Originally posted by Wheatfield Dave, don't take this as picking on you specifically, you just had the bad fortune of setting me off on one of my rants.
This, in a nutshell is what really went sideways at Pentax. They undervalued their (underperforming) equipment for years to try to get customers to buy the stuff, and now what they have for a customer base is a bunch of cheap @ss whack jobs who, had they any brains, would have bought Canon Rebels.
Lenses are not consumer electronics. Anyone who tries to apply that theory to lenses is a fool, plain and simple. Good quality lenses are not cheap to make, and better quality lenses cost a lot more to make than good quality ones. The law of diminishing returns hits home very quickly with lenses.
Unlike Canon and Nikon, Pentax doesn't have the advantage of economy of scale. With something like 5% (whatever) of the market, they are probably selling 1/30th of the lenses that Canon or Nikon are selling.
Low volume = higher cost.
High quality = higher cost.
SDM issues aside (and believe me, for what Pentax is charging for lenses, there should be no QC or design flaw issues at all), Pentax is making some of the highest quality glass in the business.
I guess the question is, is Pentax's pricing questionable because they have a cheap customer base or is the customer base questionable because they want Pentax to give them something for nothing?
If you don't want to buy it, don't buy it. If you don't agree with their pricing and can afford to take a lens quality hit, then go somewhere else and buy a Holga.
No one will stop you, and you'll be respected more for doing that than carping about how gas used to be two bits a gallon, bread was 15 cents a loaf and Pentax gave equipment away until they bankrupted themselves.
I am not sure if I was lucky or unlucky, stupid or unsuspectingly cunning, but I bought my first Pentax SLR when they were very expensive (an *istD in 2003 was £1200 or about $1800 US at the time). All the lenses I bought since are now worth double, so I have done pretty well finaincially from the deal I think.
The competition at the time was the truly excerable Nikon D100 or the Canon 10D which had the dynamic range of morse code. Moreover the Pentax was so well made and so small that it just made the other two look clunky and unnecessary and it was a doddle to use by comparison.
Finally with the K7 they made another body worthy of the brand. I never felt at home with the K10 or 20, and although AF is still not up to Canon levels in continuous mode, they have sorted everything else out pretty well. It has the same appeal to me as the initial *istD, in other words its a tool I want to take with me instead of leave at home and tell my mates about.
If the current DA* lens lineup had decent QC and slightly faster SDM motors, then they would be worth every penny of the asking price, especially the 50-135. Its not something that would be too hard to fix.
I still own a Pentax because I actually like them for positive reasons, despite being able to use most of the nearest competition on a regular basis. Until everyone else has hyper manual mode and the same size and weight, I'm not going anywhere. I dont ever feel shortchanged because I know why I'm here.
Anyone who buys into any brand because they are cheap are using negative rather than positive selection criteria. Subconsciously they are convinced they did the wrong thing and suffer permanent performance angst and brand association angst from the get go.
I would be quite happy to see them become a quality niche player, because I really dont mind paying a little more a little less often for something that lasts and I really dont want people to think I am cheap. If they could just make them last, that would be dandy. As a high quality brand, Pentax can afford the better QC and design standards that would make the product worth paying for.
And look on the bright side, if anyone wants to jump ship they can get a lot more for their used equipment than they could before.