Kunzite, all planning and everything ahead: you don't really think, a PC lens from Pentax will appear anytime within the next 3 years or so?
Anyway, there are other lenses a electromagnetic aperture actuation makes sense, i.e. long teles. And here I can imagine a joint venture of Ricoh with Tamron although the Tamron 150-600 is not really breathtaking but still a nice piece of glass.
I never said anything about expecting a PC lens from Pentax within any interval of time. The only resemblance to the 55-300 RE is the special construction making the electromagnetic diaphragm pretty much a necessity.
Joint venture, to what purpose? Pentax has all the technology it needs, and a nice tele zoom (the 150-450).
If it has all the technology it needs, then why use Tamron's 15-30 and 24-70 and just rebrand it?
150-450 is something for APS-C in my opinion. The K-1 got some outstanding cool features with it. It's just a shame, Pentax keeps on repeating the behaviour to come too late to the show. They did it decades ago with their LX which was as well a pretty cool professional body with some great features - and the professionals stuck to their Nikons or Canons although Pentax' lens portfolio was quite huge and of good quality. Okay, that's old stories. To me it just looks like Pentax burns a lot of energy and money on a field the cannot win a noticeable market share.
But then, that's entirely not my business and if Die-hard-Pentaxians like you finally got the long awaited FF-body - cool. ^_^
Neither 15-30 nor the 24-70 bring some technology inaccessible to Pentax. Why rebranding them? I'd say, time (to have them ready when the K-1 was supposed to be launched - it was planned for 2015) and money (to get them at a lower price point than pure Pentax designs).
Note that I've seen some very interesting claims that it's not a simple rebadge - the optics are said to be different (improved), and the coatings, Pentax' own HD. The published specs agree with this, but I can't offer any other proof (I'd like to see that myself).
150-450 is no more "for APS-C" than, let's say, a Canon 100-400 or a Nikon 200-500, or other similar lenses.
The same old "OMG Pentax is too late, panic!"... really? Don't you realize how ridiculous this sounds, also your other posts on the subject, while Pentax can't make enough K-1s to cover the demand?
The only ridiculous thing I see, with a tendency to be pathetic, is your behavior of defending Ricoh/Pentax for everything they could have done but didn't. And producing not enough units to fulfill the demand says just something about production capacities, not superiority. This happened to all producers and I wonder how much influence the earthquake has to this. Not getting enough Sony sensors must be hard for every producer depending on those. So, not be able to make enough bodies can also indicate a shortage in supply of essential parts...
Speaking of tendencies: Putting other words than I or somebody else said into posts is your speciality and you stick with that. I know it's pointless to tell you, fanboys have to be ignorant against any trace of critic, that's normal for them. It's kind of amusing how reliable your defense automatism works.
If Pentax is to remain in business (and they are certainly pledged to make money for Ricoh) they have to go slowly and slowly means cutting costs and using the "off the shelf" help of Tamron, even though they are rebadge/remodels, after all a profit on a medium run of cameras is better than a loss on a huge unsellable one.
In any event it's utterly pointless criticizing their past behavour, all that matters is the "now situation" and that looks at least stable.
Owner/users of a brand should bring a certain support to the table and boast the features that attract them to the brand, by that, naysayers also have the right to their opinion, but to me.... "you no like, you no buy" says more than any words can!
BTW. I doubt any change in optical formulas above and beyond coatings and removal of VC with the Tamrons.
Well, dave, "If Pentax is to remain in business..." is the big point. After my experience with a Tamron/Pentax combination (in entry level, I'm aware this camera is way above) and both were accusing each other not to be able to deliver sharp results, I at least raise one eyebrow if those two are now playing together.
It's true, what matters is now. If you can blow a couple of thousands today for a great featured FF body plus lenses, super. Who cares about tomorrow? It won't be the first nor the last product which dies quietly although users are perfectly happy with.
As for the lenses: I don't know how the coatings come to the glass - in a Pentax coater or with Pentax formulas in a Tamron coater. Giving key technologies out of hand is always a sign of a desperate manufacturer, so I guess Pentax is doing it, ships back the glass to Tamron's assembly line? Or gets the parts like barrel and polished glass an assembles them? How about the necessary tools and fixtures? But at least they could use tighter tolerances to improve serial consistency.
In any case, collaboration of two manufacturers is not bad, but one has to face additional complications in assembling and to solve these issues before customers becoming aware of any.
Dunno why we are underestimating Pentax.
Compared to the big players against whom they are competing they are a struggling small company however in absolute terms, that's a profitable company, their production chains are working at full capacity, they manage to sell all the goods they are producing.
Logically, those are the objectives of the owners and CEO, IMHO they are fully accomplished.
From a user point of view yes that's a different story, but it is clear they aren't on the path of Samsung camera system
I don't think a big company is a warranty against dead-end development. Sony is an excellent example for that. And Nikon, while it's reliable on their mount, is not as innovative as Pentax proved to be with their version of FF. Also, their MF body is available and alive for quite a while now.
Quote:
but it is clear they aren't on the path of Samsung camera system
Well, then your crystal ball is more informative than mine  But I would agree that Pentax knows photographic business while for Samsung it was just another branch in it's portfolio.
Quote:The only ridiculous thing I see, with a tendency to be pathetic, is your behavior of defending Ricoh/Pentax for everything they could have done but didn't. And producing not enough units to fulfill the demand says just something about production capacities, not superiority. This happened to all producers and I wonder how much influence the earthquake has to this. Not getting enough Sony sensors must be hard for every producer depending on those. So, not be able to make enough bodies can also indicate a shortage in supply of essential parts...
Speaking of tendencies: Putting other words than I or somebody else said into posts is your speciality and you stick with that. I know it's pointless to tell you, fanboys have to be ignorant against any trace of critic, that's normal for them. It's kind of amusing how reliable your defense automatism works.
Oh, right. I should've thought of the Kumamoto earthquates.
Except I did. And while they likely had an influence on the production after they happened, they couldn't affect the initial batches. There has to be a delay between manufacturing components, shipping to assembly factories, making the products, packaging and shipping them, and reaching the retailers - so the effect could only start to be seen quite a bit after 16th April.
But even the first batches were utterly insufficient, to a scale I would call unprecedented.
L.E. On a funny - or not - side, Ricoh Imaging published their note about "some impact on the future production of our lens-interchangeable digital SLR cameras, interchangeable lenses and digital compact cameras" on May 27th.
Speaking of tendencies: I've seen too often how people with an agenda of brand bashing would call others "fanboys" and such, "supporting" criticism by personal attacks.
And the best clue of a "fanboy" is that he would attack other brands and their users, to "diminish" them compared to his own. Just sayin'.
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