Originally posted by MarkJerling
Pentax has not been available in a Harvey Norman or Noel Leemings for as long as I remember. Even 35 years ago, it was rare to see a Pentax camera in most camera shops I frequented. I've only once seen one in a shop in Wellington and prior to that only rarely in shops in Cape Town. As stated in my previous post, remember that Ricoh / Pentax is more interested in what happens in Japan than anywhere else. Of course, I have long argued that the local New Zealand Pentax agent appears to do no marketing at all, but then Ricoh / Pentax does not do that much marketing either.
I saw Pentax K-1 in a camera shop in Queen Street in Auckland a few years back, but other than that, that's pretty much the limit.
The K-70 is the 'budget' Pentax model, but it still represents pretty amazing value for money as a still camera (so long as the aperture block behaves).
30 years ago it was a very different story, and at one stage, my Dad, my uncle, and I all owned Pentax SLRs, even though neither my uncle nor Dad were photography enthusiasts. Some of the Pentax SLRs to be honest, were basically just ILC point and shoots, as they gave very little creative control, but there were a lot of them around, and you could always take the lens and stick it on a better body.
I do wonder if Pentax may be shooting themselves in the foot a bit having such a small lineup with such a big price jump between the K-70 and the K-3 III. Canon is confusing with their huge range of models, but I think an affordable, mid-range and high end so that people can adopt a system then grow as their needs and budgets allows is necessary.
The KP seems like a good intermediate model, but I thought I saw somewhere that production has been discontinued, which would be a shame, as there are people who might upgrade from a K-70, but not as far as a K-3 III. KP is about twice the price of a K-70 but about half that of a K-3 III, so keeping all three makes a nice progression.
Mirrorless introduces some interesting possibilities, and if I were starting from scratch, I'd consider it, but I don't think there's anything compelling enough to change systems for the type of photography I do at this stage.