To say you have more lenses availible from Canon or Nikon Compared to Sony is unfair. Sony can go all the way back to the Minolta days. Do you have any idea how many lenses that is? There are plenty available. If you got to camera stores there is always used Minolta lenses.
No, it's accurate. For instance, KEH shows us 5 focal lenghts of used Minolta AF primes, ten samples total- only two lenses wider than 50mm, one 16mm Fish Eye and one 28mm prime. I think every store I've been in over the last 20 years has had more used Nikon, Canon and Pentax lenses than Minolta.
Also your giving out only certain brands for accessories also unfair I'm sure that someone makes these products for the other brands.
I'm using the brands I'd be likely to buy- I own a Kirk L bracket, I'm going to end up with a set of Kenko tubes once I've had some fun with the $8 eBay set, and since Amphibco doesn't seem to make SLR housings anymore, Ikelight is the brand I'll go with when I start diving again. These aren't marginal brands, and the point remains salient, there are fewer third-party options when you go outside Canon or Nikon.
Minolta didn't go under not sure if your aware of that or not? Sony just bought them because minolta was selling it's Camera Division. There are
Minolta's imaging company was for sale because they were going under with it, and the losses would have sunk the whole company. You don't sell off a business that's doing well unless you get a multiple of about 15 or so for it- and the company "Konica Minolta Photo Imaging, Inc." of which the camera division was a part seems to no longer be producing paper, chemicals, minilabs, film, light meters, scanners or binoculars- in fact they don't seem to produce anything any longer, so while they may still exist on paper as a subcorporation of the main company, they seem to be pretty-much out of business.
plenty of companies that I'm sure are interested in Camera companies. Also if people like you weren't telling everyone not buy these brands because everyone is going out of business maybe the problem wouldn't be so bad.
Once again, you have yet to substantiate the "plenty of companies," since most of the marginal layers have been losing money in an expanding market- hardly an attractive acquisition target.
If these companies had been run well, they wouldn't have financial problems. All of these companies are publicly traded on the Japanese exchanges- you can look at their statements and see how they're doing. I'm hardly the voice of consumer spending, and I'm hardly the only one who's saying that at least one of these companies likely won't make it in the future. I'm certainly not the one responsible for say Olympus having to restate their projections for 2008 or who forced them to sell off what looks to be a profitable chunk of their life sciences division.
Anyway, the fact that I'm saying it doesn't change the facts behind the statements- the fact is that Nikon is making very good profits off of it's DSLR sales, Canon's profit is down a lot, but it's still a profit-
Here's what Hoya had to say about it's 3rd quarter Pentax results:
3. Pentax
As for the medical endoscope of PENTAX, sales decreased in comparison to the same period of the
previous year due to an appreciaion of the Yen, in spite of the favorable trend of a new endoscope
system compatible with mega-pixel imaging in overseas markets. For digital cameras, sales
decreased due to sales decline in compact cameras, and also single lens reflex cameras recorded
negative growth because of the fierce price competition in th market.
This section has been implementing a structural reorganization in view of future growth, and recorded
operating loss in this quarter under review, posting expenses for reviewing business strategies,
organizational changes, as well as revaluation of assets, etc., in addition of goodwill amortization
generated upon integration. As a result, sales in this section amounted to Yen 30,643 million and
recorded operating loss of Yen 1,433 million.
"Negative growth" isn't something someone wants to purchase- Pentax lost market share during the holiday buying season- now maybe you want to purchase a camera from a manufacturer who's bleeding 1.4 billion Yen a quarter making it, losing market share against his competitors and whose main acquisition target is losing money in a growing market- but that's not the profile of a company I'd want to start buying into a system from. If I already had the system, I'd probably take the odds, but I wouldn't buy in at this point and I wouldn't go long on Hoya, Sony or Oly at the moment- I'm still doing the math on Nikon since the currency fluctuations can kill indirect investment on the US OTC market.