According to this, doesn't a CSC equipped with a bolt on EVF then become a dslr?

Anyway, this is all nonsense and I refuse to take part in a discussion of semantics when urgent business at Sainsburys is beckoning

Source: Wikipedia

Anyway, as I said before a discussion regarding semantic labels is in my view pointless. What I believe is much more interesting is to explore the meaning or inference behind these terms.

What I mean by that is that in my view technological advances in imaging have enabled competent photographers to take professional quality pictures with a variety of camera types.

It seems to me that an opposing view held by a substantial number of people is that professional quality pictures can only be taken with perceived professional quality devices (eg dslr/FF/medium format etc.).

However, to discuss that sensibly some labels should first of all be agreed upon!

I don't know anything much about the Canon Pellix approach, but regardless of whether the Sony mirror is a non-mirror, the new designs do not have a pentaprism; surely that is a defining characteristic of the slr design?

Q: When is a mirror not a mirror? A: When it is translucent/see-through.

In any case these semantic discussions illustrate the need for some agreed on definitions, if for nothing else than calculating market size, shares, etc.

In my view the best idea may be to move away from technology based definitions towards something like mass-market, enthusiast, semi-pro, pro, although that is bound to cause much anguish in certain aspirational quarters.

There are two main ways of analysing market share data; by volume and by value. The data presented above looks like the BCN retail data measuring volume, but given the relative pricing difference, FF's share of market value is going to be significantly higher.

Furthermore, the average FF customer is probably going to spend orders of magnitude more on lenses than the typical buyer of the volume leaders making the segment even more attractive.

That said I believe there are plenty of reasons why Pentax ought not to go ahead with FF at this stage, but it is absurd to argue that Nikon should drop the D700/D3 class bodies because they don't appear in the above table.

Some of the comments here illustrate the difficulty of interpreting market share data.

First of all we are dealing with Japan only numbers. While this is undoubtedly an important constituent of the the global market, it is a leading indicator by perhaps 1-2 years and does not reflect the current total market.

Secondly the period covered by the survey is not at all apparent bordering on nonsense (read the heading). But even if it were a bog standard 1 year period it would not be particularly useful since the typical product lifecycle is somewhat longer than that. For that reason time series data rather than snapshots must be used to get a more meaningful picture of trends.

As an extension of this Sony did not launch their new dslr models until November and as such their 'current' popularity is in no way evident.

Notwithstanding the obviously nonsensical heading, what is however clear is the extent to which mirrorless/EVIL cameras are displacing dslrs.

I agree with you narrowly in this instance, where lavish quantities appear to have been available judging by the evidence of only a handful of people. But I seem to recall many past occasions where individuals have hoovered up limited offers.

This is more problematic. Lenses aren’t like shares or cartons of fags. There is a finite level of demand, and when a flood of supply comes onto the market the process of absorbing that into the hands of people who actually want to use the things rather than sell on can not help but lower prices; it is simple economics. In this way some of the lens traders’ potential profits come from the erosion of second hand value on the stock of lenses already in peoples’ hands.

How low prices will go is naturally impossible to say, but judging by the number of speculative purchases made by the few people to have declared in this thread, there is a considerable overhang of supply that is not going away anytime soon.

Separately I suspect street retail prices are trending lower for various reasons. This is partly due to company specific factors at Pentax, as well as a wider slow-down in demand, with the economy generally in the toilet.

As the saying goes fear and greed drive markets; we’ve already seen a good deal of the latter accompanied by a fair bit of backslapping, let’s see whether we get some of the former as well!

Good news; a success story of an individual who has acquired some lenses for the purposes of photography.

This as opposed to attempting to out-retail Jeff Bezos, of whom an ex-employee recently quoted in the New Yorker said ““Bezos is super smart; don’t get me wrong. He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.””

Amongst other reasons based on your assertion that criticism wouldn’t bother you in the slightest .

But I am much more interested in this statement:

How do you know this was a pricing error?

The reason I am interested is that I too was doing some christmas shopping and saw the FA 50 f/1.4 at something in the region of £ 150. But if I recall correctly the same lens was selling for maybe £130-140 no longer than a couple of years ago.