I remember, back in the film days, Olympus defined a niche for the half-frame camera in a universe of full-frame 35mm offerings.
I suppose it may be conceivable that Pentax may occupy a similar niche if the two major camera makers move to full frame. On the other hand, I have a feeling that the consumer market will eventually move away from the optical SLR in favor of mirrorless ILC type cameras. I'm getting notable numbers of young students (early 20's) in my classes that prefer to use live view and don't particularly like the optical viewfinder in the SLRs. I suppose this makes sense. They grew up with digital point and shoots. Also - very few people in my basic classes even know that there are different sensor sizes. It's only a very small part of the unit on lenses, but when I bring it up, many of them find the very concept confusing. I think the whole concept of "full-frame" is something that is only important to professionals and serious hobbyists While this is a very important segment of the market, it is relatively small. I see lots of camera brands in my classes. The mix is overwhelmingly Canon with Nikon a distant second. In the last couple of years Sony has been creeping in. I almost never see a Pentax camera. When you look at the features on the typical entry to mid-level SLRs Canon is way behind everyone else. They were last with Auto-ISO. Something that is quite helpful to the beginning consumer but was non-existent on Canon until recently. The almost-two-year-old 7D, which is a big seller, and considered to be one of Canon's shining stars, just got a firmware upgrade that added features that have been on Pentax, Nikon and most other brands for years. That being said, Canon sells more cameras than any other manufacturer. So, I don't think all of stuff we argue about helps sell lot of cameras and makes a manufacturer big. In my opinion, Pentax has a great line of equipment that could compete very well if they concentrated on marketing, distribution and dealer support. GS George Sinos -------------------- gsi...@gmail.com www.georgesphotos.net plus.georgesinos.com On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 8:51 AM, Bob W <p...@web-options.com> wrote: >> From: pdml-boun...@pdml.net [mailto:pdml-boun...@pdml.net] On Behalf Of >> Toralf Lund > >> I don't know, personally I'm not convinced that chasing the "latest and >> greatest" and focusing on higher numbers (in various specs) or a longer >> list of features, is generally a good way to make products. > > if you are Nikon or Canon and your market is professional journalists and > such-like then it is the only way to make products, because if they don't > make them someone else will and they will end up as also-rans. > > Pentax had a big slice of that market once. > > B > >> As such, I >> rather like what Pentax appears to be trying to do today, i.e. make >> robust, simple and usable cameras built around the "right" technology >> or technology that has perhaps matured a bit, as opposed to what's most >> "advanced". If anything, I'd like to see them trimming down the feature >> list even more and go further in the direction of keeping things >> simple... > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
