£100 Cash Back for Ist DS+ 18-55

So Pentax are finally digging in deep to try to establish the DS. Marketing strategies usually the preserve of Nikon and Canon in the DSLR sector comes to your favourite brand and mine. I really hope it does well for them, and I welcome aggressive marketing to help break this great camera. The only problem is, why didn't they inform people of this in advance. I appreciate this may be a reaction to the 350, but if I had known this 2 weeks ago I would have kept the money in my pocket untill now. I would have put the £100 towards a flash or kept it for putting towards the 50-200. I have a little bitter taste in my mouth tonight

I haven't heard about this yet, but to be honest once I've bought something then I just get on with enjoying it and don't worry any more about the price. Things are dropping in price all the time and we could wait forever and still find it cheaper next week!

Perhaps it's a good opportunity to buy a spare?

Wouldn't bother me either, after all I've been using mine since december and saved a fortune on film. But then my *istds and 18-55 were only 635 quid anyway.
john

This was announced on a forum a few days ago, and appeared on Pentax UK website yesterday.

I am glad that Pentax have enough faith in this product to advertise and market on a more stronger basis than is usual for them. Practically every uk based photo magazine has full page adverts for the DS, and they are even sponsoring competitions with the DS as the prize. When I bought my MZS - just as it came out - there wasn't a single add to be seen anywhere, despite a lot of favourable reviews both tin amateur and professional press. I don't remember any strong advertising when I bought my Z1 either. These were and still are absolutely brilliant cameras and deserve(d) to adopted by a much wider photographic community. The last SLR i remember Pentax having significant advertising on was the P30n. I bought one of those also.

Hopefully all this effort will result in a rush of sales for Pentax. We are already witnessing new sales to people with a collection of kit from other manufacturers, as witnessed on this and other forums. Higher volume of sales makes greater markets for system accesories, along with increased income to pay for R&D, and the Pentax roadmap unveiled recently seems to be hinting at this. More lenses. More flashes. Firmware upgrades. All of these things are to be looked forward to. As much as I love older Pentax primes, new digital based lenses with so called limited appeal would be a great bonus to the artistic community.

So what do you reckon guys. Does the future look brighter?

Pentax have good products, and with enough promotion there is no reason why they shouldn't be very successful. Which would be helpful for future projects as well.

I wonder what will happen to the 67 as medium format cameras in general seem to be under a lot of pressure from digital.

Dunno about the 67, but the 645 is going digital http://www.pentax.co.jp/english/news/2005/i0507.html