Originally posted by ElJamoquio I am certain they didn't start new products on day 1. It should've been day 100-180. A 2 years development cycle means they'll have the FF out in early 2014.
Pentax/Ricoh wants to compete with Nikon/Canon. It's pretty obvious they have to have competitive products to compete. They don't need to have a product directly competing with everything, but they have nothing to compete with the fast AF stuff, nothing to compete with 5DII, 5DIII, 1Ds, etc.
OK, so how many 5DIIs does canon sell, assuming Pentax at least initially would sell probably 10% of what Canon or Nikon sells is that a worthwhile market to go after?
I'm guessing keeping a K mount FF comparable price with so much smaller a production run... would be at best problematic. Due to AF design and Canons lead in things like ring motors etc. I'm not convinced Pentax will ever compete in speed of AF, with either Canon or Nikon. Speed of AF has never been a feature of any Pentax camera that I know of, to the point that I wonder why people anticipate it. All I want from a Pentax FF is Pentax IQ, on an FF body. Competing with Nikon and Canon on speed of AF.. that just wouldn't be Pentax. Having a better feature set with equivalent or better IQ, that would be the Pentax niche.
But then I'm a guy who selected Pentax because I like their philosophy. Not a guy who bought into Pentax for the price and lenses, and then expected them to fill all my camera needs in based on what everybody else does.