Best Digital Camera by Pentax

I certanly hope they have a Compact Flash slot. There have been cameras that take two different kinds of cards before, or they could put a sleeve into the CF slot to fit SD cards. It would be very antagonistic of them to obsolete our investment in a standard that's been around for a long time!

Two wheel operation is a necessity for a pro-grade camera. They can't be too stupid, they must have thought some of this out.

Yes I remember the powerzoom lenses, but the digital bodies do not support powerzoom if I am correct. A dual option lens will be to expensive I think. So if they really switch to in lens motors then it is bye bye to backwards compatibility I am affraid.

I think Pentax will do whatever they think is best from a financial point of view. They are in business to make money, they do that in part, by making cameras and lenses and if a change of technology seems necessary, they will do it, I'm sure.

They made the change from screw to bayonet mount once and some functionality was lost. They could make a similar decision about AF systems and introduce a whole new breed of camera system that might compete more favourably with the C & N makes. I for one tend to use manual focus more than AF anyway and I don't think it'd make much difference to me, and many others I suspect.

Some of you have kept your old screw mount bodies to make best use of the lenses that were designed for them, many will probably do the same if the AF system moves from body to lens.

As long as the K and A bit of the mount doesn't change too much your existing lens investment will still be usable, albeit in manual focus. I think I would keep the best of my existing bodies as I am very happy with my collection of screw, K, KA, KAF, KAF2 lenses. I'm not sure I would jump on a KAF3 (or probably KAF-USM) bandwaggon at its introduction 'cause there's bound to be a few wrinkles that I would prefer others to iron out.

Unless of course P has the financial clout to poach the best of the C & N design staff

The images of the new camera from the PMA show only an SD sized cover
(see this thread: https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2308 )
This image in particular: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/pma2006/Pentax/IMG_1592.jpg

...and having visited a plastics moulding company just yesterday I can better appreciate how difficult it is to change the tool. So it looks like it'll be SD.

Incidentally, there's an overview of the current *ist-D series on this site:
https://www.pentaxuser.com/faq/pentaxspecs.html

Matt

I just took a closer look at the images in the link Mattmatic posted.
I would hope those new lenses pictured with the camera were kmounts...I wonder if the marketing dept would hide the switch to new internal af motors...my istds2 has the Saf/Caf/M function, without a switch by the lens mount.
A switch by the lensmount could also be marked "Kaf/UsmAf/M" and be geared to disengage the body af motor, to allow the new lenses to funtion and keep the old lenses....when it hits production.

golfdiesel wrote
I understand that "backwards compatibility" is that a new body is able to use older lenses. You really think that a new body won't have an in body motor to take advantage of the existing line of lenses? OTH "forward compatibility" is the ability of an old body to take new lenses, and even in that area Pentax has been much better than the competition, I still can mount new 43Limited in my k1000. If you have a digital body today, it will take years until you don't have a choice of buying new full working lenses for that body (the existing/still growing DA line tells you that)

Ebay Item number 7602892217

They don't come up for grabs too often.

Happy bidding . . . oops, wrong site.

PS: It's not mine, honest. Just trying to help.

cheers!