----- Original Message -----
From: "J. C. O'Connell"
Subject: RE: Camera engineering (was Re: Rename request)
...Not to mention the cost
of losing your customer care reputation
forever too...So bottom line is there isnt
any way to accurately measure the cost of screwing
pentax system owners without cause even if its
unintentional due to plain outright stupidity at the
top of the company, its too complex and
with too many variables and total unknowns..
In other words, its risky "business".
Strong words, and perhaps wrong ones, my pompous compatriot.
When I bought my istD, I had a pretty decent lens line, mostly K and M, a
few A and a couple of AF lenses.
And I felt kinda choked that the K/M lenses didn't have metering at all (I
bought before it was an option with the software update).
What I found was that most of my old lenses just didn't work for me anymore
because of the change in crop factor.
As an example, I hate the 28mm range on 35mm, it just doesn't do anything
for me, and it is a lens I can count on two fingers the number of times it
was the right focal length for me, but I really like a standard lens' field
of view.
Guess what......the 28mm focal length works really well on the digital
(being very close to a standard lens), and I ended up buying a good quility
lens in that range (31mm).
I didn't really like the 77 on 35mm, even though it is as fine a lens as one
is likely to get, but I love it on the digital.
I could continue in this vein, but I don't think I need to.
My present lens kit for the digital contains exactly two lenses that I owned
prior to buying the digital, one of which, my much loved A20/2.8 will almost
never see the light of day, since it has a similar field of view as a 28mm
has on full frame 35mm....
It wouldn't have mattered if there was full compatability or not, the old
lenses just didn't work for my photography anymore, the focal lengths were
wrong.
This isn't taking into account at all the zoom lens contingent, which are
legion.
I don't know my history all that well, but I don't think there are all that
many K/M zoom lenses out there, and even if they are, I expect newer lens
designs are better, and it seems to me that most users these days are
wanting
zoom lenses, and will most likely be wanting something with autofocus.
As a business decision for Pentax, K/M non support is probably not a bad
one, they sold me
another half dozen new lenses. I may not be a typical user , but I suspect
I am not all that atypical either.
YMMV
William Robb
