Originally posted by Kemal (snip) IS it really a complete clone of the Pentax counterpart?
Ah, revising an older thread ending in November, Batail. Fair enough, as I had intended to comment about it as well. In spite of it being used several times in this thread (such as Kemal's comment above), the word "clone," with it's widespread connotations of copy or imitation, is perhaps not the best to use here. The Samsung and Pentax cameras were jointly developed by the two companies and even share the same manufacturing facilities. Only the last stages of manufacturing (branding, minor cosmetics, firmware, etc) are handled differently. Therefore, neither company is copying or imitating the other. In other words, neither is a clone of the other.
This may all change at some point due to Hoya's recent acquisition of Pentax, but, as it stands now, I'm not aware of any hardware device (flash, lenses, etc) that will work on one and not on the other. The lone exception seems to be the K10D's battery grip. I've seen Pentax products used on matching Samsung products, Samsung products used on matching Pentax products, and 3rd-party products made for either used on both.
stewart