On Tue, 20 Aug 2002, William Robb wrote: > Pentax as a brand has always been an enthusiast/ hobbiest brand, > at least here in North America, since the Korean War.
This is certainly not true for the UK at least. For example, recently UK tv showed a documentary titled 'The Real Blow Up' (did anyone see it guys?) about the photographers that inspired the 60's film 'Blow Up', particularly David Bailey, Brian Duffy and Terence Donovan. At one point Donovan was being interviewed circa 1969 about how 'hard' it was to be a pro photographer and he said (I'm paraphrasing here) '... all you need to be a photographer is to go out and buy yourself a Pentax...'. The implication being that a) he didn't consider what he did very difficult and b) Pentax was good enough for a very highly-paid professional as late as 1969. But William, although I am no expert on trends in the USA, surely if your cut-off date for 'professional desireablility' (whatever that might be) is the Korean War you're are missing all the Spotmatic series cameras when Pentax was one of the THE brands to be seen with? Now if you'd said the beginning of the Vietnam War I'd probably be more inclined to agree. In fact I'd say that the Vietnam War probably did for Nikon (especially) and Canon the same as what it did for the Bell UH-1 Huey :-) Chris - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
