Amateur Photographer editorial

“Editor Damien Demoulder's piece to kick things off seems to pretty much discourage anyone from buying Pentax by implying they're slowly disppearing from view.”
I read with interest the above comment on this forum, when I read the editor’s comments I was encouraged and pleased to read his comments. Possibly talking about the golden days of Pentax? But at the same time singing their praises-“Its SLRS are still excellent” my view, is that as a Pentax user I am encouraged by his obvious passion for Pentax, and I tend to agree with him when he says that “two camera bodies just don’t make a range”, this is something that I commented on at the time when the KM, K200D and K20D were dropped and replaced with the K7 and KX.
I still feel that Pentax are not catering for the first time user, Olympus and Nikon certainly do, they sell bodies at £299 while Pentax will be asking the best part of £500. It could be that they just aren’t interested in aiming at the ‘beginner market’ and are relying on their pedigree and Kudos to attract older ‘die hard Pentaxians’. The KM was an excellent camera, I’m sure it got thousands hooked into the Pentax system, but they dropped it???
A final note on the AP review, it was not like for like, why she didn’t put a decent lens on the K7 beggars belief, still, the K7 had front page.
Regards
Chris
A very happy Pentax user. K200D,MZ30,ZP-1.

Agree with you regarding the K-m.

The reason I chose it as my first SLR was the fact it offered a better feature set for the same (or less) money than the competition.

If I had to make the decision now (imagining no K-m was available anywhere), I probably would have gone Olympus. My budget simply wouldn't have stretched to a K-x. I guess I could have bought secondhand, but for a first time SLR buyer, the cushion of 30 day return policy and manufacturers warranty are not to be ignored.

Thankfully, I have a K-m which I am more than happy with! It really is a great piece of kit.

They really need an entry level, midrange, and semi-pro body to be able to compete with Cansonikon. At the moment the Kx is too expensive to qualify as an entry-level body, and doesn't have enough features (AF point selection, weatherseals) to be a Pentax 'midrange' body. I'm not saying they should go the route of Sony and have zillions of models differentiated to a microscopic extent, but a sub-midrange model and a model priced at semi-pro level but with lower high ISO performance than the sub-midrange one really doesn't cut it.

In short, let's hope that 2010 is the year Kodak buys Pentax from Hoya

The K-m and the K200D used the Sony 10.2MP CCD sensor which is no longer in production. An unfortunate state of affairs but not one Pentax can be entirely blamed for!

Yesterday I had an e-mail anouncing 3 new Pentax Compacts - and Damien Demoulder's says Pentax doesn't have a range with two camera bodies! Cameras and camera manufacturers are not confined to SLRs are they? Lets face it, more people own a compact then own a DSLR.

What we need is Pentax back in the highstreet with its good range of compacts - the Opti i 10 reminded me of the Pentax 110!!!

My first Pentax was a K100D Super + 18-55 kit from Argos for around £275. I didn't have a lot of money at the time, and I chose Pentax mainly because of the great price. (I'd also read a few reviews praising the camera.)

I wouldn't have gone with Pentax if that first camera had been £475.

Can I start by saying I know nothing about camera/sensor disign. So my question would be why could they not use a different sensor. My next point would be that Pentax are to blame if they had used a sensor that was not available for the envisaged production run of the camera. Maybe the case for the K-m as it did seem to me to have a short life.

They can and they did with the K-X and while they are add it they threw in new firmware and the new processor.

The K200D was quite old and I don't know how and what is in the K-m precisely.
It could be that the hardware of the K-M is the same as the K200D cutting down in development costs and to see how the design will work among the people, but this all speculation of course since no one really knows beside Pentax self.