I just wonder how happy Rebel digital customers will be. Only time will tell, obviously, but I'd be afraid to drop any money on one. The reporters the company sends me are usually newbies, and almost every single one tells me they have a great! camera - a Rebel. I just smile and nod. Then after a few weeks of regular use, they bring it to me and ask me what's wrong with it. I open the back and pieces of plastic fall out. Important pieces of plastic. The camera doesn't work anymore after that. It also doesn't get fixed because they spent the little bit of savings they had to buy it and by this time, they're thoroughly disgusted with it anyway.
Now to be fair, I'm sure there are Rebels out there that have held up over time - I just haven't seen a single one of them. If a customer who buys a camera for less than $200 that breaks in a few months, how unhappy will they be if they sink $1000 in a digital Rebel and pieces fall out in a few months after low to moderate use? If it's the same quality as the film camera, I have a hard time believing it will take market share from anything over any real amount of time, AND if this is the case and what it takes to compete in the low-end digital slr market, I'd just as soon Pentax didn't go there. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Juey Chong Ong" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 9:14 AM Subject: Re: Has Pentax missed again? > On Thursday, Oct 9, 2003, at 20:43 America/New_York, Joseph Tainter > wrote: > > > The issue is gaining market share. Newcomers are more frequently > > swayed by price. It is not until they are more experienced that they > > realize they will need those extra-cost features. Newcomers will buy > > this Canon, not the starkistdee. > > Pentax will price it and market it to meet their targets, whatever they > are. The *ist-D is no Rebel Digital. They compete in different > segments. If Pentax wanted to compete with a Rebel Digital, they would > have called it a ZX-D or something like that. > > btw, you can now get a Nikon D100 for US$1,499. That's a US$100-US$200 > price cut, I think. > > --jc >
