SRS have a "buy a body receive a free lens or grip" offer at the moment and there are some big discounts on lenses too.
The ones I looked at are exactly the same, buy a K1 or K3 and get a free grip, buy a K3 and Grip, get a free 35mm lens.
Which may attract some people but, as has been said, probably only Pentax users will hear about the offers. Which is part of the problem. Pentax have little or no marketing in this country. Even Pentax UK is in abeyance (is that the word?) and the web-site redirects to Pentax Europe. I think they may have given up on us. Don't know about Europe/The USA. They do apparently have a strong following in Japan (and the rest of Asia?) which might support their new cottage industry manufacturing strategy, assuming they can get away with the associated price hikes.
It looks pretty unlikely that they are planning to launch upgraded models though it could be a way to get more UK customers.
Pentax was around, before, and will outlast Keith Richards . They've got enough around to keep me happy in my twilight years Cheers, Jack
To be fair, Pentax has kept going a lot longer than many another manufacturer! It seems that the camera industry has much in common with aviation. To make a small fortune from either one must start with a large one.
My lovely black Pentax Super A is still going strong, well looked after, hardly a mark on it, and bought new in 1988.
As are my Pentax MX's from 1986 and 1994, Mark . a few snaps from last month using my MX, 35/2.8 and Kentmere 400 Cheers, Jack
I worked my way through a Spotmatic F, MX, ME,Program A and only the Super A & Program A are left. Boy, I loved that era for cameras.
started with a K1000 in July 1985, moved up to a MX and ME Super in 1986 (because they could take winders ... lost the ME Super to death ... moved up to a PZ1 -- woooo hoooo, Auto focus -- in 1993, after getting a beating and dosh from police dept . Had a number of PZ1's up until 2002 when I got a digital camera -- Canon G2 -- got my first DSLR (a Pentax) in November 2004 -- IST*Ds, a K200D x 2 in 2008 ... a K-r in 2011 and a K-50 in 2014 and, lastly, a K3 in 2017 I still have, film wise, my original MX from 1986, PZ1 and a PZ1P from a mate in 2015 and a couple of AsahiFlex IIb's from 1997 and 2021 and, regularly, use the PZ1P, MX (from 1995) and the Asahiflex IIb's Cheers, Jack
When I started in photography, towards the end of the 1960s, the received wisdom was that Nikon was toughest, Pentax was prettiest and Canon was the least bad compromise...
In old age Nikon have probably proven to be the toughest. I found Pentax M42 cameras tend to suffer shutter taper and Canon seem to suffer their own problems.
Agreed. That said, the Canon FP / FT series had a very good reputation for reliability, according to some very high volume people like school photographers. They'd wind through twenty or more rolls a day, five days a week, which is more than any of the press photographers I knew, when I worked in newspapers.
