Price depression

Well, the limited prospects of the price hikes being reversed has gotten me extremely depressed about Pentax as a whole. In one of my idle moments I checked out the Canon lens listings on Warehouse Express. All of the sort of lenses we lack - a 28mm f2.8, a cheap fast fifty, a 35mm f2, are available for less than £250 on Canon. On our system, on the other hand, the first and last of these no longer exist while the latter is only available in 50 1.4 guise for north of £400 (current SRS sale notwithstanding). Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my K20D and the images I can create with it and my current small flock of lenses, but in a few years when it needs replaced I honestly can't see myself sticking with Pentax.

You don't know that Pentax prices won't come down. You don't know that Canon and Nikon prices won't go up.

Anyway, I can't see that it's worth replacing a whole system to get cheaper new lenses when there is such a good choice of Pentax lenses on the second-hand market.

No need to get depressed. A few years is a long time and things might be very different then.

Do you want to buy a 28mm f2.8 lens? If not, then it's academic. If a Canon user wants a 21mm is there one?

You also can't compare the low cost Canon range with the professional Pentax range. So comparing their 50mm f1.8 with the Pentax 50mm f1.4 is not really a fair proposition. Compare the f1.4 lens with the appropriate level of Canon and Nikon lenses and you end up at about the same street price, give or take £20.

If you really want to see a strange and expensive lens range, there's always Sony!

The Canon and Nikon 50 1.4s are both under £300, whereas (again, excepting the current exceptional SRS sale) the Pentax is over £400.

The only reason I used the FA 1.4 as the 'fast fifty' price is that there simply is no other fast prime available. If they were to announce this rumoured cheap 35 1.8 at whatever photo show is coming up (bear in mind that I'm just repeating a rumour I read on another forum!) then that would of course be rectified assuming it wasn't £600.

Although Sony aren't great on price they do for example have a fast fifty, and a fast 'normal' APS-C lens for under £200 each. Still, with my experience of Sony's product reliability (specifically a Vaio laptop) I'd sooner take photographs with a box of crayons than a Sony camera

Obviously different systems have different lenses, but my point was about the system's prices in general: on Canikon (more so on Canon, given Nikon's baffling screw drive decision a few years back) there are a fair number of very reasonably priced prime lenses, whereas on Pentax (supposedly the "prime person's system") the cheapest is the 40mm limited at £350.

Put simply what I'm thinking about is the lenses I'm likely to want to buy in future: an f2-or-less lens for low light, an ultrawide, and a normalish prime. On those lenses alone (in fact, just about on the ultrawide alone - £890 for the Pentax 12-24mm vs £520 for the arguably superior Tokina 11-16 or £650ish for the Canon 10-22) going with Canon would save enough money that the body would instantly pay for itself.

You're still ignoring though that right now the Pentax 50mm f1.4 is £299.00 whilst comparing it with today's alternative prices. You are effectively saying that the Pentax is too expensive if you ignore the best price you can get it for....

The Pentax Limited lenses should probably be compared price-wise with the canon L lenses, but to be honest I don't think price is the whole story.

For my money, the Pentax range is better designed and more ergonomic than the Canon range. In other words, it fits my requirements better. On that basis and considering I don't keep buying the same lenses I might as well buy the right product and stick with it.

I did compare the pricings in AP the other day and didn't find any one range to be out of step price wise. Most of the lenses that tend to get quoted as advantages to the Canon and Nikon ranges are horrendously expensive optics anyway, and unlikely to be purchased by most photographers.

Hi:

I've only just joined the Pentax User site and therefore the Forums, but what concerns me more about the Pentax System/Range is the lack of breadth of products (principally Digital Cameras) when you compare with the likes of Canon and Nikon.
I've always seen Pentax as a more expensive but better quality brand with ultimately better optics as being the foundation of the whole thing, but when you start to see the likes of Sony and Panasonic muscling into the Digital market with some good products and a relatively thin Pentax range to compete, it is a worry.


shockednstunned

Despite only having two models Pentax do seem to be holding their own, however. We will have to see what the year brings. The medium format system will give them quite a string to their bow.

I wouldn't want them to go down the Sony route of having multiple models almost (but not quite) identical in spec. Three or four quality models aimed at different parts of the price range seems ample to me.

My impression is that Pentax is "on the up" at the moment, and I'm feeling quite buoyant about the future. Yes, I'd like a tilt/shift lens (it won't happen!) and yes some of you want longer telephotos (that might happen) but what we have is largely damn good. And if you really want a 600 f/4 you could have bid for the one on ebay. I doubt a new one would cost any less!

K.

I hate to think what a new 600mm f4 DA* lens would cost...but I would quite like an 80-400mm and I think that is achievable given the will to do it.

The variety of bodies aren't so much of a big deal (unless you are on a tight budget and thus need something in the sub-£400 range which Pentax no longer provide) - after all once you buy a body you keep using it until it drops or you change system. The Kx is very good indeed, the K7 is good and will be very good indeed if the rumoured 'K7s' with the Kx's high ISO performance materialises).

I wouldn't worry too much about Pentax's market longevity: their market share has actually gone up noticeably in the past year particularly in Japan (because of the Kx). Even if they were to have some problem, or Hoya got bored of them, they would be a prime* acquisition for a company wanting to get a foothold in the DSLR market the way Sony did with Minolta. Personally if this happens my bet would be on Kodak - buying the rights to a DSLR system which is called 'K mount' would be their marketing folks' dream right?

Baseless speculation aside, Pentax makes a decent profit (IIRC) so I can't see them being in any danger in the near future. In fact with the 645D looking like a reasonably-priced (and therefore, one would assume, relatively well-selling) alternative to the Hasselblad (bear in mind that my knowledge and interest in Medium Format could be written on the back of an electron) Pentax's business prospects are actually looking better than they were a year and a bit ago.

*Sorry, the awful pun was entirely intentional

I believe it is around the £4500 without TAX, they still do it on order if I'm right.

I thought so too, but I did read somewhere that it is being discontinued. If so, better get our orders in quickly!

Yeah I said it but my Japanese isn't so good and after some better reading it seems you can still order them.
I'll look it up for you John.

here we go.
link

1,350,000 yen without TAX so £9670 then of course you must add 17,5% VAT and import tax as well I believe...
Still a beauty though.

That's a bit unfair. I know a couple who have (between them) an A900 and a couple of lesser Sony Alphas. They take them hiking, photograph motorsport events, and do mad things like hanging out of car windows to photograph spectacular scenery (while moving at 5mph or so). They've never had any trouble at all even while treating the gear in this way.

But they still envy my K 55mm f1.8!

I have got a plastic Canon 50mm f1.8. It's build quality is awful and the image quality not very good. I have experienced a number of Canon lenses that I considered poor. I only rate Canon L lenses. Pentax lenses are in my experience, much better that general Canon lenses.

So you would rather switch to a camera you didn't like so much rather than buy second-hand lenses for Pentax?