>Seems you, even today, were not aware of the Nicad Pack M (very similar >to the >LX nicad pack). The AA battery grip was just a cheaper less convenient >alternative to it, though I have known aerial photographers who loved it.
Au contraire. I owned Nicad Pack M. I owned Nicad Pack LX. Both eventually died, as nicad packs do. I found that replacements were hard to come by at the time, and quite expensive. MX with nicad pack did work well for me ergonomically--I liked motor drive MX (except for the lack of rewind). Unfortunately by the time I got an MX the nicad pack M was sitting on the LX due to the demise of Nicad Pack LX. I did not find that the LX with motor and nicad pack and grip B worked very well ergonomically for me. On the other hand, I appear to be in the small subgroup of Nikon users who did NOT find the F4 handgrip to be too big. >A good >MX is a thing of joy to many of us. A old worn out MX is just another >piece of >junk, like any other worn out camera. Yes. My problem was that "worn-out" appeared to apply too frequently to MXen. My first hand and second hand experience with MXen is that they are simply not that tough compared with much bigger and more expensive things like the Nikon F. The small size did require some compromises. My camera repair guy says that they are fiddly inside and refuses to touch them. He still does spotmatics. I've never found Pentax to engineer their cameras for very heavy use (in the thousands of frames a week category). Presumably, their users do not in general require this level of durability. Nobody can build this level of durability into a small, inexpensive camera. >To me your comments say more about >your >likes than about the camera. Well of course. The MX was not the camera for my needs and preferences. I never said that "the MX sucked". I said that my experiences with my MXen were not positive, and some of the design choices did not make sense to me. Many people apparently love them, which given their small size and essential feature set (mechanical, DOF preview, hot shoe) is not surprising. For me, slow top shutter speed, lack of power rewind, and lack of detailed exposure information were major limitations. I can see that a lot of people wouldn't be bothered by these things because they don't use them. I was shooting sports with it, and I don't really think that the MX was the right camera for this. > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I've used an MX and an LX for photojournalism, and I wasn't blown > away by either. This is probably because newspaper-style photojournalism > is not what these cameras do well. It is also a case of showing their > age. DJE
