John, this touches on something that I've been thinking, and perhaps even commented about.
On Oct 1, 2010, at 3:00 PM, John Celio wrote: > I noticed something recently: there is not *nearly* as much discussion > of new Pentax cameras as there was just a few years ago here. I > remember threads going for weeks when new products were announced, but > that seems to have been reduced to days or even hours sometimes. It got > me wondering: > > Are we generally happy enough with current cameras that new models > aren't worth getting excited about? Has the dSLR market reached a point > where new models are pretty much more of the same, with few real > innovations appearing with each new model, and thus don't warrant much > discussion? Part of it is that for the most part, the changes are evolutionary. Occasionally there will be a surprise, such as the K-x, where it won't seem like much at first, but as it's used it gains a lot of respect. > > Or are we all just holding our tongues until Pentax comes out with with > either a 35mm-sensor'd or mirrorless body? These two camera categories > seem to elicit the greatest response these days, even though we're > invariably talking about other brands and wishing out loud. There are several things going on. First of all is the aforementioned evolution versus revolution. Another, is something that within the scope of its ability, I find that I can get as good of photos with any of the cameras that I use. Better equipment doesn't allow me to take better pictures, it just lets me take as good of pictures in different conditions. Almost all of the discussions of camera bodies seem to devolve into people stating whether a camera will, or won't do something that their current gear won't do. Would I get better pictures with a 645D than, for example, the shot with my K100 that was displayed in Chicago? Probably not. I could likely get photos that are clearer and sharper when printed up at the size of a garage door, but since I've never done anything bigger than 12x18, the differences in clarity may not be noticeable in the vast majority of pictures that I take. I do a lot of photography pushing the low light performance envelope of my gear. For me, the K5 would probably make a big difference in the number of shots that I can get, and in how low of light I can get shots of people dancing. The greater dynamic range would make a big difference in my band photography as well. Better autofocus and automatic metering could mean that those functions would actually be useful for me, enabling me to take pictures faster under dynamic conditions, and miss fewer shots. When I got my K20, I was very, very happy with its low light performance compared with my K100. I was able to get shots in much more challenging conditions. When I got the little stormtrooper, I was so impressed with it, I pretty much stopped using the K20 in low light conditions. Last night I went to see some friends play at a local club. I had my gear, but with a backlog of about 2,000 unsorted/unprocessed photos (It's been a busy month) I wasn't planning on doing much shooting. When I walked in, it was band break and when the drummer saw me he said "Do you have your rig? We need you to come up on stage and get some shots with the band facing into the colored lights". I mounted different lenses on the K20 and the K-x. When I was processing the shots, I was blown away by how rough the high ISO K20 shots are compared to the K-x shots. So, yes, the steady improvement in performance is important to some of us, but different features to different people, for different reasons. Being able to use my slower lenses like the 16-50 in a wider range of conditions is exciting to me, but probably not worth a lot of discussion on the list. Especially when there are important cormorant puns to make. > > Just some things I've been wondering about. > > John > > -- > http://www.neovenator.com > http://www.cafepress.com/jacelio > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- Larry Colen l...@red4est.com sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
