I don't think the situation is quite as bad for Pentax as you make it sound, but at any rate I more or less agree with what you're saying.
Like I said before, I don't think the *ist D is going to be a runaway success for Pentax, and when I get excited about it I'm not excited about it specifically. What I *am* excited about is that Pentax is finally getting a presence in the DSLR market. They may not sell a lot of *ist D's, and they may not sell a lot of the next one or two DSLR's they make, but, by the time that DSLR's are priced low enough that ordinary consumers won't mind buying one instead of a film SLR, Pentax will be in a good position to do what they do best: sell good quality cameras with excellent lenses for less money than Canon and Nikon do. Sure, pros will probably still use C/N, but I suspect that Pentax will have a very strong, if not dominating, position in the entry-level DSLR market, which should make them some decent coin... hopefully enough to subsidize some cool film equipment. Even if their marketing continues to be crap, most entry-level SLR buying is done pretty much spur-of-the-moment, over the counter, and the salesperson has a lot of control over which camera the customer winds up taking. In Canada, the MZ-series cameras have sold very well because of their low prices and good spiffs for salespeople. chris On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, Bruce Rubenstein wrote: > I didn't say it was a knock off and it doesn't matter if it's similar or > not. It doesn't matter if it has the best interface know to humanity, > because people don't start with user interfaces, or any other technical > detail. A digital SLR, for the general population, is just an expensive > electronic gadget. They want to buy from a company that they know makes > "good" electronic gadgets, or a camera brand that has such good name > recognition that they already know it. Pentax is neither. Pentad's name > recognition starts with Spotmatic and ends with K1000, with nothing in > between. If Pentax's DSLR sales are just dependent on long time Pentax > users then they'll sell about as many as Minolta did of their Maxxum 9's. > > BR > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > >True, but I don't see the *ist D as a knock-off of the F80. It shares > >some design similarities, but it's a very different camera. Obviously the > >people who always buy Nikon aren't going to be swayed, but for those who > >are still undecided, a vaguely user-friendly interface should be a plus. > > > > > > >
