Sad, really. If this chap had a need for anti-shake lenses (perhaps because he wanted to photograph sports), then a shift to Canon might have made sense.

As it is, he will lose money on his Pentax gear, having bought kit that offers nothing that Pentax doesn't.

Pictures from my *ist D look terrible on a TV too. I don't think there is much you can do about it. The resolution and colour quuality of a TV are much inferior to a good computer screen.

You do realise this is a fish-eye?

I had a fish-eye once, and rarely used it. Be sure you really want it before parting with the hard-earned.

The two lenses I'm looking out for at the moment for my *ist D are the 77 Limited and (despite all I've said in the past about zooms!) the 18-55 zoom. I know the latter won't work on 35mm, but I very, very rarely use 35mm now.

But to answer your question, I haven't used the 17-28, though it gets reasonable reviews on Stan's site.

George

The Pentax AF400FTZ is a good gun, and sells on Ebay for around £50.00. It is not as sophisticated as the 360, but you can't argue with the price.

Kimbo

Point taken.

George

It's a feature of the power-zooms only. Without power, how could they do it?

You'll find several American Pentaphiles here (plus other nationalities):

http://www.mail-archive.com/pentax-discuss%40pdml.net/

Some of them are mad as hatters, but many are extremely knowledgeable, (and equally opinionated).

The American election goes to show that you can fool most of the people, most of the time.

My two American nieces had to state (in writing) which party they supported when applying for a postal vote (they are both students at university). So much for the secret ballot. I wouldn't have believed this if I had just read it in the paper. It beggars belief.

America is fast losing its democracy, and Americans have nobody to blame but themselves.

George

This discussion has rambled and rumbled on so much that I think we have all rather lost track of who said what and why.

I wasn't arguing that the *ist DS is in a similar position in the market place to the position held by the Z1-P in its heyday. I am just saying that it is a good camera (better certainly than the Canon), and at a reasonably competitive price.

The Z1-P point was that, as recently as the mid-90s, Pentax was producing damn good value cameras, but failed to support them. I mentioned that the replacement (the MZ-S) came too late; by then the Z1-P had been overtaken.

I also didn't initially make any points about small batches. My main point was that there is no longer a large demand for sophisticated film cameras, so we are unlikely to see any more, or many more, being developed. I also don't think it is worthwhile to produce small batches because the profit, if any, is pretty insignificant.

George

Mattie,

It's absurd to compare cameras from different eras and at totally different price points.

I recall a review of all the best SLRs of the day undertaken by Practical Photography in 1996 or thereabouts. The Z1-P came out just below the two pro cameras from Nikon and Canon (both of which cost two or three times as much), and way ahead of all the others, including the Leica, Contax, Minolta and Olympus.

At the time, far from being too expensive, the Pentax was easily the best value for money of all the top cameras from all the top makes, and was reckoned, inter alia, to have the best exposure accuracy and better than average focussing.

The problem, as I said before, was that Pentax did not develop the range. When it eventually appeared, three or four years too late, the MZ-S actually had fewer features, though it was more robust and a bit smaller.

It is also completely misleading to compare the economics of small batch production for cars costing perhaps £5,000 or more, with cameras costing less than a tenth of that. If it costs £50 to switch from one model to another, that is peanuts in car terms but way over the top in camera terms.

I did not say that individual batches have to be of the order of hundreds of thousands to be economical. I was talking about the whole production run. Spreading the development, tooling and marketing costs over 100s of 000s is much more economical than spreading it over 10s of 000s.

You might make a (very) small profit producing a batch of 5,000 cameras, having already recouped your initial costs, but why bother? Better by far to concentrate resources on products with greater potential.

George

Kim,

Pentax lost market share prior to the M series because of two things. First, they were the last brand to introduce a bayonet mount; and second, the Olympus OM was a great success, and took market share from all competing companies.

Pentax fought back with the ME and the MX, and recovered a lot of lost ground, and became market leader again.

It was after the M series that they really went downhill. Canon went for the low end of the market and hoovered up a lot of sales with cheap and cheerful cameras, whilst Minolta produced the first really good auto-focus cameras.

The SFX was a sturdy and worthy camera, but lacked excitement. Pentax could have fought back with the Z1 and Z1-P (easily the best cameras for the money at the time), but they failed to develop the range. By the time the MZ-S came along, it was too late.

The good news is that the *ist DS is a fine camera at a very good price.

It is worth remembering that Pentax does a lot more than produce cameras (which is probably why it took its eye off the ball). It is still a profitable company, and in my view it is most unlikely either to go bust or to pull out of camera manufacture in the foreseeable future.

Just a point re the small batch "special editions". These were a marketing exercise, pure and simple, undertaken to gain publicity. There is not a shred of evidence that they made any money in themselves, and they do not support the theory that Pentax or any other manufacturer can viably produce even established cameras in those quantities.

George