"MZ-D", unfortunately they misread the market, and the rapidly decreasing price curve. The realized
that it would be a disaster when it was almost too late.
John Francis wrote:
On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 07:36:33PM -0600, Tom C wrote:
It's only a short hop, skip, and jump for diehard Pentax users to start wondering whether Pentax is the future when Canon for instance, releases what, 6 - 8 DLSR's to Pentax's two. Not to mention the IS capability, the FF option, and the knowledge that if I wanted to buy something cutting edge I could.
It sounds to me as though you had rather unreasonable expectations. When Canon had released five DSLRs (1D, 30D, 60D, 10D, 1Ds) before Pentax got their first one onto the shelves, it was quite obvious that Pentax were going to be at best playing catchup.
If any diehard Pentax user expects Pentax to suddenly leapfrog to the front of the technology curve, they're viewing the last several decades through heavily rose-tinted glasses.
Pentax will probably (if they manage to stay in business that long) introduce a follow-on model to the *istD sometime in 2006. But it's unlikely to be either cost- or feature- competitive with the Canon replacement for the 20D which I would expect to debut not much later (or, possibly, even before the Pentax).
But, you know what? I don't care. My *ist-D seems perfectly adequate for the tasks I set it, just as my PZ-1p and MZ-S seemed to do about as well as the F5 and 1D bodies the other manufacturers offered. I don't need to be out there on the cutting edge, where the differences from those top-of-the-line models become apparent. Equally, I expect that the *ist-Dn, or whatever it is called, will meet my needs.
I've looked at what it would take to switch to Canon; at present it might be possible without an enormous penalty (A* and FA* lenses seem to be fetching excellent prices on eBay, and I've got a few of those). But I'm not convinced that it would make a significant difference - I don't find my current equipment is the limiting factor.
Sure, I'd like IS. I'd like USM. (I used to add AF TCs to that list, but at least I'll soon have a couple of Sigmas to cover that). My other major annoyance with the D (frame rate & buffer size) will automatically be upgraded by any newer model as a matter of course, and I expect the pixel count will increase as well for those few occasions when 6MP isn't quite enough.
