[MPrince]

This can't be, Adam! Pentax has been doooooooooooomed for at least 50 years!!!!

[mee]

This is no place for positive thinking.

That made me laugh out loud.

[normhead]

We're all doomed

Hey bossa, what's the Nikon deal.. is Nikon doomed?

[bossa]

Some of us more than others...

I'm an atheist so I guess I'm more doomed in that sense.

---------- Post added 16-09-14 at 10:26 AM ----------

Hey bossa, what's the Nikon deal.. is Nikon doomed?

When in doubt refer to statement # 1 (We're all doomed)

---------- Post added 16-09-14 at 10:29 AM ----------

Personally I believe the age of consumerism will end within 20 years due to the degradation of the environment and the loss of precious "resources".

Here's an article on the "we're all doomed" scenario.

It's simple. If we can't change our economic system, our number's up | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham.

Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It's 2.5 billion billion solar systems. It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.

---

Last edited by bossa; 09-15-2014 at 06:06 PM.

[Uluru]

Pentax is (1) small and (2) conservative.
Their budget is (3) most likely severely capped and (4) Ricoh don’t want to spend on them to (5) paint the picture of no loss very pretty.

So lots of future progress and positive marketing in shows like Photokina has been sacrificed through (4) and (5). They could deliver more, no doubts about it, but considering (3), (4), and (5), there is no big investment to make things possible, so they will just entrench themselves in (1) and (2) even further. It is like never-ending loop of poverty.

As a DSLR system they are fine. 645 system is fine too.
But don’t ask for what they don’t have already, because you will never get it and will die waiting. They are only allowed to make tiny steps, which you don't know, but they are really tiny.

Thus the lesson with Pentax: buy, it's good, time-proven, but never ask for anything.

[bossa]

Pentax is (1) small and (2) conservative.
Their budget is (3) most likely severely capped and (4) Ricoh don’t want to spend on them to (5) paint the picture of no loss very pretty.

So lots of future progress and positive marketing in shows like Photokina has been sacrificed through (4) and (5). They could deliver more, no doubts about it, but considering (3), (4), and (5), there is no big investment to make things possible, so they will just entrench themselves in (1) and (2) even further. It is like never-ending loop of poverty.

As a DSLR system they are fine. 645 system is fine too.
But don’t ask for what they don’t have already, because you will never get it and will die waiting. They are only allowed to make tiny steps, which you don't know, but they are really tiny.

Thus the lesson with Pentax: buy, it's good, time-proven, but never ask for anything.

Brilliantly put mate and I don't doubt that it's right on the money.

[normhead]

Pentax is (1) small and (2) conservative.
Their budget is (3) most likely severely capped and (4) Ricoh don’t want to spend on them to (5) paint the picture of no loss very pretty.

So lots of future progress and positive marketing in shows like Photokina has been sacrificed through (4) and (5). They could deliver more, no doubts about it, but considering (3), (4), and (5), there is no big investment to make things possible, so they will just entrench themselves in (1) and (2) even further. It is like never-ending loop of poverty.

As a DSLR system they are fine. 645 system is fine too.
But don’t ask for what they don’t have already, because you will never get it and will die waiting. They are only allowed to make tiny steps, which you don't know, but they are really tiny.

Thus the lesson with Pentax: buy, it's good, time-proven, but never ask for anything.

And then you'll be so grateful when you get something.

Oh my goodness pentax.. is that (I can't believe it) something for my Pentax camera? You made a new lens? Oh that is so awesome, is it the 300 ƒ2.8 I've been dying for?... um, 300 ƒ5.6 but really light and easy to carry... uummm, well still it's something new right? I'll just have to think about it.

[johnmflores]

Looks like there's gonna be a lot of lightly-used gear in the marketplace soon….

[rubs hands together in anticipation…]

Honestly, I hope that you people dissatisfied with Pentax find a camera system that meets your needs and makes you happy, whether it be Canon, Nikon, Fuji, whatever. Life's too short, and your hobbies should give your pleasure, not agita.

