Originally posted by Class A The later Sony sensors were. They are now the ones to beat.
The one Sony used in the A900/850 was nowhere near at that level yet
Kind of missing the point.
Sony chose
notto put its own sensors in their FF camera series and instead sold 100% of those next gen sensors to Nikon. So the Nikon D700/D3s (and now D800) all were Sony sensors Sony chose not to put into Sony cameras.
Instead, Sony dropped out--pretty much for 2 years--of the FF market (early 2010 only 5 months after the a850 release to ~late 2012 when the SLT a99 was announced...but not yet available for another 3 months along with the DSC-RX1).
Obviously, even with SLT/EVF as their new differentiation badge, Sony bean counted that the FF DSLR market could not handle more than 2 players.The $2000/body price point is a killer for volume sales.
Pentax likely came to the same conclusion, legitimately. They chose to cede FF to Canikon because to enter in with both bodies and lenses likely meant buying too few sensors from Sony at too high prices (low volume), making the whole FF endeavour a money loser once one factors in the need to revamp the lens line-up.
The capital cost to make an FF body is likely not much more than a K-5 considering Pentax already wrestles with the 645D. The real cost for the body is the price delta between the APS-C and FF sensors + additional FF needs (battery, processor, 10% more raw material/body, etc.). So you get a near-$2000 body. That's a small, small, small market.
The real barrier is investing in 4-5 FF zoom lenses and a similar rework of their FF primes, all while keeping APS-C sales afloat, not just in volume but in price. how do you keep selling a DA70mm (stellar lens) at its current price when FF is the target market. Realistically Pentax needs to severely drop the price of its DA lens line to meet the sub-$1000/body APS-C DSLR market. Pentax cannot keep up the cash flow of high-end DA lenses in an FF world. APS-C is not going anywhere, but its prices are going down.