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I'm tired, big day, instead of writing something new, I'll just paste what I wrote in a Q-related thread
(to anyone: please don't just scan what I wrote below and post some stock answers against FF - we have too many threads like that
- please take the time to read and
think about the points I make.)
I think the general mirrorless tier itself is probably going to emerge as the most competitive tier of all, especially when things like camera phones start getting better - start getting really good - and encroach
that tier from below. Pentax may find itself pushed from the side by all the other mirrorless players (and there are more players in that tier than the DSLR tier)
and pushed from below from apple, etc.
If Pentax puts too many eggs in that basket... they could end up regretting it. Especially if they enter it with the wrong product, and frankly I fear that the Q is the wrong product at the wrong price.
A FF move by Hoya can be seen as a strengthening of K-mount. Every lens they develop for FF will also be usable and work wonderfully on aps-c - those two tiers are actually part of the same silo, while 'Q' is a completely different silo. 'Q' is a spreading of resources - a shotgun approach, but the shotgun shell has only a couple pellets.
Hoya has the financial capability of placing Pentax in the FF tier with a unique product, a small-bodied (within reason) WR FF offering that has a line of small/brilliant/relatively-inexpensive primes to shoot with it and several weather-sealed primes and zooms. They would need to expand the lens line - part of the investment - but again, this doesn't happen in it's own silo.
An investment in FF filters down to the entire DSLR product line. Nikon showed how to make this work brilliantly - the ROI on a lot of it's R&D was spread down a tier (or two) over a couple generations. Their entire product line was enriched by this.
The FF and MFD tiers have the ability to survive above the fray below, because there will always be an ultimate upgrade market. They really can't be encroached by Vivitar, Apple, all the Android clones, even Samsung and Panasonic are too far away from that to really consider it.
The FF tier could actually be expanded if Pentax entered it with the right offering. Some existing K-mount users would upgrade, but you'd also get Olympus users, and a good many Canon, Nikon and Sony users would consider a jump if the product seemed to fit them better, especially if they're size-conscious. There would also be a % of FF shooters who would buy a smaller Pentax and a couple primes as a second FF body. Add to this a % of new buyers entering the market who may like what Pentax has and chooses to jump from whatever mirrorless product they have right into a smallish FF.
I think we're discounting the potential power of the new, really good camera phones and commodity-sensored mirrorless products to make the lower tiers a big, difficult mess for the traditional camera makers. It may come to pass that the only way they can distinguish themselves is to have product up in the FF tier and/or very high-end aps-c tier - MFD is a nice place to be as a symbolic thing only, IMO. I don't see how a market that small (and it's
much smaller than FF) can sustain Pentax in any significant way.
'Q' takes resources away from an expansion of the aps-c lens product line, takes resources away from development of a Nikon-competetive AF module, takes resources away from an SDM replacement strategy... and probably contributes to pushing FF out to 2013, 2014... or never.
I characterize my wish for a FF body as a personal thing, because that's easy for people to relate to, and it's a quick way to get my point across in a forum. But it's more than that. I think it's a viable strategy to strengthen K-mount, strengthen the brand and build something that can't be washed away by whatever happens below.
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