Alan wrote: > Well, the LX failed to generate cash flow and failed to compete with Canon > F-1 & > Nikon F3.
Neither the F3 or the F1 made any money. They were expensive to built and built by hand. >What made the LX successful? Sales volume. 5000 units a month was a LOT for the most expensive 35mm slr money could buy. >I would not even go into the on-going > reliability issue. Theres is no ongoing reliability issue. I've used mine for 24 years and it failed the first time after 19 years. It still worked though. The other problems are pure maintainance. It is one of the most durable and reliable camera ever made. All other Pentax slr have more "problems" than the LX except for the 645's according to those who repair the stuff. The problem issue is biased. Due to the LX value and collectability, "problem" LX are still around and getting repaired. Problem Super A's are thrown in the garbage and you consequently never hear about them. > I could be wrong, but I think Pentax have been detached from reality since > the A > series. They put all their eggs in the A series and Minolta caught them by > surprise > with 7000. Minolta took everybody by surprise including Canon. >When they introduced the SF series, the F lens line looked ridiculous. > With P/PZ series, they decided to offer the either super cheap zooms or super > expensive * lenses, nothing in between for the real consumers. They have > always seem > to produce products that they wanted, instead of what consumers needed; a > very poor > business practice. They had all the time to introduce high quality f4 zooms > (especially tele-zooms) at much lower price than FA* lenses, but they ignore > the > demand. They kept pumping out their super expensive FA* lenses and finally > collapsed. And the self-destructed FA 28-70/4 just didn't cut it. I don't really agree with this. When the Z-series were current the lens line up was mostly OK. The F:4 quality zooms was virtually non-existent from all manufacturers back then; Canon didn't make them until the late 90's. By then Pentax had lost interest in the SLR line-up.The F:4 quality zooms seems to coming now in DA form now that Pentax supposedly have rediscovered slr's for digital this time. However, if you keep wining about Pentax lens line from 15 years back, I seriously think you should have shifted system long ago to put you out of misery. Personally, I find Pentax current lens line up pretty much OK. There are holes but for my usage there are larger holes in the Canon lens line up. > Did I mention the FA43/1.9 Limited has horrible corner sharpness even stopped > way > down? Nonsense. Mine doesn't. Neither is this supported by test and published MTF values. Pål
