and add another $2,000 for a grand total of $14,600 give or take. They all produce similar still image quality. Many will argue myself included that the overall image quality of the Pentax is better. A sizable sum of $4,600 to $6,600 in savings is substantial in my book. The only advantage of Sony besides the obvious MLC vs DSLR is that Sony has better video specs, much better specs. So if I strictly shot stills, the K1 set up is more reasonably priced for the quality I get.

I am sure what I just stated can be debated all day. I don't think anyone on this forum or any other forum will dispute that Pentax as a whole is a value system. The most bang-for-the-buck so to speak.

---------- Post added 05-30-20 at 11:27 AM ----------

Sometimes you just have to look at what the ultimate camera would be, to understand how crazy it is to expect it.

You are absolutely 1,000% correct. Looks like you and I may be contemporaries. I have seen so many technological advancements that I have no doubt that what you listed as the ultimate camera will be possible sooner than later. in early 80's an answering machine (what is that?!) was a technological breakthrough! Today's phones do calls, sends emails, takes pictures, do great videos, do face time (beam me up Scotty!) and so much more. If you told someone in 1985 all that a phone can do today, they would have thought you had watched an episode of Star Trek.

In 1996-97 I pre-ordered the first Olympus digital camera and waited months for it to be delivered. It was a 1.3MP camera with no manual controls, no hot-shoe, JPEG only images for $1,300! And I photographed, designed and delivered an 8-page product catalog for a client with that camera. A KP or a Fuji X-T30 with a kit lens would cost quite a bit less than $1,300 and can deliver serious pro grade image that would make the Olympus from late 1990s look like a toy. Technology is great. Long live technology!!

[Pål Jensen]

I guess the question is, what is a "reasonable price"? Does "reasonable price" mean a price you (or I) can afford, or does it mean a price that is fairly in line with the rest of the industry?

Good question. I never understood why some buy third party lenses. Ok there might be something missing from the manufacturers line-up only covered by third party. Apart from that it is false economy. Usually inferior lenses than don't keep their value. How many 30 year old third party lenses are worth anything? Most Pentax lenses keep their value. The really good ones lenses goes for thousands of dollars. The Pentax FA* 200 Macro have sold for four times new price on e-bay (still, people whined that the lens was too expensive when new. The same people claimed that 43 Limited was pointless as you could get a 50/2 far cheaper). How many third party lenses increase in value or even keep their value? Or even Canon lenses? A Canon 300/2.8 can be had for a bit more than $1000. A Pentax FA* $3500; probably the same the lucky guy bought it for new. Now you now why wildlife photographers use Canon: they can't afford Pentax.
Save on the camera body - not on the lenses.

[Zygonyx]

Now you now why wildlife photographers use Canon: they can't afford Pentax.

Hummmm, there'd be quite a lot to argue on this statement

[keos]

How many people buy a camera so they can buy a 3rd party lens for it? And can you make money selling cameras to those people?
You can have huge market share and still lose money. The more 3rd party companies there are eating your lunch, the less you have for yourself.

it's this exact type of thinking that sunk IBM in the 80s and 90s. glad to see that same type of marketing naivete is pervasive still into the 2020s. IBM and MS both used to sell compilers for their respective operating systems, and made a bunch doing it. They couldn't have loved the fact that Borland sold their damn compilers for $49, when the IBM version cost upwards of a few k. Fast forward to 1987 and the newly released OS2 didn't come with a free SDK or open documentation like DOS did, to do anything useful at the system level you had to fork out over 2k for the IBM tools. I'm sure IBM would love to sell to every programmer 2k worth of stuff, but most hobbyist and small developers told them to piss off, and continued DOS and Windows shareware development. Fast forward to the 2000s and MS through Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7.x limited development to MS only tools, and again, an already niche system never saw any sort of grassroots support because people want to use what they are familiar with and can make money off of.

