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Forum: Photographic Industry and Professionals
02-20-2018, 03:49 AM
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It is clear that Pentax doesn't have the budget of the competitors. That is why it takes a long time for them to release top end lenses and why their tracking auto focus and number of auto focus points is relatively small compared to some others in the industry.
From Pentax's standpoint, their goal is to find niches within the camera industry where their products can flourish. If they come out with a K3 II sequel, I think they will target it to somewhere just a little above a D7500 -- high image quality, decent frame rate, and two card slots -- but not the sports shooter that the D500 is. Tacking on things like pixel shift and accelerator chip certainly should help it stand out in the market place. I am convinced, though, that Pentax's biggest issues have nothing to do with tech and everything to do with marketing and product placement.
We are in the internet era and it should be relatively cheap to develop a "Pentax channel" on You Tube where they do five minute, well produced segments talking about how to get the most out of your Pentax cameras. How to use pixel shift in the field, what settings are best for AF-C and so on. Do some real world videos with guys like Kerrick James and Kenspo when they are doing on location shooting with current Pentax gear.
I will say that I think the issues with regard to auto focus are overblown. My wife does shoot weddings with a K-1 and has no issues capturing all of the moments she needs to get. The lens is as big a factor as the camera body. The older DA * SDM driven lenses do not keep up with action and won't even if the algorithms are awesome. The newer DC driven lenses and DFA zooms are a lot better and I expect the DFA *50 to be in the same ball park. There is progress there and the idea that someone with skills couldn't use Pentax gear to shoot weddings is invalid. The biggest issue with the K-1 and weddings is the buffer size (if you are writing to two cards it fills up awfully fast).
Anyway, I do think Pentax has a plan. It isn't an aggressive plan and we aren't going to see Canon/Nikon/Sony spec monsters, but there will continue to be SLRs with nice ergonomics and interesting features coming out for a long time to come.
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