Nothwistanding the Pentax users' s hunger for long tele...

John_A_G wrote:

moving_comfort wrote:

Mark Ransom wrote:

Without the assurance of third party lenses being available, I probably would never have bought the *ist-DS that put me into the Pentax camp. You shouldn't underestimate the importance of this vote of No Confidence from the lens makers. Putting a positive spin on it is delusional.

It's a bad omen, but both Tamron & Sigma might be waiting to see what Ricoh's next move is before committing to anything.

I'm going to beat this horse some more: If Pentax had a FF body, you'd see both these lenses in K-mount, because that would signal to 3rd-party makers that Ricoh is serious about K-mount and that they intended to hang on to the bigger spenders.

It isn't about full frame - it's about expensive. The sigma 120-300 2.8 is a $3500 lens. Clearly Sigma believes there aren't enough people in Pentax fold willing to spend that kind of money on this type of lens. And, if DPR is a litmus test - they are right.

They recognize that there is enough demand for consumer grade super-telephoto lenses that are sub $2,000 - so they have the Bigma and other f5.6 lenses.

Just having a full frame camera won't mean squat to that. Whether people are using aps-c or full-frame in Pentax you still have that belief by third party that expensive lenses just won't sell enough.

My impression from being a member of these forums for years is Pentax owners love a bang-for-the-buck product. A $3500 lens doesn't fall into that category.

.

Your response illustrates my point while simultaneously being blind to it.

Anyone who's ever bought into Pentax is not inherently born-to-the-frugal gene; the folks left in K-mount after the standard consumer upgrade cycle are the folks not willing to buy into Full Frame - Because Pentax has not up until now offered Full Frame. In other words, the products Pentax is offering cause a big % of the super-telephoto spenders to move on eventually.

If Sigma/Tamron are going to be making $3000+ telephotos, why would they bother doing so for a mount who's manufacturer cares nothing for catering to this market, who intends to keep their mount selling only in the $1200-and-under body tier?

.