Originally posted by Clavius Very good advice... if money is of no issue. All manufacturers have really good lenses in their lineup. That's how I ended up with 4 bodies from 4 different brands.
I think money can get got around to a degree. I fell in love with the DA Limited primes as a set. I bought all but one second-hand over 2-3 years and in total they cost less together than buying one new super-high-massive quality prime from Canonikon, let alone from Leica or a Zeiss 21mm, for example.
Of course, the DA Limited have their compromises not least because of their size constraints. But the point is that I fell for them. Whoever thought them up and ensured that each was differently configured like a piece of netsuke was being extremely clever. Since a body was also designed specifically for them (according to a Pentax paper on the subject) - it was originally the K7, now the K5 - someone in Pentax was joining up the dots. They didn't push through on the marketing, however, selling the whole collection as a unified set (as an idea or aspiration even if not to buy all at once) - this was a bit of a mistake, imho, since the ensemble was and to an extent still is unique.
Anyway, my point is that if you make things people fall in love with they will buy them. And chances are, no one else will be producing anything all that similar. Most cameras and lenses are about as interesting as washing machines or coffee grinders. They are highly competently done to a fine standard of industrial design and they do what they say they will. But they are cold and workaday and nothing one can get excited about. The Nikon D600 and Nikon 28mm 1.8, 50mm 1.4 and 85mm f1.8 G lenses (the standard "economy" set of primes for FF) are perfect examples of that school of thought. The Pentax Limiteds or the Fuji X series are good examples of the different approach.
So Pentax have done it once and I hope they can do it again, reminding us that we take lots of pics because we fell in love with photography. If they only do "me too", however, whether in FF or any other new format, which is always the easy option in a corporate setting where "cheap to make, quick to sell" is what the money men want to hear, I think they are sunk.