Re: Whatever happened to Pentax?

"George Kerby" <ghost_topper@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:C3F88C39.47FCD%ghost_topper@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
> On 3/8/08 2:46 PM, in article nWCAj.74916$w57.63673@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 "Dudley 
> Hanks"
> <hanks.dudley@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>> Back in the '60s, '70s and even into the '80s Pentax was right up there

>> with
>> Canon and Nikon.  But, today, it seems like the company doesn't even
get
>> honourable mention in the brand wars.  What happened?
>>
> The first SLR with spot metering as I recall in the late 60's.
>

Well, sort of.  If my memory isn't too fuzzy, I think that they "said"
they 
were going to make the first SLR with spot metering -- the Spotmatic. 
Pentax made a pre-production model according to its claims, but when it
hit 
production the spot sensoring turned out to be a couple of sensors that 
really only read an average of the light in the viewfinder.  I'm not sure
if 
they later modified the spotmatic to actually use spot metering, or
whether 
one of the other giants got it into production first.

Trying to Remember,
Dudley