[UncleVanya]

No, they didn’t need yet another mount.
I believe they could have purchased an EVF from Epson, then added it to the K-01.
Canon and Sony persisted with their MILC designs;
Pentax simply decided “MILC is not for us”.
There is nothing in MILC which inherently makes a new mount necessary, as the K-01 demonstrates. Pentax made up their minds, and that was it.

Pentax lacked vision with the K-01 just as they did with the “Q”.
They never really tried {outside Japan, at least} to sell the “Q” to the general market.

It's difficult to see what the overall value proposition for the K-01 with EVF and DSLR registration distances would be. I can see how it would be lighter and smaller and perhaps it would offer excellent focus and tracking (today using current PDAF embedded sensors) - but would that be enough to get DSLR users to buy it over an OVF camera that had close to those capabilities? I'm not sure.

As for EVF's - adding those would add cost and these products (K-01 in particular) were very expensive already. The K-01 with an EVF or the Q with an EVF might have really stretched the market higher and made sales suffer. But on the flip side the EVF would have pulled in some additional customer interest - weighing one against the other is difficult.

In an ideal world, a K-02 would come out with a FF sensor and an EVF as a lightweight brother to the K-1iii - it would use a 24mp sensor with embedded PDAF and would leverage some subset of the K3iii AI leveraging the added coverage of wider PDAF coverage across the frame.

A GXR style body that had a good quality modular EVF an articulating screen and "sensor/lens/mount/modules" like a 1" sensor with an integrated fast zoom similar to the MX-1 and an m43 sensor with an m43 mount and a Q sensor and a Q mount would be really a cool option. But I have no idea how practical it would be.

[gatorguy]

Going once, going twice...

[UncleVanya]

Going once, going twice...

LOL - Sorry we have strayed far from the original topic.

[reh321]

LOL - Sorry we have strayed far from the original topic.

I did try to summarize the salient points in comment #329;
I have basically given up Pentax’s ever resurrecting either the “Q” or the K-01.

[UncleVanya]

I did try to summarize the salient points in comment #329;
I have basically given up Pentax’s ever resurrecting either the “Q” or the K-01.

Fair. As far as this new macro - I’m interested to see analysis when it releases. I’m not seeing the bad purple fringing in general use so I’m not sure if it will actually be worth acquiring for me. The change from SMC to HD limiteds was similar to my way of thinking. I saw it as “NICE to have”, but not worth selling my old lens and buying the new one (for me).

[reh321]

Fair. As far as this new macro - I’m interested to see analysis when it releases. I’m not seeing the bad purple fringing in general use so I’m not sure if it will actually be worth acquiring for me. The change from SMC to HD limiteds was similar to my way of thinking. I saw it as “NICE to have”, but not worth selling my old lens and buying the new one (for me).

That is basically what I’ve been hearing in this discussion. Perhaps they are running out of inventory, so they are putting lipstick on the pig of low inventory, by presenting it as a completely new idea, but I don’t see this as a big deal for many of us, although it has given us something to talk about at a time when they seem to have a dearth of announcements.

[Rondec]

So, how much of a market exists amongst us, amongst more dedicated users?

How many of us are sufficiently bothered by fringing that we would purchase a new one?
How many of us would be attracted by a decent in-lens focus motor?
If they add a KAF4, would that affect its draw?

I’ll start off by saying that I would be attracted by neither ‘macro’, nor a F/2.8 lens, nor an in-lens motor - I have a 55-300 PLM, and that alone meets my needs - I don’t make any use of pure ‘macro’ enough to spend my money on one, as is evident by my seeing “100 mm” and not seeing “macro” until it was specifically pointed out to me.

I think the problem is that it is hard to say what you will or won't do until images and real world reviews come out. It isn't a very expensive lens and if you own a DFA 100 macro WR, my guess is that you could flip it into the new lens for 150 dollars, more or less.

People buy lenses based on images, not based on specs and so it is hard to say. I have definitely seen purple fringing when shooting backlit flowers and while it isn't the end of the world, I would consider it. More than that I can't say, but my guess is that there are many others who are in the same camp as I am.

(It isn't like we are talking about a new DFA * prime where the street price is considerably north of 1000 dollars).

[Wheatfield]

No, they didn’t need yet another mount.
I believe they could have purchased an EVF from Epson, then added it to the K-01.
Canon and Sony persisted with their MILC designs;
Pentax simply decided “MILC is not for us”.
There is nothing in MILC which inherently makes a new mount necessary, as the K-01 demonstrates. Pentax made up their minds, and that was it.

Pentax lacked vision with the K-01 just as they did with the “Q”.
They never really tried {outside Japan, at least} to sell the “Q” to the general market.

It's no secret that Pentax treats the home market as the most important one with the rest of thecworld secondary. The Q was aimed squarely at (primarily) Japanese tweenaged girls. That it found a small market outside of that was a bonus, but apparently the market for the thing was too small to continue the line.
These things happen. It happened with their 110 system, I suspect fir the same reason. In general people who want tiny little cameras don't want to bother with interchangeable lenses, and people who want interchangeable lenses are OK with bigger cameras.

I don't think Pentax lacked vision with the K01 or the Q, if they lacked vision the cameras would never have seen the light of day.

Also, Ricoh's vision is not Hoya's vision.

I'm not sure if it would have been as easy as gluing an EVF onto a K-01 to make a mirrorless but again, they made their decision regarding that camera and mirtorless in general.
As consumers we have the choice of staying with the brand, augmenting the brand with something else, or leaving the brand entirely.

As for Pentax deciding MILC r'nt us, that's a corporate decision that we can agree with or disagree with, but it's one we have to live with, which takes us back to our options list.

I do think Pentax will, by staying out of the MILC market, do better than if they try to use their very small muscles against the industry Goliaths.

Either way, it's their choice not ours. We lost the ability to make the decision when we didn't buy Pentax from Hoya in 2011.

Now we can live with it, or move on, but no amount of discussion on forums is going to change things.

[UncleVanya]

I think the problem is that it is hard to say what you will or won't do until images and real world reviews come out. It isn't a very expensive lens and if you own a DFA 100 macro WR, my guess is that you could flip it into the new lens for 150 dollars, more or less.

People buy lenses based on images, not based on specs and so it is hard to say. I have definitely seen purple fringing when shooting backlit flowers and while it isn't the end of the world, I would consider it. More than that I can't say, but my guess is that there are many others who are in the same camp as I am.

(It isn't like we are talking about a new DFA * prime where the street price is considerably north of 1000 dollars).

I have to agree. I doubt that I will go out of my way unless the real world experiences of others are spectacular. I kept my SMC da 15 and 40. I have an hd 20-40 and 70. I also have an SMC 21 and 35 macro and my fa 31 and 77 are SMC. Clearly I didn’t let the change in coatings make me spend more for them, but I do not dislike the new lenses either.

---------- Post added 10-13-22 at 06:30 PM ----------

Now we can live with it, or move on, but no amount of discussion on forums is going to change things.

Discussions are fun. A little armchair quarterbacking is harmless.