Originally posted by rawr Prestige as much as anything else, I think, and history.
While there is a digital medium format marketplace (Hasselblad, Mamiya, Leaf etc), I really don't see how Pentax could produce such a low volume, high end product and expect to make money on it.
Leaf is out of business. There is only Hasselblad, which does not fair well on the market and PhaseOne/Mamiya. Then there are some tiny specialists, like these RED cameras. That's it - and that's it for a reason: The high-end DSLRs by Canon and Nikon cannibalized a large share of the former medium format market, namely weddings and social photographers. This is the reason, why Hasselblad recently began to concentrate on the weddings sector again, after years of complete ignorance. Which wedding photog would have payed 30,000 Euros for a Hasselblad, if he could have a Canon for a fraction of that price?
Hasselblad has just started a massive price dump, because they finally realised, that the medium format market is completely down. You can have the latest Hasselblads for around 12,000 Euros now. I cannot imagine, how Pentax can compete here. The 645D will not have interchangeable backs, the lens choice is fairly limited and generally those people who used Pentax MF in the past, have long given up and switched to either PhaseOne or H'blad - because Pentax is ten years behind!
I think, that Pentax is in even worse a situation than Leica, because Leica has a strong brand name, which Pentax has not anymore. I can see only a small market share for any newcomer to the MF market, and that will go to either Leica or Pentax, and I wouldn't bet on Pentax.
Ben