[JJ_SO]

The strange thing about Pentax is - at this sales volume, camera development becomes unsustainable really. Unlike lens design, new cameras are expensive - less so due to hardware (mostly standard components) but software. They can barely afford new DSLRs and we know the situation on the mirrorless side. The logical thing to do would be to transform themselves into an independent lens manufacturer - like Zeiss. Zeiss also abandoned cameras because they weren't able to compete anymore (a long time ago). However, it seems as if Pentax has - at least to some degree - outsourced their lens R&D to Tokina/Tamron.

But Zeiss tries again something with a camera and the software they believe to get from Adobe and get Lightroom onboard. I don't know, if it's awkward or weird or just plain crazy. 

However, Zeiss could transform themselves into "purely optics" because they already made from microscopes to refractors pretty much everything you could do with grinded and polished glass. They were and are connected to Schott glass.

I'd really be curious to read something about the connection between Germany and Japan during and before WW II. It's interesting that no more countries played significant roles in optical development when it comes to cameras. 

Earlier I heard older guys saying, it was Zeiss' fault to become a company unable to compete with Japanese products because they let Japanese designers, engineers and glass makers into their factories to copy most things. There are loads of similarities between Contarex and Nikon's/Canon's early rangefinders. And Zeiss and the Japanese camera / lens makers had not only the same portfolio but also the same goals while they were allied. This part of company history in Germany usually is left out of the fancy "100 years blabla manufacturing" commemorative writings. Usually it's something like "it was hard to get supplies, factories were bombed, women working" - nothing about killing competitors in occupied countries, slave workers, and the role of the "these days neat and shiny" companies to bring mass destruction over other people. Most of the people who could tell "the other stories" are dead by now.

Don't get offended, Kunzite, I'm German like Klaus or Markus as well. Today we can't change what happened 90, 80 years ago, but I'd like to see some companies communicating more open about their history.