[Laurentiu Cristofor]

If the adapter is made so that the distince is the proper 46.5mm, that would work, but no contacts so your all auto lens would be turned into a full manual lens. If you want contacts and motors and gears added, that pushes the price right back to the 4-5-6 hundred dollar mark that most people would not be willing to spend.

You're back to where we started from. Here's how I answered the first time around:

The Kenko device that I linked to costs $179. And it is actually a set of three tubes - each as complex as each other. A single adapter would not have to cost more than a third of that - $60, but let's say $100, because Ricoh is EVIL and wants to milk the Pentax brand (cheap sarcasm) or maybe because Kenko sells for a smaller market (grim realism) - still $100 is not a prohibitive price to use all your lenses on a new camera. And it is quite a way off from your $600 estimate or Clinton's $800 one. After all, people are willing to pay $100 to buy a crummy PKA adaptall-2 adapter, just so they can control aperture of old MF lenses through their camera bodies.

If Ricoh wants, they can phase out the K-mount without losing compatibility with all the K-mount lenses. It is technically possible.

I don't think Ricoh wants that though. They seem committed to supporting the K-mount and DSLRs - at least for the near future. And that makes sense if they want to move to an SLT type of design in the future - I can buy that (both figuratively and literally). But I wouldn't have much interest in a K-mount MILC and I would start having doubts about the Ricoh strategy if that is what they are going to announce this year.

I don't have anything else to add.

[markku55]

If I have to use my precious glass via an adapter, I can just as well jump to another brand. I can do that with other brands too.

You can do it if the mount registration distance in the other brand is SHORTER than that one in your precious lenses.

[Giklab]

"Less expensive" is entirely area-related. Here, for example, Pentax gear is the cheapest of the major camera manufacturers, but our market is defective anyway.

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

I should have thought about this example before, but what I've been arguing earlier is for Pentax to do what Olympus did when they introduced the Micro Four Thirds mount - they offered an adapter so FT lenses can be used with full functionality on MFT cameras. The cost of the adapter: $179. Kenko could probably make a less expensive one.