I still want to take the "image" view on this, though (surely image is
more important to photo companies than most others ;-)) The question is
not (only) if people actually want to use these old lenses, but how the
lens compatibility issue affects Pentax'es image, i.e. the way people
look at Pentax as a brand, or more specifically, whether or not it
affects their opinion of the company enough to have a real influence on
their selection of brand.
The fact is that Pentax have the best backward compatibility in the business. I
doubt this fact will hurt the companys image...
With the possible exception of Leica (which compete in a quite different
segment anyhow), I believe they do. They have moved from 100%
compatibility to compatibility with limitations and exceptions, though,
or differently put, from a class of their own to the same class as
Nikon. Although they are still best in that class, this repositioning
may have done *something* to their image. As it happens, I believe that
they saved most of it by implementing the stop-down thing, but don't
tell ... that I said that.
- T
