Originally posted by steffi It seems Pentax have a very good reputation for their current line of DSLRs but the availability of lenses considered by some to be a weakness. So why don't they simply give up the lens business and make a body that uses either Canon or Nikon lenses? Are the licensing costs too high to make this a worthwhile exercise?
Haha, the camera saleperson at the camera store I usually go to asked me "why was I taking a step backwards" when I asked to see some nikon lens on his display shelf. (Some big fat Tokina telephoto.)
Pentax lenses are just about the best esepcially back in the film days where they easily stood up to the best german lenses (Leica, Zeiss). Its just that nowadays, the general public is so absorbed into the whole Canikon marketing thing that Pentax has really fallen from the limelight. Pentax lenses today are still very good and their K Mount offers unrivalled backwards compatibility.
Pentax got into the dSLR game rather late (better late than never..like Ricoh) but they are making progress. Canon and Nikon lenses aren't as good and both of them (Canon more so) work on heavily a "Buy-Up" thing. Their consumer lines are rather mediocre and to get anything decent, the customers must buy into their premium lenses costing thousands.
Fujifilm has good sensor tech but as stated in previous posts, it would cost too much to adopt their own mount. Sigma has their own mount but its unremarkably similar to the Canon EF Mount (probably to save costs).