No 1st party developer wants you to buy 3rd party addons, but they all accepted it because it helps draw and keep people in your system. Case in point, the new RF and Z communications could have easily been locked to 1st party lenses, the technology is already there, but neither of them did so. Why? because they accept that 3rd party is a fact of life, and it helps them more than it hurts them.

Not really, but why bother?

To pick one of many points that could be refuted perhaps the most obvious is the current Ricoh policy to pursue more margin on the lenses they sell and to not pursue market share. It's actually a pretty good strategy in a downturn. It's odd that people take Pentax corporate policy that is keeping the company alive and trying to paint it as a negative. It comes off as being a misrepresentation of current corporate policy.

There are so many small businesses that rely on quality of product rather than market share I sometimes wonder if posts like this are a joke. But it's more a product of not understanding the company in it's current form.

All of the current DFA* lenses are better than 3rd party offerings in the same focal lengths. And more expensive. At the same time, the DA 55-300 and 16-85 are stellar lenses in the lower end of the price spectrum. Yet these lenses haven't increased Pentax's market share. There is not shred of evidence that producing top quality lenses at better prices than 3rd party vendors will increase market share. That's what Pentax sees.

People can promote these pipe dreams about low prices and market share all they want. But, it's harder to make money on inferior product with all the competition in those markets, than it is to have lenses people will buy the camera for.

How many people buy a camera so they can buy a 3rd party lens for it? And can you make money selling cameras to those people?
You can have huge market share and still lose money. The more 3rd party companies there are eating your lunch, the less you have for yourself.

You can't make money selling to people who only look at price. If you make quality gear there will always be people undercutting your price by leaving off features or by producing intentionally inferior product with design specs that wouldn't hold up in OEM manufacturers. And there will always be people who look at the focal length, and believe thy can be happy buying based on lowest price without regard to IQ , build quality or weather resistance. But catering to those folks is a mistake. Someone else will always be able to make flimsier, less optically viable product. There are people who make a living undercutting the price of those trying to make quality product. But it's not the most viable long term corporate strategy. K-tel is still alive and kicking, but are the camera K-tel worshippers really who you want to sell to?

Nobody is saying it's a bad strategy to make money by selling at higher prices. But history has shown unless you have name cachet like Leica or Hasselblad, or LV or Prada, high margin low volume does not work. Remember even Apple in the 90s? More costly than PCs for almost comparable hardware, arguably better usability. Almost dead if not for some fortuitous events and a cash injection from MS.

[HankVonHeaven]

Good question. I was going to elaborate but did not want to make the post too long. You are absolutely right. What is reasonable. So here we go. A system with an $1,800 K1 at the heart of it is reasonable and easier on my pockets as opposed to a Sony A7RIII which was the contemporary of Pentax K1 when it first came out.

Today, I can build a two camera K1II kit with the trio of the zooms, 15-30, 24-70, 70-200 all f2.8 for about $8,000 US vs. a Sony A7RIII with the same trio of lenses is around $12,600. Go to a 7RIV and add another $2,000 for a grand total of $14,600 give or take. They all produce similar still image quality. Many will argue myself included that the overall image quality of the Pentax is better. A sizable sum of $4,600 to $6,600 in savings is substantial in my book. The only advantage of Sony besides the obvious MLC vs DSLR is that Sony has better video specs, much better specs. So if I strictly shot stills, the K1 set up is more reasonably priced for the quality I get.

I have to disagree with you. There is many big differences between K1II and 7RIV. The major one is the autofocus. I had K1 and I have 7RIV.
I switched because I shoot moving objects and people. With K1 my keeper rate was poor, with 7RIV it's excellent. K1 was
good for stills without anything moving(landscape), great camera for that. But I have to say that 7RIV is something out of this world compared to K1. For my kind of shooting it is like night and day level difference. About image quality I like more 7RIV, but this is more question of taste than some hard data.

