Originally posted by JinDesu Maybe they just want to sell more 18-135 WRs.
Yes, that is one of my points. If I buy a K-30, I am considering the 18-135 kit lens, but mostly for its increased range and increased image quality, while only a little for its WR.
Originally posted by Ryan Trevisol For people like me, WR is a nice-to-have feature, and maybe someday I'll pony up for a WR lens and be ready for shooting in bad weather.
Even if I owned a WR camera and a WR lens, I probably would not shoot in the rain. I'm not and never have been that gung ho about photography. Besides,
we've barely had a drop of rain here in the past year anyway; and rain isn't that common here even in a normal year. That said, rainstorms can and do catch photographers completely off guard when they are far away from the nearest cover. I've had to tuck my camera inside my shirt a number of times over the years to protect it from an unexpected rain shower when I was faraway from a vehicle or a building.
I'm not being "critical" for any consumer-related reasons, only for my personal ethical
beliefs (actually, "annoyed" and "disapproving" are more accurate terms in this case than "critical"). In fact, I've never owned a WR camera or WR lens in my 38 years of taking pictures, and I've always gotten along just fine without them. In fact, I didn't even know that WR cameras and lenses existed until I started studying the K-5 last year (yes, I was out of the loop for a while). I'm being "critical" because I think Pentax's coupling of a WR camera with a non-WR lens will be misleading to many of the non-professionals in the target audience for this particular camera (the sort of audience that would be interested in Pentax spokesmodel Sarah Harding, for example, and in the flashy -- and sometimes very attractive -- non-traditional colors of the K-30). To me, that almost borders on being unethical and unnecessary, especially when, as Unsinkable II says with some authority, "The WR adds PENNIES in material costs."
Originally posted by Quicksand Why is this suddenly a major faux pas?
The sad thing is that it should always have been considered a major faux pas, but it has not been.
One of my main points in this
particular thread is that Pentax-Ricoh has opened themselves up to lots of potential criticism by reviewers who are frequently eager to find fault with any non-Canikon (or non-Sony?) camera they review; and, as I wrote in my previous comment, "it will appear to many consumers [at least those who read camera reviews] that they [Pentax-Ricoh] are just being greedy (and not behaving responsibly)." Who cares if those consumers are right or wrong about that? If they decide that Pentax-Ricoh is trying to "pull a fast one," they may not buy a K-30. This "mismatched-kit" policy certainly gave me a tiny bit of pause when I first learned about it. The
PC Magazine reviewer (biased as he is toward other camera brands and as wrong as he was about the K-5) was quite correct in pointing out --
in the "cons" section -- the coupling of a non-WR lens as part of a kit with a WR camera. Even B&H Photo mistakenly assumed at first that the K-30 would come with an 18-55 WR lens. What, besides logic, common sense and ethics, would have led them to come to such a wrong conclusion?
Originally posted by lammie200 This belly-aching...
Where is the fine line between "belly aching" and legitimate criticism? Who gets to define what legitimate criticism is and what "belly aching" is?
Originally posted by lammie200 ...about not receiving the 18-55 WR and/or 50-200 WR at give away pricing is cry-baby-ish IMHO.
"Give away pricing" is an extremely subjective term. I think that $900 for a camera and a basic non-WR kit lens
is not giveaway pricing. If it was, Pentax-Ricoh wouldn't be doing it. I think at that price that an 18-55 WR lens should have been standard, and there would still have been plenty of profit to spare for Pentax-Ricoh. We have to stop thinking of WR lenses as if they are made of gold, because they aren't.
Originally posted by lammie200 That said, Pentax lens pricing in general is too high.
Is that "belly aching" or "legitimate criticism"? Either way, I totally agree with you.