Leica's in the same position. Of course, they're both in the position because they didn't significantly upgrade their main product lines. The only real difference between an M7 and a M3 is in-camera metering. There's even less difference between a 500C and a 501CM, despite there being around 30 years between them.
Note that Hasselblad's solution was to replace the 'V-Series' with a totally new H-Series 645 solution, that's geared towards digital. Leica has been trying with various digital things, but still hasn't succeeded in redefining their market away from the 50 year old RF design. Which is bad when they are seeing real competition in that market for the first time in 35 years (From Cosina itself and the two cameras it builds for Zeiss and Rollei). -Adam Mishka wrote: > it's not a trivial matter. e.g. look at hasselblad. over the years its biggest > competitor has become hasselblad -- used gear. so there is some delicate > balance between a healthy secondary market that helps new sales and > a used market that kills business. > > however, i think pentax had no reason to worry about lost lens sales since > their older glass caters to a completely different market segment. and at this > point they offer no product like this (fully mechanical, built like > tank, silky smooth > manual focus lenses). > > therefore i think it was a dumb desision on their part to > ditch a feature that could bring them good PR and user loyalty, if nothing > else. > i would be very surprised if they haven't realized this yet. i am willing to > bet > that their professional body (whatever it will be) will have sTimulator. > > best, > mishka > (a few grands worth of *new* pentax lenses/cameras, if that matters) > > On 10/13/06, K.Takeshita <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On 10/13/06 11:40 AM, "William Robb", <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >>> If that obsolete lens gets resold, they don't see any of that money. >> I know I have no place in this thread but a thought occurred to me. >> >> BTW, JCO just popped up all of a sudden lately after a long silence only to >> be bashed :-), but to me, I remember him being a long time institution of >> this list with a lot of old (read: classic) lenses. So, I have absolutely >> no bias toward him. >> >> But my question is this. >> Is the used lens market also not helping the new lens sales? It is much >> like a used car market. People have to sell or trade-in old cars to buy new >> ones, and if the used ones won't sell and the world does not revolve, the >> new car sales might suffer as well? >> >> JCO's purchase of old classic lenses might be contributing to the new lens >> sales in a small way. >> >> I can see his frustration of not being able to use his rather large stock of >> lenses in new body etc, but it is also true that things progress. >> >> That's about where I stop. >> >> Ken >> >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
