DSLR brands

[speedog]

Back when I was in high school, there were basically four major brands of 35mm SLR cameras - Canon, Minolta, Nikon and Pentax. Each brand had very loyal followers and competition amongst them could be quite fierce.

These days in the DSLR world it appears that Canon and Nikon are the only major brands and I'm left wondering if Minolta and Pentax are even worthy of consideration any more, in fact do those two brands even have any decent comparable consumer grade DSLR models and accessories?

I am just asking, posing this up for discussion. I do have a couple of ancient Canon DSLR's stored away as well as I believe I've still got an old Canon AE-1 SLR around some where - all have been collecting dust for a long time but I do sometimes rue not having a DSLR with me at unexpected opportune times where a cell phone camera just doesn't cut it. I don't care what anyone says, a quality DSLR will by far out perform any cell phone camera - the difference and choice in optics easily makes that do.

Maybe I've should just toss the old Canon DSLR in the back seat of my truck for those times when a great scene presents itself and I know that my cell phone camera just won't do it justice. Hell, I carry a tripod in my truck all the time for my laser level so not having a tripod for a better picture isn't an excuse in my case.

Anyhow, so what of Minolta and Pentax?

[blitz]

Konica-Minolta’s camera division was purchased by Sony and led to development of their DSLR cameras (A-mount). Which are sort of dead in the water now with Sony’s push for mirrorless. Pentax makes good cameras and lenses, but they don’t have the resources or historic investment of Nikon or Canon when it comes to lens selection.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Pentax makes some well priced feature-rich DSLRs on paper, and they are built really well, but AF in particular and lens selection is so far behind the competition most people don't even consider them. It's a shame too, because it would be nice to have a third major competitor but they just don't have the resources.

[tonytiger55]

I used to have a old Pentax (35mm Film) but I used Sigma lenses.

Do people still buy the Pentax DSLR's and use alternative lenses..?

[Xtrema]

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Do people still buy the Pentax DSLR's and use alternative lenses..?

89% of market is owned by Nikon+Canon+Sony and the volume is shrinking due too. The question is who is still buying Pentax.

I see Sigma/Tokina lenses are still quite popular for the budget DSLR crowd.

[Mitsu3000gt]

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I used to have a old Pentax (35mm Film) but I used Sigma lenses.

Do people still buy the Pentax DSLR's and use alternative lenses..?

Not really, no. Ricoh owns Pentax at the moment, and they have an incredibly tiny piece of the market share around 4.5% or less. It used to be up around 7% 6-7 years ago, and it's only got smaller. I honestly can't think of any good reasons people would even consider their cameras, let alone the entire system. Maybe if you inherited a bunch of free lenses or something.