Jeez.
Ricoh has owned Pentax for less than a year at this point.
In my experience working with engineers in high-tech companies, it can take around three years for a new product to be planned, designed, developed, and released. Three years. That's a very reasonable development cycle, especially in a smallish company with limited development resources.
Looking backward from right now, two of those years would have been during the Hoya ownership, when everybody around here KNEW things were pretty lean at Pentax. There were rumors about engineers being cut loose, rumors about the company being shopped around -- and look, it clearly WAS shopped around! We know that now.
Nonetheless, they recently still squeezed out the 645D, the Q, the K-01, the K-5 II/s, the O-GPS1, and a few lenses. That's not too bad under the circumstances.
And Ricoh is really showing some signs of commitment. Look at the Photokina presence. We're seeing better advertising now.
Maybe Hoya worked on FF, I don't know. But if they didn't, Ricoh has a pretty big and long-term job to pull one together, even if they fully intend to do exactly that.
Yes, Pentax is behind the big boys. Digital-era Pentax has ALWAYS been behind Nikon and Canon. Remember, from 1999-2003, Pentax had no DSLR at all. That's not very long ago.
Canon introduced its first FF model in 2003, and Nikon in 2007. Obviously, that failure to compete is what caused Nikon to shrivel up and die, because everyone who ever wanted a FF bought a 1Ds. Wait, hold on, they didn't? Nikon did not fall further and further behind without an FF to compete with Canon?
I understand the current lack of FF is bothering a number of people here. I get it. I don't blame people for switching brands. But it's not like 2012 is some kind of historic special year for FF, "now or never."
If Pentax develops and releases a nice, competitive FF model with some compelling features, they'll do fine. Maybe it will be 2013, or maybe 2014, or 2015. Maybe there won't be a stampede to buy them out, but when was the last time Pentax experienced that?
In the meantime, there are an awful lot of APS-C DSLRs yet to be sold. I see piles and piles of APS-C starter kits at Costco, and people are apparently buying them.
Cameras come, cameras go. People come, people go.
There's a huge crowd of APS-C DSLR people out there, and if there isn't a viable Pentax upgrade path, then some of them will upgrade to Canon/Nikon FF. Many won't. I don't see that equation changing this year, next year, or anytime soon.
