Pentax

The Pentax booth is notable mainly for the huge banner apparently designed to re-define the Pentax user (or 'Pentaxian') as some kind of pioneering outsider with no interest in 'pixel peeping' or camera specs. It's an interesting postition given that the K10D offers perhaps the best specification in its price bracket and is notable for its sophisticated feature set. That said, having seen more of the ads that are going to be running we really like the campaign and think it'll work - especially as parts of it owe a fairly big debt of thanks to our very own Pentax SLR Talk forum!

Although not new for PMA the big draw on the Pentax stand continues to be its revamped and well-recieved new DSLR range, with the K10D getting a lot of attention from visitors. Shown for the first time at PMA are a couple of new DA lenses, the 16-50mm F2.8 and 50-135mm F2.8, plus a swathe of Optio compacts E30, M30, T30, A30 and W30), the majority of which are fairly minor upgrades to models announced at Photokina last September, such is the pace of change in the camera industry today. Once again there is an 'under glass' 645 Digital on display, which is well on its way to becoming a bit of a photo show tradition. We still have no definitive date for this long-awaited camera to make its way onto retailers' shelves. There are also what look like fairly finished pre production samples of some of the new lenses announced at Photokina back in September. It's an exciting time for the Pentax DSLR user, there's no doubt.