On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, William Robb wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "John Francis" > Subject: Re: Old lenses and *ist D > > > > > > > This still comes down to demanding that everybody pay > > the extra $10 or so, even if this is for functionality > > they don't want and will never use. > > No offence, but everyone keeps pulling numbers out of thin air. Sometimes > it's ten bucks, sometimes it's twenty, but no one with any authourity has > actually come up with a real hard and accurate number for how much extra, > overall, this camera would have had to cost with K/M compatability. > Since, as JCO pointed out, the camera is already more expensive than a Canon > 10D (whatever), and is way more expensive than the Rebel digital (like about > 500 bucks), it seems to me that adding even more to the cost of the camera > for a dubious benefit wouldn't have been very smart.
Isn't the *ist D based on the *ist film body? The Nikon D100 is, for all that nikon would have you believe, basically just a digital back on an N80 film body. Obviously, this sort of thing saves a lot of development and production costs compared to creating an entirely new camera just for digital (which only Nikon and Olympus have done, really). Problem is, basing a digital on the top-of-the-line film camera means that it costs an awful lot, and is often big and heavy. Only the canon EOS-1D/Ds cameras are based on top-of-the-line film cameras (EOS1Vs), and they were at the time of introduction the most expensive things out there in their class. Basing a digital on the middle and bottom-of-the-line cameras means that you don't get all the features that might be nice. A $20 or whatever feature is a trivial addition to a $1700 digital but probably a noticeable addition to the $200-$300 film camera it is based on. Price competition is pretty tight down there at the entry level. DJE
