3. Pentax is scaling back. They will produce new lenses, like the DAs, at a steady pace, but will not produce enough to meet sudden surges in demand. (Foolish, if you ask me, since the demand is now. If not met now, the demand may not exist when production becomes adequate.)
Some news from Taiwan retailers (or just rumour) suggested some Pentax FA lenses were not manufactured anymore (like FA100/2.8 & FA50/2.8 etc) because they are expecting new lenses to replace them. But then again, nobody can confirm.
Back when I got an early DA 16-45, then my lab ordered two more, I checked the serial numbers against when the lenses arrived. I suggested that Pentax was producing the DA 16-45 at a rate of about 500 per month. Someone protested that such a production number was way too low. To the contrary, the evidence suggests that Pentax is indeed producing very few SLR lenses.
Maybe they were uncertain about the actual demand prior to the introduction so they were playing safe not to oversizing their production line?
The bottom line is that Pentax is shafting us serious photographers. And if they lack a full lens line-up, what serious photographers will buy Pentax?
In Pentax sense, serious mean 120 (or at least what they said). :-)
I was not doing photography in the late 1980s when the F lenses were being introduced. I wonder if the situation then was similar.
Ironically, by the time they introduced FA* lenses, the demand was still very low (except the FA*24 & the FA*85).
Alan Chan http://www.pbase.com/wlachan
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