Letter in AP's issue 6th March

I did that ages ago .. even the original had a next to it

You should publish the text here. In Canada, I will only be able to see it in about a month. By the time I see it, it won't be current any more. Don't be selfish...

As a Pentax user I can understand Mike Gosling's pain over the Pentax
lens price increases in 2009. There are a few points to take issue
with, however. Firstly, the lenses in question (DA Ltd series) are
high quality products which for a long time offered amazing value for
money. But Pentax is a smaller company which presumably struggles more
because of adverse exchange rates, than the big two who are better
placed to withstand short term losses. So a price rise was
inevitable. And the 'budget' lenses, perhaps of most interest to
'newbies', such as the 18-55mm, 50-200mm, and 55-300mm are all still
very keenly priced (and decent quality too). Let's not also forget
that third party lenses for Pentax obviously cost no more than for the
opposition, and can offer tremendous value. Secondly, he says Pentax
bodies are too expensive. A casual glance at the adverts in the back
of AP shows that the excellent K-x and K-7 are cheaper
than their nearest competitors, for example the Nikon D5000 and D300s.
Thirdly, he says that Pentax DSLRs aren't 'quite good enough'. Well,
the Pentax range may be small, but the current cameras have both
received excellent reviews if you look at a broad section of print and
online sources. And even Mr Demolder himself uses the Samsung version
of the Pentax K20D - need I really say more?

A well written piece putting your an my) point of view very succinctly.

Thank you for placing it here for us to read, and for writing it and expressing the views of most Pentax owners so well.

Thanks for taking the time to post your letter Will. Seems like you have countered all points very convincingly there, good job

No problem! Sorry about the lack of paragraphs- unfortunately my phone doesn't allow that very easily.

Thanks Will, well written. Difficult to find unbiased reporting these days.

Cedric

Will...nice letter, however how can you, or anyone else explain the huge difference in price between the almost exact same lenses sold by Pentax & by Tokina? The Pentax versions of 16-50 & 50-135 are hugely more than Tokina, who have exactly the same exchange rate issues as Pentax, and presumably are no bigger than Pentax...

I'm not sure what impresses most, the detailed, point-by-point fluently expressed answer or the fcat that you wrote it on a mobile phone.

If you ever saw me trying to compose even the shortest of text messages...

Well done!

A.

1) Weather sealing
2) SDM motors
3) Quality of plastic used in mouldings
4) SMC coating process (still the best in the business)
5) Economies of scale. Tokina sell the same lens in several mounts and (due to the size of the market for Canon and Nikon compared to Pentax) probably sell many, many times more than Pentax do.

These lenses are the same in so far as they share an optical formula - that's it. There are no common parts or manufacturing processes so they can't be subjected to a straight comparison to calculate price.

The DA*16-50 and DA*50-135 has:
- A dual focus system (screw-drive + SDM = higher development and production cost)
- Weather sealed
- Better coatings
- Pentax name on it (brand lenses are always more expensive then third-party)

The price hike at the end of last year did almost double the price of these lenses though in the UK, why that is I don't know. The same thing happened with the DA12-24.

Hefty had the same thoughts ^^

BTW, to the cheapskates... the issue of AP with the letter in it won't be available to non-subscribers until Tuesday so you still have time to go to Waitrose and buy, one or train the dog to chew on something else.

K.

PS Excellent letter but I still wish I had bought an FA77 before the price rise!

Tokina have stopped production of the 18-50mm and 50-135mm in Canon and Nikon mounts.