I know some of you will say aloud "My Pentax can shoot moving objects too! You are just poor shooter!" Might be but after 12 years and K100,K200,K20,K5,K3 and K1 and countless pictures I have taken this is my opinion and experience.
I still use a lot Pentax manual glass and I love them. For the body side I never looked back.

About trio of lenses. Tamron has 17-28,28-75 and 75-180. Together with 7RIII it's something like 5000-6000€

[normhead]

it's this exact type of thinking that sunk IBM in the 80s and 90s. glad to see that same type of marketing naivete is pervasive still into the 2020s. IBM and MS both used to sell compilers for their respective operating systems, and made a bunch doing it. They couldn't have loved the fact that Borland sold their damn compilers for $49, when the IBM version cost upwards of a few k. Fast forward to 1987 and the newly released OS2 didn't come with a free SDK or open documentation like DOS did, to do anything useful at the system level you had to fork out over 2k for the IBM tools. I'm sure IBM would love to sell to every programmer 2k worth of stuff, but most hobbyist and small developers told them to piss off, and continued DOS and Windows shareware development. Fast forward to the 2000s and MS through Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7.x limited development to MS only tools, and again, an already niche system never saw any sort of grassroots support because people want to use what they are familiar with and can make money off of.

No 1st party developer wants you to buy 3rd party addons, but they all accepted it because it helps draw and keep people in your system. Case in point, the new RF and Z communications could have easily been locked to 1st party lenses, the technology is already there, but neither of them did so. Why? because they accept that 3rd party is a fact of life, and it helps them more than it hurts them.


Nobody is saying it's a bad strategy to make money by selling at higher prices. But history has shown unless you have name cachet like Leica or Hasselblad, or LV or Prada, high margin low volume does not work. Remember even Apple in the 90s? More costly than PCs for almost comparable hardware, arguably better usability. Almost dead if not for some fortuitous events and a cash injection from MS.

Your view is so different than mine. IBM let Bill Gates do the software, and then couldn't even keep up in hardware. As noted in a previous post, when my school bought me a Cad Cam system, the IBM computer they included with it wouldn't even run it. Ya, and I remember Apple in the 90s, but you er. Apple used a different faster than PC hardware at that time. And Apple almost died because they fired Steve Jobs and brought in marketing gurus to run the company instead fo trying to excel at hardware, That's what almost killed them. When Jobs came back he immediately brought in Intel hardware and PC compatibility through Boot Camp. He actually produced computers that had a higher Windows compatibility than any other company, including especially IBM.

And Apple never took the cash infusion from the law suit against MS. They just had MS continue to make Publisher for Mac. Once Apple was profitable again, IBM actually bought a lot of Apple stock. IN my case, my board had an exclusive contract with IBM to supply computers, but as IBM PC sales crashed and burned IBM bought Apple stock, and included Apple product in their exclusivity agreement, without even being asked to do so.

[Pål Jensen]

it's this exact type of thinking that sunk IBM in the 80s and 90s. glad to see that same type of marketing naivete is pervasive still into the 2020s..

You cannot compare software to lenses.
There are 30 million Pentax K-mount lenses out there. These are the users Pentax are aiming at. The vast majority of third party lenses out there are not very desirable and few are going to choose or change camera system because of them....

---------- Post added 05-30-20 at 10:22 PM ----------

Hummmm, there'd be quite a lot to argue on this statement

It was tongue in cheek. The fact remains that Canon is desirable because lots of long telephotos can be had cheap among other things. This also show that Pentax users are willing to pay more for used lenses. This is good for Pentax showing that their users are willing to spend.

[normhead]

You cannot compare software to lenses.
There are 30 million Pentax K-mount lenses out there. These are the users Pentax are aiming at. The vast majority of third party lenses out there are not very desirable and few are going to choose or change camera system because of them....

