Oh, deities no, blue...*shudders*
That's gotta be Pentax's biggest adantage. Backwards compatibility.
Trouble is, "backwards compatibility" is a dirty phrase in the digital age. We're looking forward! Modernism rules in the digital world! To say you have faith in something older than six months - blasphemy! It's admitting defeat, that you have no new ideas, that you're staid and boring! Forward, always forward!
Besides, if blokes like me can use a K lens or an M lens or Tak, that's cuts profits from the sale of new lenses. In this sense, the K mount is a liability.
But I think culling it would be a bigger liability.
Though there is the precedent with Canon, yes. Canon's FD SLRS, from what I hear, weren't given a second though in the pro stakes.
With the introduction of the EOS, sure, Canon properly ushered in the AF era. But it wasn't just a bunch of a new tech and plast- er, I mean polycarbonate bodies. Sure, Minolta worked on the body-mounted AF motors, but Canon worked on lens-motor AF.
It wasn't that the EOS was a breakthrough on its own. Canon had a concerted marketing push behind it.
I had a photojournalist tutor in uni, ex-newspaper photog. When she recommended a camera, she recommended Canon. Why? She'd been there since the last days of the Nikon F reign - why Canon?
She said that Canon were the best, as they'd shown they'd "cared" about photojournalism - when the EOS came out, Canon made a lot of severely loss-leading sales to newspapers. Whole kits, with a variety of pro-grade zooms and primes, flashes, the whole shebang. (Can't think why she said that'd help out students - "Oh, you're doing a single photography subject? Please take this ID and a half-dozen L lenses of your choice for a flat fee o $1000".)
I think that's what Hoya needs to do.
Let Pentax have another crack at it, and get behind it. Right behind it.
A new set of cameras, a clean slate design to differentiate them from the last set. For the love of Jupiter, improve the bloody AF. One of them to have a custom Sammy sensor.
A decent, multimedia marketing campaign. Focus on the heritage of Pentax, its advantages, its history - how it's a camera company, not a mere consumer electronics company. The trailblazing work on pentaprisms, in-camera metering, instant return mirrors, and multicoating. Hell, even AF.
And for crying out loud, spread the love, ok? Not just in the US and Europe. Wideband it, go global.
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