[ddinmpls]

I started out on Pentax film oh so many years ago. I have shot every major brand of digital camera in the last 15 years. On a lark I bought a used K-3 for 300 bucks and I cannot believe what a great camera this is for 6 or 7 year old tech. And a manual you can read without getting a headache. I'm grudgingly keeping a Sony a6100 just for the eye AF but now I see why Pentaxians are so loyal in the face of shrinking market size. I shoot mostly people and the face recog seems to work much better than I expected in live view. Intuitive menus and stuff other brands don't do. Of course now the itch for a K-1 begins...... Crap

[ffking]

Welcome to PF!

[sergysergy]

Welcome! The k-1 is a great camera so I hope you can get one some time soon

[aslyfox]

Welcome

lots of friendly members and knowledge can be found here

and Pentax has lots of choices for camera bodies and lenses

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Last edited by aslyfox; 02-15-2020 at 12:13 PM.

[Markovo]

Now you see what's Pentax about. Once I was forced to use a Nikon DSLR for a first time and man what a pain that was... but when I held a Pentax body for the first time... I never had to read the manual for a Pentax camera to this day.

[Madaboutpix]

Unreal! How can Pentax not be more popular?

Er, actually for a number of reasons, but mostly because people act like sheep.

[stevebrot]

Unreal! How can Pentax not be more popular?

Ask yourself how you came to own your A6100 and you may get a partial answer. Then take a trip down to Best Buy and notice what they have on hand for interchangeable lens cameras. With the widespread demise of brick & mortar camera stores, market exposure for many brands (e.g. Olympus and Fujifilm) has simply evaporated.


Steve

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Last edited by stevebrot; 02-15-2020 at 03:31 PM.

[Wasp]

My K10D didn't come with a printed manual - only a CD with a PDF file and some software. I never bothered to read the manual and got by just fine. When I got my K200D, there was a book but I never needed to read that either.

Last year, I noticed how affordable the Canon EOS 4000D was. It seemed like a good buy, with K mount adapters available and all. I only had to pick one up in a store to cure me of that idea forever. Everything, but everything is plastic. Flimsy is the word. Meh.

[PJ1]

Welcome to the Forums. I agree on the K-3. It's a great camera and I see no reason to upgrade mine. But you asked why Pentax is not more popular. Part of it I think is that many people these days only hear of Pentax by word of mouth. So someone they know introduces them to one or maybe they inherit one. And it only takes a high profile you-tuber with links to another manufacturer to talk down Pentax and it puts a dampener on the potential market although there have been some positive reviews lately). But we enlightened few can feel smug about our superior knowledge.

[Rondec]

Welcome.

I would say a big aspect of that is lack of advertising from the mother ship. But the gear still performs admirably from my standpoint.

[SpecialK]

Here you go:

Are we really THAT rare? - PentaxForums.com

[stevebrot]

I would say a big aspect of that is lack of advertising from the mother ship.

This is often said, but I was wondering where the advertising might be placed where it would be viewed by potential buyers who are unfamiliar with the brand. Facebook? DPReview? Half-page ads in major newspapers? Forbes? GQ? Cosmopolitan? Perhaps sponsorship of programming on PBS (in the U.S. this approach being quite effective for Canon)?


Steve

(...FB ads appear in-line for my feed, but I suspect only because I "liked" the Ricoh/Pentax group...)

[monochrome]

This is often said, but I was wondering where the advertising might be placed where it would be viewed by potential buyers who are unfamiliar with the brand. Facebook? DPReview? Half-page ads in major newspapers? Forbes? GQ? Cosmopolitan? Perhaps sponsorship of programming on PBS (in the U.S. this approach being quite effective for Canon)?


Steve

(...FB ads appear in-line for my feed, but I suspect only because I "liked" the Ricoh/Pentax group...)

Huh. I don’t view any of those media so I wouldn’t see any ads.maybe Google placing ads on websites I read.

[Rondec]

This is often said, but I was wondering where the advertising might be placed where it would be viewed by potential buyers who are unfamiliar with the brand. Facebook? DPReview? Half-page ads in major newspapers? Forbes? GQ? Cosmopolitan? Perhaps sponsorship of programming on PBS (in the U.S. this approach being quite effective for Canon)?


Steve

(...FB ads appear in-line for my feed, but I suspect only because I "liked" the Ricoh/Pentax group...)

My thought all along has not been that they do advertisements as such, but that they create Pentax-centric content. Have a You Tube channel with real, interesting information on how to get the most out of your Pentax camera. Have the Facebook page be something that has something useful on it. Have Pentax reps do Q and As on a routine basis here on the Forum or elsewhere.

Not everything has to be full page ads in Outdoor Photographer or GQ, but what attracts people is interesting content that has real substance.

[stevebrot]

Not everything has to be full page ads in Outdoor Photographer or GQ, but what attracts people is interesting content that has real substance.

I agree, so you were not referring to advertising per se. The problem with YouTube or the Facebook page is that both require that you go looking for it, so I just did. I searched on Goggle for "Why should I buy a Pentax". At the top was a question posed to Quora followed by two videos by Mattias Burling and one by CameraVille and then a whole bunch of forum posts and a fairly recent shutterbug article that was pretty decent. Translation, this is not looking good (could someone make CameraVille go away?) and I asked for the brand by name!

I would have expected to at least see a little bit from Ricoh somewhere, so yes, your point is well-taken. Changing it up a little, I asked, "Is Pentax a good camera brand". This one was a little better and brought up a 2017 Adorama article on best camera brands where Pentax was given third place billing below Canon and Nikon (in that order), but ahead of the rest of all the rest. There was also a blogger article from about a week ago on best brands where Pentax placed 4th by popularity just behind Sony. The assessment was very positive except for suggesting that the company is dying and that it has a limited lens selection.

Hmmmmm...

How about "best camera brand to buy"? First promising link (best cameras of 2020), no Pentax. Another best for 2020...again, no Pentax. Third link kept popping up unrelated "stuff"; ditto for the second. PC Magazine...no Pentax. Ricoh N. America has a page called "Five Reasons to Buy Pentax", but it is invisible to Google search. (No SEO... )

It appears there is a general failure in effort to sell cameras to noobs and perhaps not anyone. The Pentax USA Web site is OK, but makes for a hard user experience overall with camera detail pages for the KP and K-70 that make no attempt to sell the camera.

I knew things were bad, just not this bad.


Steve