Originally posted by MarkJerling While on the topics of iPhones: While they may sell well, they're not a particularly good design. I have seen several that, from a drop from moderate height, have had their screens cracked / shattered. They fail at the slightest whiff of moisture. And, they're overpriced. Yet, countless people buy them because they look good. The Apple laptops are beautifully made, but they do not offer good value in terms of computing power.
This place loves it's word games doesn't it? Design as in visuals, the user experience etc. Apple is second to none here and pentax could learn a thing from them. No I'm not saying their cameras should look like iPhones, but user experience is everything. Our cameras are letting us upload pictures directly to social media. It's not just enough that the camera lets you get the shot, although this is a huge part of it granted. The pentax cameras that I've used in the past while admitantly small and lacking the bulk of full frame, just didn't feel good in the hands. The grip on the K20 just didn't feel like it was designed to be ergonomic. Pentax's design hasn't been the best traditionally. Pentax is losing out because of the form follows function. It's not marketing. We live in a social media age. Sony cameras have blown up primarily to social media. Good things sell themselves. You could have the best tasting dish ever but if it looks like an alien from a low budget movie, no one is going to want to order it.
Im not Jonathan Ives (iPhone designer afaik) but I feel like I could have designed far better looking cameras for pentax. I know, bold statement, but Pentax has traditionally not been at the top of the design game. It's like they dont have any sense of direction or goal. I can't tell whether they are going for a retro look or they just weren't sure how to design it. Fujifilm does the retro thing beautifully and if this is the case, they could learn a thing from fuji. I did take a look at a few videos of the K1 at CP and the screen itlself does look like pretty nice.
https://youtu.be/XrN7xiHGg80?t=6m57s
Pentax has been trying to compete purely with specs and bells and whistle. The k3 as good as it seems just doesn't seem that unique. It doesn't seem like they went in thinking "how can we set this apart from every other full frame dslr on the market." That's one of the dangers of showing up the full frame party 5 years late (not to rip on them or anything.) I know, there is the pixel shift, which is honestly very cool, but it's limited to a certain kind of shooter. How is the K1 going to improve things for portrait shooters? What about connectivity? The "flucard" (which sounds like it might make you sick) wasn't exactly an example of cutting edge connectivity. They compromised the size of the top deck lcd in return for a third dial which I hope does something big. The smaller top deck lcd means that info such as white balance cannot be shown which makes it much less useful for pros. What about studio work? How is the K1 going to help the studio shooter?
Im not trying to rip on pentax, I just think these are some things which may help them. There is some truth to what Jared said, and while it may have ruffled some feathers i think it could help pentax. Greater market penetration means more 3rd party support for things like lenses and the like. It seems like they have some really cool things but then they get distracted and forget about the other things. I think the reason why pentax is still kind of rare to this day is that their cameras tend to not be the most well rounded packages (even though they may do some cool things) for example, video has been a huge weakness and instead of just of just focusing on stills, they opted to include a video mode which dates back to roughly 2010. The control illumination and all are cool but that doesn't change the fact that things like autofocus are still very important. The k1 only has 33 af points and a very small coverage at that. I don't think it's even 50% coverage. This is why mirrorless cameras came along. They give us what we have always wanted in our cameras, that nearly edge to edge af coverage. In some ways, pentax is ahead of it's time,but in other ways it's still playing catch up and I think this is why more people dont use them in spite of the fact that they are pretty good.