[bossa]

Looks like there's gonna be a lot of lightly-used gear in the marketplace soon….

[rubs hands together in anticipation…]

Honestly, I hope that you people dissatisfied with Pentax find a camera system that meets your needs and makes you happy, whether it be Canon, Nikon, Fuji, whatever. Life's too short, and if your hobbies should give your pleasure, not agita.

My D810 and 2x D800e's are great cameras (particularly the 810) and it's great to be able to consider lenses without wondering if they'll be made available for Pentax.

I've always been "a Pentax person" who took awhile to get over the fact that he bought Nikon stuff. But it's good, in that I no longer worry about brands I use and concentrate more on what I want from myself as an Artist.

[Venturi]

As fantasy goes, that was light reading.

Pentax isn't doomed any more than the other majors, but we photographers certainly are if the status quo keeps rolling along at its current pace.

The mainstream camera industry is at a plateau that is going to take a lot more concerted effort to to overcome than megapixels, frames-per-second, and sensitivity performance. Pentax is in the same doldrums that Canikony are. Menus, Buttons, and E-dials, oh my! There's so much yawning similarity between Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sigma, and Sony that they're all just one big gaussian blur of status quo.

The only real player right now in the innovation game is Fuji. They're taking hard looks at everything that was truly awesome about film photography and rejuvenating it with 21st century technology. I've been distantly smitten by them for over a year now, but I really wasn't sure why until I read David Hobby's article on PetaPixel. Him talking about their wholistic approach to color rendition got me thinking about the rest of their system. The whole camera experience is thoughtfully artisan minded. The X-T1 is what the Nikon Df should have been, but couldn't be because ... Nikon. Canon would have flubbed it too, as would Pentax - because they're all still stuck in an endless marketing loop of specs driven one-upmanship.

Fuji walked away from that unwinnable battle in favor of building artisans' tools; functional, insightful, beautiful tools. They realized that many of us really don't want rapid-fire photon cannons. We want versatile brushes and sublime paints. The only question I have remaining is "Do I buy a fedora or a beret?"

/esoteric-rant

[pinholecam]

I've been using my Pentax lenses on a Sony A7 for close to 9months now.
Even got into even more serious LBA and got some RF lenses, Canon FD, compared with friend's Nikon lenses and all that.
You know what?
The Pentax lenses are as good and often better than all these other makes especially when viewed as a realistic whole of build, size, performance, rendering.

I say 'realistic whole' as some guys may argue blah blah blah... this lens is sharper, that lens is f0, etc.
But in real life, there is portability, encumbrance, costs that needs to be factored in .
A $50, A50/1.7 that easily goes toe to toe with a Rollei 50/1.8 (a Zeiss) and even a $600 Leica DR Summicron.
What more to ask for?


Even for the cameras, I agree with the article that the Pentax cameras stand out for the wealth of features and the 'flow of photo taking' in its buttons/handling/functions that we often take for granted.


So Pentax is not doomed. (but certainly need to rise to the challenge often and soon)
Some of the best lenses that one can have (Period).

[RGlasel]

the age of consumerism will end within 20 years due to the degradation of the environment and the loss of precious "resources".

An Essay on the Principle of Population: Or, A View of Its Past and Present ... - Thomas Robert Malthus - Google ????? Malthus beat you to it by 207 years.

[Fl_Gulfer]

Pentax has everything you need to be a great photographer, another system won't make you any better, but some lessons might.

[bossa]

An Essay on the Principle of Population: Or, A View of Its Past and Present ... - Thomas Robert Malthus - Google ????? Malthus beat you to it by 207 years.

Cheers I'll get to it after I clean up the kitchen. I just nuked a pasty in the microwave (accidently put it on for 10 minutes instead of 1 - it's a new unit). The pasty was turned to carbon.

[noser]

Cheers I'll get to it after I clean up the kitchen. I just nuked a pasty in the microwave (accidently put it on for 10 minutes instead of 1 - it's a new unit). The pasty was turned to carbon.

See that? Right there? I snerked my glass of water out of my nose.

That's why I come here.