Originally posted by indyphil Personally I think they should get back to the leaf shutter design. Photographers value that 1/500th sync speed. Overpowering the sun is very popular, and the other more expensive medium format rigs all have that option. The only 645 glass with the leaf shutter that a Pentax owner can use is old, manual focus stuff.
If you have to calculate light and cock the shutter for each frame, autofocus is not really speeding things up. That is a manual world. In other words, the manual focus LS lenses will do just fine in that environment. And at least the 135mm is very good indeed (but I believe the LS 75mm is, too, I just did not have it long enough to confirm).
Having said that, the LS lenses are only available on the used market, and are far and few between. So yes, they should be made again, perhaps optimised for the digital age.