Originally posted by Parry Incremental upgrades ain't gonna cut no more. I look at my K-5 IIs. Look at the shots I get out of the thing. Then look at the results people are getting with the K-3 and look at the spec sheet. Diminishing returns on increased investment is really coming into play here.
Another £1099 for what exactly? A few more keepers?
I think the SLR cycle has really spaced out over the last few years. The APS-C update cycle was always shorter than the full frame one (18 months versus 3 years, roughly), but you could usually skip a generation over even two. If you owned a K20, there was little point in buying a K7, unless you needed video. If you owned a K5, there wasn't a whole lot of point in buying a K5 II, unless you were having a lot of auto focus troubles. Of course, Pentax was taken over by Ricoh and that really sort of spaced out the time between the K5 and K5 II release and certainly the K3 release.
The cameras that felt like big jumps to me, were the K10 (primarily the sealing, general improvements in ease of use) and the K5 (primarily the amazing Sony sensor which continues to impress, even today). Otherwise everything has felt incremental, evolutionary rather than revolutionary.