I am probably just feeling bad for the sales reps because of all the times I have got them to demonstrate a piece of kit, only to buy it online elsewhere. No wonder Jessops struggles to retain knowledgable staff.

I tend to know what I want (and why I want it) in advance... I presume that people working in Jessops etc have limited knowledge of all the photographic brands, as they appear to be mainly spotty teenagers

Let's be honest, most of us only go into Jessops to handle kit we are thinking of buying online anyway....

I know it, the sales people know it... I just try and make the whole process as swift and workmanlike as possible. I hate chatting about kit 'in real life' anyway.

To be honest I find going into a store expressly to prove my superior technical knowledge equally tragic....

With some of the harsh comments the camera is getting, I sort of wish they'd put the Marc Newson signature up front on the prism, and tucked the Pentax logo discreetly away on the base

But I think the 'designer camera' thing might partly be Pentax testing the water re a K-mount mirrorless... you know, if it does badly they can say it was a one-off design experiment and dump all the blame on Mr Newson . On the other hand it might show that there's an appetite for this sort of thing.

+1.

A lot of the comments on that page agree.

AFAIK no-one has said that (and that's the opposite of the point John was making).... No suggestion that the K5 or Kr will be replaced with mirrorless cameras for the foreseeable future.

I would disagree too, Ron... (although I would definitely not go as far as to say rangefinders are 'horrible' to use... it's just a different shooting style)...

I can only assume that by 'serious' you mean 'expensive'

The obvious solution for the K-02 - lop off the phoney prism hump, and provide a clip on EVF as Ricoh have done with some of their own compacts. We can then have a choice.

The fact that Pentax already has 5 primes covering 31 to 43mm doesn't make the new XS lens make any more sense to me!