On 3/30/05 6:06 AM, "Alin Flaider" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> As always I appreciate your glimpses over the "inside". What I find > most interesting now is the hint to the build costs (point 2). > I suspect a major contribution to the cost was due to having to > maintain very low tolerances and this perhaps is associated with > manual assembly in the now closed Japan factory(?). Anyway, a friend > recently disassembled several FA consumer zooms and was horrified to > find out large tolerances by design, alignment through shimming as a > rule, high wear plastic guiding rails - all of these easily leading > to misalignments of moving optical groups, both relative to the > optical axis and the image plane. Optics that are rather good > delivered sub-average or inconsistent results mainly due to poor > mechanical design and manufacture. It's hard to believe that Pentax > might apply the same cost reduction to the DFA macros - > traditionally some of their best lenses - but I cannot help > wondering if common and molded parts policy sufficed to lower the > production costs enough to make the goods profitable. Hi Alin, I hear similar stories everywhere, particularly on what is called "consumer zooms". And this is not just on one brand but across most of the brands. I do not want to sound like a Canon basher (I do have some of their equipment which I appreciate) but some of their consumer lenses are horrible too. In the case of DFA macro, it is apparent from his statement that at least one of the major reasons (or THE reason :-) was to make the lenses profitable. I am not quite sure if they did it in loosening the manufacturing tolerances (maybe to some extent, but these are primes). But, according to his statement, they did it mainly by designing common parts (I am not sure if the use of common parts is across their new lens line, or just macros. Probably just macros, considering the common filter size) and using the molded parts (interpret it "plastic". I guess he did not quite want to use the word :-). Much like what they are doing in auto industry. I am sure that they also looked at the way to assemble these lenses and eliminated the steps which require close tolerance assembling. However, it is hard to believe that Pentax, being what they are, cut corners in designing lenses like macro. Since the shift to AF, the design and assembly inevitably incorporated some loose tolerance by default in order to allow faster AF at minimum motor power (and the use of "a lot of " plastic parts perhaps to minimize the inertia along the way). I hate those wobbling plastic zoom extensions. So, it was inevitable that AF lenses went plasticky and loose. Obviously, it is impossible to have a butter smooth MF feeling (oh, I miss my old M50/1.4) with the AF capability :-). Unfortunately, we cannot have it in both ways. I do hope that the new DFA Macros are well built, not excessively like the current one. Metal barrel is nice, but I no longer mind the plastic barrel as long as it is solidly built. One thing which concerned me, although I do not have their stock, is the fact that Pentax continued selling the older macros at loss, and they say these were one of the best selling lenses. In a way, it sounds very typical Pentax, but if they continued to do so, they were obviously choking themselves up and they are not supposed to afford such a thing. I am rather glad they found a way to make money on these lenses by changing the design, hopefully without compromising the performance as they said :-). It sounds healthier. Cheers, Ken
