Originally posted by Nicolas06 DSLR as a product is mature. FF DSLR too. People that wanted one now have it. SLR technology is not new or shiny or innovative. The new products have almost nothing more against the previous version. Pentax still make noticable improvement, but only because they are 10 years late to the FF game, to the modern lenses game etc. If you brought the K1 now, you are more on the laggards part of the FF DSLR graph adoption curve anyway than an early adopter.
Careful not to mix up technology, format and product. There is something called technology adoption. There is also something called product life cycle (PLC). Format (24x36) and technology (DSLR) aren't new, but the product (Pentax K1 is new). As per Philip Kotler & co (Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2014). New-Product Development and Product Life-Cycle Strategies. In
Principles of Marketing (15th ed., pp. 273-282). Upper Saddle, N.J: Pearson.), the concept of early adopter, and laggards.
For example, you could consider cars. Cars have been around well before you were born, that does not prevent that, if you buy a new model of car (with 4 wheels, a gearbox, engine and 5 doors), I can't say you are a laggard, you are an early adopter of this new model when you buy one the first produced prototypes of it.
The Pentax K1 is a new product. As we can see, the early adoption rate of the K1 indicates that Pentax FF to set to become a successful and viable product line. Of course there will always be the guys who are happy with a cameraphone, but they don't interfere with photography hobbyists, uploading real time pictures of anything passing by from an smartphone to facebook doesn't appear to replace the taste for nice glass and artful photographic creations. Or, it would mean that photography is in danger of disappearing, and if so, it's going to take more than a decade, so we're still safe.
---------- Post added 12-06-16 at 18:22 ----------
Originally posted by normhead My rebutal, would be 95% of K-3 users don't need it. At least 90% of K-5 users never take an image that makes use of it's ability. I bet more than 50% of K-5 users could do everything they do with a K-x, and 25% could get along fine with a K100D. When you start down that road, it never ends.
That's what APSC owners believe. The K1 gives you a significant step of additional capability, the step consists of higher ISO and more resolution combined. Which means that if I take a photo at a jazz concert in dim light, the K3 photo is blotchy, and the K1 photo is an order of magnitude better, because the noise is lower and since it packs 36Mpixel, the overall image resolution is also better (the image look better, significantly). The problem with the K1 is the total cost of the full frame system including new lenses is way beyond the budget for non-pro usage. For a complete K1 system including three DFA zoom lenses, is about $5K or $6K, costs as much as a small car, hard to justify to take pictures for a hobby, if you don't have spare money. There is sort of an acceptable threshold around $1K for spending money on camera gear, that's what apsc dsrl prices are at, but when you see that K1 and most new DFA lenses are priced $2K (more or less), that's a show stopper for a number to K5/K3 users, because even if the larger sensor has more room for image quality, the system itself is beyond budget. Prices may adjust in the future though.