> Bill wrote:
>
> > A camera with good build quality and a feature set that
> > doesn't need constant reference to the owners manual for
> > operation will go a lot further to satisfy my needs than a
> > zillion focus points and 47 exposure programs. I can still do a
> > few things for myself.
>
When push comes to shove, the only thing that really matters is how much light
you get to put on the film! There are only two things you can adjust for any
given film, and that's the shutter speed and the aperture. Every other
'feature', unless it helps you to get those right for your taste, is just
something else to slow down the process of actually taking the shot. 45 focus
points, 27 exposure modes, a whole database of scene data - how long does it
take to work through that lot? As long as you can twiddle the aperture ring
and the shutter speed dial to make your own choices, you're a real
photographer.
I hold no truck with camera snobs, ever since I saw a Belgian guy take a nail
file to his Leica M4 because he hadn't worked out you have to plug the PC cord
into the PC socket to get the flash to work!
I started photography with an uncoupled selenium meter and moved on to a
meter-less Pentax SV - I learnt more about exposure through my failures with
those rigs than I ever would with an all-singing, all-dancing electronic
doodad. I have on my wall one shot taken with that latter camera, using a
55/1.8 Super-Takumar, exposure guessed, hand-held and manually focussed, which
is a twenty-inch high print taken from a 36-inch high enlargement. Guess what -
I can count the bricks in the wall of the house in the middle distance under
the bridge, and it wasn't even the main subject!
So don't tell me that Pentax make inferior lens - in fact I would refer Paul
Harvey to a series of lens tests conducted by the UK's Practical Photography
magazine in which they consistently whupped ass against _all_ the competition
in their grades.
I will buy the MZ-S, hopefully in Hong Kong on my way to England in a couple of
months, mainly because I think it will be a great replacement for my MZ-5 as my
principal camera, and the MZ-5 will take the place of my now dying ME as a
backup camera.
Um, that feels better!
John Coyle
Brisbane, Australia
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