---------- Post added 05-30-20 at 10:22 PM ----------



It was tongue in cheek. The fact remains that Canon is desirable because lots of long telephotos can be had cheap among other things. This also show that Pentax users are willing to pay more for used lenses. This is good for Pentax showing that their users are willing to spend.

When looking at threads like the "Three lenses" thread, you see, a lot of Pentax users don't use telephotos. For many their longest lens is the 77. Pentax seems fine without a lot of long lens choices.

[btnapa]

I switched because I shoot moving objects and people. With K1 my keeper rate was poor, with 7RIV it's excellent.

I agree on the K1 focus not being on par with Sony. I shot a wedding as the main photographer and two other weddings (cousins) as a guest and I suffered with the K1 focusing. I do not use my K1 for weddings. It does other types of photography for me and does it very well.

I wanted to elaborate on the other systems but I will send you a PM as I know people, one moderator in particular, who get antsy when we talk shortcomings of Pentax and the advantages of competing systems!!

Well, so much for a PM! You do not accept PMs.

[normhead]

I agree on the K1 focus not being on par with Sony. I shot a wedding as the main photographer and two other weddings (cousins) as a guest and I suffered with the K1 focusing. I do not use my K1 for weddings. It does other types of photography for me and does it very well.

I wanted to elaborate on the other systems but I will send you a PM as I know people, one moderator in particular, who get antsy when we talk shortcomings of Pentax and the advantages of competing systems!!

Nonsense, Rawr and myself have both commented on the 45% keeper rate during wedding shooting and the unsuitability of Pentax for that job... if you're a pro. Pentax itself describes itself as a field camera, not a wedding camera. Rawr does much better with an A9, I've repeated that many times, I've never had any comments from the mods in regards to recommending that system, and I also understand the Canon 1DX is quite good for weddings. But, as I pointed out, I've shot one wedding in the last 25 years. I was warned about wedding performance , I shot 3 to four shot bursts and I got every shot I needed, so no way I'd buy a 1DX or A9 for weddings, or any camera. I can get it done with my Pentax. Now if I was like my cousin and shooting 40 a year, then OK, buy a camera for it.

[keos]

Your view is so different than mine. IBM let Bill Gates do the software, and then couldn't even keep up in hardware. As noted in a previous post, when my school bought me a Cad Cam system, the IBM computer they included with it wouldn't even run it. Ya, and I remember Apple in the 90s, but you er. Apple used a different faster than PC hardware at that time. And Apple almost died because they fired Steve Jobs and brought in marketing gurus to run the company instead fo trying to excel at hardware, That's what almost killed them. When Jobs came back he immediately brought in Intel hardware and PC compatibility through Boot Camp. He actually produced computers that had a higher Windows compatibility than any other company, including especially IBM.

And Apple never took the cash infusion from the law suit against MS. They just had MS continue to make Publisher for Mac. Once Apple was profitable again, IBM actually bought a lot of Apple stock. IN my case, my board had an exclusive contract with IBM to supply computers, but as IBM PC sales crashed and burned IBM bought Apple stock, and included Apple product in their exclusivity agreement, without even being asked to do so.

MS cash infusion to Apple is a statement of fact, and should not be in dispute. Aug. 6, 1997: Apple Rescued ? by Microsoft | WIRED. PowerPC had significant advantages over x86 up until the Athlon64 where it started lagging behind, but the problem was System 7 (and 8 and 9 after it) was not a pre-emptive multitasking OS that NT (and to a lesser extent, Win9x) was; Apple wouldn't have a fully protected mode preemptive OS until OS X was released in 2001. For people who used computers casually, Macs offered little benefit over cheaper PC clones of the time.


IBM's noncompetitive hardware aside (which wasn't absolutely true, they just weren't competitive at the same price point, but instead you got full 100% PC BIOS compatibility except for the PCjr), OS/2 was their operating system to replace DOS. It failed, for multiple reasons, but primarily due to lack of consumer and developer support, hurt by their ineptitude on how they treated small developers.