Herb wrote: FWIW, if you read the announcement of the DA 14/2.8, it mentions that it fits Pentax's digital SLRs (note plural). also, financial analysts in Japan are expecting some new Pentax SLR bodies to ship in the spring. no mention of where they got that information from. i can only assume that at least one will be a DSLR body. the reason the subject comes up is that different analysts have different opinions on Pentax's SLR lens sales and the opinions seem to revolve around how well accepted the new bodies are. the SLR lens operation is quite profitable, even though it's absolute profit isn't a large percentage of Pentax's total. apparently Pentax sold about 3M SLR lenses last year.
REPLY: I wonder... According to one source no Pentax digital slr are expected this year. Pentax will concentrate on volume digital products this year as it is of paramount important that Pentax increase volume in digital as the Pentax volume segment, "upmarket" film zoom P&S, is evaporating at an alarming rate. At the most, Pentax might show future DSLR's at Photokina in the fall, but they will probably not be sold until next year. As usual my source might be wrong but if he is not, then any DSLR will come as a surprise to the Pentax organization. The number of 3 million slr lens sales last year seem totally unrealistic. That number is almost half of the total screw mount production and almost equal the total of all "A" lenses ever manufactured. And this in a year. The 3 million number seem to be more fitting for Canon. Anyone know the deal about the rumor that Pentax is about to stop all 35mm camera production? An again, what is the deal about the MZ-S Limited? Pål
