The future of Pentax?

[hector49]

Hi all. I just read last night about the takeover of Pentax by Hoya. Now my question, as per the header, is what do you all think about this and how it will affect Pentax in the future - their development and offering of new products.
Reason being is, as you who read my other posts know, I have been (over) researching a DSLR and I pretty much have it down to 2 cameras, but with this news, it may change some things.
I want to buy into a system that will have some longevity. And, at the same time, I want a quality camera. I plan on starting slow, but over time, I expect I will invest in some additional lenses, so I would prefer to make the investment long term, and not something that will go the way of Minolta.
So this is the reason for my post. Looking for opinions.
thanks
hector

[RexK_Cozumel]

it is hard to say what will happen. I find it unlikely however that hoya will make too drastic changes. Again this is one of the reasons that people stick with Nikon or Canon. Nikon's backwards compatability is one of the biggest selling points for the company cause lets face it who wants to have a several thousand dollar piece of glass just to change bodies and have that lens become a paper weight.

[GEli]

Considering they've been fully merged since October of last year, not much. Well, no, I shouldn't say that - it drastically increased their operating and R&D budgets, with Hoya having a great deal more money to throw around than Pentax did.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by your post, Rex. One of the big points of Pentax cameras is having the most backwards compatible lense mount around.

[Major_Small]

I think if you're looking at photography as more than a general hobby, and want to start building up a system, Canon and Nikon are really your only good options.

[mattdm]

When the Hoya buyout was first announced, there was a lot of panic, and speculation that they only wanted the medical equipment division and were going to dump the camera business. A year later, though, it looks like the sky is not falling after all — apparently extra development resources from Hoya allowed them to beef up the K20D's specs, and the changes at Pentax USA (Ned Bunnell as CEO) look really positive. Not the kind of things one would expect from a parent company looking to gut an acquisition.

On the other hand, I do think they're trying to drive the profit margins up a bit. The K20D and K200D are still good deals, but priced a bit higher than their predecessors — and the once-constant rebate program is scaled down and now available to full-time students and photography teachers only.

The other factor is Samsung, who makes the K20D's sensor and rebadges Pentax's cameras and lenses as their own line. They're rumored to be working on K-mount bodies which differ further from Pentax too, expanding the body options in the system. Samsung has annual revenues exceeding those of Nikon, Canon, Olympus, and Sony combined, so it'd be a mistake to ignore them.

With all respect to Major_Small, I think Pentax is a great system for a specific hobby (photography), not just a "general" one (whatever that means, but I assume the connotation is "not serious"). And I know for certain that it's used by many artists and workaday professionals as well.

Canon and Nikon certainly are the safe bets and you can't go far wrong going with the mainstream ("nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"), but (since you're asking in the Pentax forum) I think Pentax offers a compelling package of quality and value that will be around for a good long time, and it's silly to cut them (or Olympus, the other system which I think has some interesting stuff going on) out of the picture without a good look first.

[GEli]

I think if you're looking at photography as more than a general hobby, and want to start building up a system, Canon and Nikon are really your only good options.

Er, unless you need the machine gun fps or ludicrously fast AF (sports shooting, essentially), I fail to see how a Pentax system is inferior to an equivalent Canon/Nikons sytem.