Hi all,
It seems that local Kyocera reps are perhaps not chosen well by the parent company here in Tokyo. I've owned both a G1 and G2, presently just the G2, and have been to their service centre in Tokyo on a few occasions for cleanings and checks, which were prompt and courteous. As well, the units sold here in Japan come only with Japanese-language manuals, including the flash units. On three separate occasions I went to the service centre and they ordered two of the manuals in English for me for a nominal charge, and also happened to have an extra manual in the office, English, for the TLA 280, which they gave me free of charge.
I've had nothing but excellent service from Kyocera. I wonder if the local reps that everyone is complaining about are merely jobbers who bid on a local service contract? This could be the case, and if so, is a great pity, since the parent company in Japan gives first-rate service.
I have no complaints at all, so far (knock on wood), about Kyocera's customer service. And as far as supporting film-based cameras, they can only do a limited amount at this point in time without seriously hurting their bottom line. Just look at the mess that Kodak is in because of their late decision to focus on digital. Kyocera is only reading the writing on the wall. They are a small company, in case you didn't know, and in fact are having financial difficulties (like many smaller, uncompetitive Japanese companies, they are spread very thin over a number of different unrelated industries), so it's safe to say that if we would like them to be around AT ALL in the future, more power to them for putting resources into digital while at the same time offering decent customer service for their traditional film cameras. But expecting them to put development money into new lenses for the G2, or any of their other film-based SLRs, is ridiculous, IMHO.
That being said, enjoy your Gs (I surely do mine) and take advantage of the very reasonable used market that has opened up. Digital is here to stay, but we can still enjoy film, just don't expect companies to dump money into it - we are truly becoming a very small, specialized market that can be no great source of revenue for any company that wants to remain in business.
Sorry for this overly lengthy posting!
Mark Edwards