Whither long lenses?

It's nice to see Pentax bringing out new wide-angle primes for digital, but has anybody else noticed that the Pentax lens range is now looking very thin at the long end?

The "lens development roadmap" stops abruptly at 300mm, but only actually lists lenses up to 200mm (and then only zooms), and while the 300/2.8 is still listed on the Pentax Japan site the only other long lens is the 600/4 which is "special order only".

What happened to the 300/4.5, 400/2.8, 200/2.8 et al?

And what about the 200/4 macro??

I can't answer exactly, but I have a fair idea.

The longer prime lenses with wide apertures tend to be used by pro's more than amateurs, partly due to their enormous cost. Sadly, it seems that pro's prefer to have the C or N name on their gear because they think it makes them more credible photographers (mistakenly, I might add) and the chances are that Pentax didn't sell their magnificent lenses in sufficient quantities to warrant continuing production.

They are my thoughts.

They also might be thinking along the lines that long f2.8 lenses are too expensive for their present targeted market, i.e. those upgrading from a compact to an SLR.

It may also be that with the introduction of shake reduction on the new K100D and the expected K10D your f4/f4.5 lenses effectively gain 2 stops negating the need for heavy investment in designing DA300/400 f2.8 lenses.

I reckon that once the new 16-50 and 50-135 f2.8 zooms are released Pentax will add 200 and 300 f4 DA primes to their lens roadmap.

Rome wasn't built in a day, have some patience and Pentax will deliver.

Just to let you know, there's a 300 4.5 on ebay at the moment:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Pentax-300mm-IF-ED-f4-5-Used-SMC-Pentax-FA-Lens_W0QQitemZ7622659676QQcategoryZ48558QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

in case anyone has a hankering for one.

Dan

Given the market that Pentax sell 35mm film SLR's and DSLR's into then I'd expect that only a small number of the F2.8 long primes and zooms are sold. With cameras that tend to attract the enthusiastic amateur then F4 zooms (like the 16-45) etc. make a lot more sense.

I've no interest at all in consumer spec zooms or the current "limited" lenses and while I'd like some long F2.8 primes I can't justify the cost. The 16-45 F4 is a much better fit and I'll almost certainly buy one at some point, and if they add something like a 50-150 F4 that would also be of interest as while I love my 80-200 F2.8 it's not the most portable of lenses. In addition it would be nice to see some non-limited (and therefore much cheaper) primes being made with focal lengths like 16mm, 30mm, 50 and 85mm.

With the digital 645 looming it looks like Pentax are going to continue with targeting professionals with medium format style cameras and it'll be interesting to see how that goes. People tend to forget that while Pentax's 35mm offerings had little take up amongst professionals the same could be said to be true for their medium format kit - especially the 67.