Originally posted by RaduA Oh, you DO have a choice, in fact you have multiple choices: Sigma has lots of primes in K mount for example, you can buy used lenses, you can buy from another country (at least in the E.U. it's easy and risk free) or of course you can switch systems. What bothers me is that some here pit Pentax to the big 2 in performance and quality but want Sigma and Tamron prices for the lenses. You want superior quality, silent AF, weather protection but for free if possible. It seems is no longer possible but this don't imply at all that the user base will shrink. Some will go, others will enter and I bet Hoya knows this very well.
no. you don't understand. i want pentax glass, and i want premium pentax glass. not sigma, not tamron, as long as what i need is available from pentax. it's not loyalty, it's just that i prefer their glass, and it's part of the reason i chose pentax. of course, it doesn't matter what i want, the options you presented are valid, but tell me, how good will pentax do if we start buying bodies and maybe kit lenses, and all the premium stuff from sigma and tamron?
Quote: I want to make myself clear, I am as upset as anyone about this especially since I think this will be the norm in the future and not a temporarily fluke. But a lot of people speak at rage now and when the dust will settle the Canikon alternative will be still much costlier.
Radu
P.S. Most of the time in this message *you* means a Pentaxian in general, not you, Lol101!
on this one, you might be right, unfortunately, and it remains to be seen. but as things are now, at the very least, pentax/hoya has strangled the release of the k-7, as can be seen. they could have gone for a more gradual increase in price (getting the advantage of people starting to rush to buy lenses, seeing the trend, as opposed to how it is now: it hits you, and you can "take it or leave it"), and we _don't_ know if it will be this way, maybe canon/nikon (not to mention the others) will not follow, maybe they are simply waiting for things to stabilize, and are betting on it (example: the yen is strong and wester currencies gone to hell? how long will this be true? sell at rather stable prices, keep the euros in the bank, and wait for things to stabilize, and for those euros to be worth what they should, being a japanese company doesn't mean you only deal in japan anyway, so those funds don't even have to be blocked just because they are in euro; i suspect this might be why canon prices seem to have remained so stable). as things are now, the gap is scary, and people are bound to run away, or at least hold off for a while to see what happens (which is bad, it means no cash flow for a while, or very very little), don't think i haven't thought this through, i honestly can find no reasonable excuse for what is going on (comparatively), it's not that i am enraged, it's jsut that i am worried, i am starting to wonder if the hoya corporate beancounters haven't taken over the pentax engineers, made some graphs and decided to (blindly) "put things right", i have seen such things and i know what they lead to..
let's try to simplify this: (hypothetical situation) i have a k20d, the kit lenses, some old primes, been wanting to buy some premium stuff for my needs (let's suppose the two da*, and some ltd prime), things have come "around" now, and i have the cash. what do you expect me to do, realistically and honestly? have you seen the price comparison from my area, for pentax and canon glass? i have my cash, where do i put it? been waiting to spend some cash for months, my palm burns, i want to spend it, but all of a sudden i am looking at prices and something makes me dizzy, it's as if the money i thought i had are now worth half or so. when i look at canon prices (for example), my money seems to be worth roughly the same, or at least close, same for tamron and sigma. can you blame "me" for thinking about trying a 40d or something "you know, just to see how i like it.."?
another one: been wanting to get into dslr stuff (time to switch from film, everybody seems to have done it a decade ago, maybe it's time i do it too, or time to grow from that point and shoot, all my mates have dslrs, wtf.. you get the picture), the k-7 has made quite a splash, and seems very tempting, everybody buys canon and nikon, but i'm the kind of guy who thinks he's "smarter" than everybody else. my mates all have at least one premium (or at least serious, like an ultrawide zoom, maybe?) lens, and brag about it all day, so i know that's where the "goodness" is. so i look at what pentax offers in that area... i fall off the chair, and light a cigarette to calm down: provided i stick to one area (not everything from ultrawide, landscapes to birding and wildlife), either nikon or canon can actually be cheaper, the stabilized stuff from canon is the same price or slightly cheaper than the (roughly equivalent) pentax stuff, the non stabilized stuff is half the price.. now i am stubborn as hell and i want to show up with a camera my mates will look at and say "wtf did you buy? are you stupid?", but on one condition: that i can prove them wrong.
this might be just a temporary gap, and we might see everything go to (the same) hell soon, but we cannot _know_ that, here and now, it looks wrong, and if it's not obvious that this can only hurt pentax sales (of anything photographic), and i mean _now_-sales, than i don't know how to put it any other way to make it clear..