Here is an ingenious Kickstarter that has already raised 3x the number of $$$ they had as their goal and there is still most of the month left. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lomography/the-lomography-petzval-portrait-lens Delivery of the first lenses is supposed to be Feb. 2014
It is by an established company (Zenit) and it made me wonder why an established company like Pentax couldn't do something similar. Take a lens that everybody wants and Kickstart it. The backers get their lens before the general public (and often for less than the eventual selling price) in exchange for their support (and their prepaid WAIT). The company can judge the level of excitement for a product by the amount of buzz and support dollars it generates. Delivery is in the future. It would be possible to fund even relatively small Pentax projects this way, with the manufacturing process even being different than the mass-produced way, but if successful a particular lens could be moved into the mass-production methodology. Thoughts? -- "Photography is a Bastard left by Science on the Doorstep of Art" - Peter Galassi -- 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.
