I think you're right, great answer.

I'm not into photography to support any manufacturer. I'm in it to make images. The brand name I couldn't give a flying f*ck about. Pentax produce good gear, good lenses, hence I chose it. But I have no intention of becoming one of these vile Pentax apologists or being blinded because of some snobbishness about the name.

Will I contemplate a switch? No, probably too expensive. My current setup is 90% perfect for me. I bet with another system there are downsides too, of course there are. Maybe it's a corporate sales & marketing numptie who set EMEA prices this high. Maybe it's controlled from the centre. Just makes you wonder what the priorities of these Pentax sales and marketing people are and if they actually know what they're doing when it comes to Europe. I havn't seen any evidence that they do.

People like me will just switch their purchases away because of this. I have a very nice fish-eye that I was going to flog to get the 12-24. I've just discovered ptlens which I'm playing with. It corrects distortion. I think I'll just buy that (3rd party software) rather than Pentax hardware. Silly buggers.

Whilst I'm at it and have people's attention, feel free to sign the great & mighty "Pentax 30 second DFS" petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/p3ntax/petition.html - bottom line, you can't switch off NR at above 30 seconds on the K-7. I'd love to be able to, so asking for a firmware update.

Thank you

K10D, yep, even the 12-24 costs £100s less this way. Ah well I'll just get my mates in the States to get my gear for me then.

I don't think there's nearly as much supposition as you might think John, otherwise all these different Canadian dealers couldn't afford to keep offering at the prices they do. It means they're being offered a certain base price, which by the looks of things EMEA dealers are not.

Either that or the EMEA dealers are all ripping us off which is unlikely - one dealer would generally undercut another for sales. But that's why I looked through some EMEA prices being a fluent Dutch speaker to see if it was a UK thing. It's not. Stranger things have happened though.

Useful discussion, I'm just trying to understand this myself.

So bottom line (albeit very simplistic), if I'm acquiring a flash that requires triggering through the PC sync, there are likely to be issues?

I'm looking at buying a Paffrath & Kemper Ring-flash

Thanks

Not really John, any halfwit can do the calculations and come to an intelligent deduction. And it's all very well and good to accept the status quo but I think most people starting out on the Pentax system arn't that comfortable with the status quo. No wonder there have been letters about this in AP.

I'm beginning to wonder if it's an EMEA thing actually, I've just looked at some prices in The Netherlands and they're steep too. Perhaps Pentax offers these things at an expensive EMEA purchase price.

You can surmise the base cost of these things because it has to be lower than the price Canadians are selling them at, otherwise Pentax wouldn't make money. So the £590 that I can see this thing at on ebay means it gets sold to them at £400-£500, otherwise they wouldn't make any margin would they now. let's go in the middle, say £450 sale price, that has to include margin for Pentax, especially given its increasingly prosperous p&l. Probably a good £100-£200. So let's call it £150, so £300 or so to produce at the most.

And us EMEA consumers get to pay £1000 for it, through the combination of EMEA Pentax and dealer markup. Crazy.

What's also interesting is that there seem to be rebates offered in some countries but not other. Usually such things are offered worldwide so I wonder why they're not offered in EMEA. I work professionally with the disti/dealer model (different vertical though) and I know of plenty of cases when the manyufacturer offers incentives to dealers and they don't pass them on, they just keep more of the profit for themselves.

/rant over

There seems to be an 8 year worldwide warranty on the Pentax 12-24.

Even with sales tax it's still £300-£600 cheaper from Canada depending on which UK retailer you look at. I imagine they're adding 20-30% margin, if not more.

I've just done some sums.

I'm looking at ultrawide lenses.

In the UK the pentax 12-24 is quoted at £900 (US1384) and the sigma at £400 (US$615).

It is cheaper for me to fly to f*ckng Canada and back from the UK, buy a Pentax lens there, than to buy a goddam lens here.

What sort of GP do these dealers make on this stuff?

Why are we being ripped off so much in the UK, is it the Yen exchange rate?

Stupid.

Please sign my petition to be able to disable DFS

http://www.petitiononline.com/p3ntax/petition.html

Thanks

Thora,

I run a few websites myself and I used to work at a website agency. What you need is a CMS - this allows you to manage your own site. Best thing is to get some of the young people in the club interested - which part of the country are you?