Regards,
Bob...
------------------------------------------------
"A picture is worth a thousand words,
but it uses up three thousand times the memory."
----- Original Message -----
From: "Boris Liberman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2005 7:29 AM
Subject: Re: Rumors About Pentax's Future
Hi!
The once ubiqutous K-mount is only an open standard to whoever bothers
with backwards compatibility.
Indeed...
The current incarnation is proprietary enough for Sigma to have
compatibility problems without a license for the technical quirks. And
let's face it; backwards compatibility doesn't sell new lenses. It
keeps us old farts around Pentax, but it's no good in the non-PDML
market.
Well, I humbly disagree. I think that it is only a matter of one's
persistence and/or seriousness about their choice of new piece of toy
they're going to buy. I managed to discover that Pentax was backward
compatible before I even knew PDML existed...
As for Sigma - it their own problem. Perhaps for them it is *good
enough* the way it is...
If a new owner wants to build the Pentax brand, they should do what
Nikon has done. Build a new range of good lenses without aperture
ring. Get rid of the costly support for all the old stuff.
It depends how costly. Imagine, Sony (or whoemever else) buys Pentax
and simply announces the end of K-mount. The new mount would be purely
electronic (like that of Canon) and at best you would be able to mount
your old lenses on your new Pentax camera. You wouldn't be even able
to fire a shutter...
I don't know about success in market penetration of Olympus 4/3
system, but I'd think that would be a difficult thing to achieve. I
don't think Sony *really* wants to *bother* themselves with *building
the Pentax brand*...
They see some opportunity for profit, and by Ferengi rules of
acquisition they work on not to miss it.
If a new owner really wants to be smart, he disassemble the whole
Pentax brand, and use the expertise from the company to build another
brand. Sony could be a good choice.
You're radical, my friend, very radical :).
My "radical" idea would be to make full use of existing K-mount and
add more electronic contacts in order to slowly but surely divert from
original K-mount... I think *istD for example was a good move in that
direction, even without later addition to firmware for compatibility
with older lenses...
--
Boris
