On 11/24/2004, Cotty asked :
No, I do not own shares in Sigma. And I really do not care about IS or VR, etc. I care about the availability of bodies and lenses that allow me to better do what I want to do.On 24/11/04, Larry Cook, discombobulated, unleashed:
You are right about Pentax. The availability of the Sigma 120-300 lens is the one thing that has caused me to seriously consider switching to Nikon or Canon. The majority of my current shooting is my son's soccer which is often at night. I have an 80-200 f2.8 but it is just not long enough to reach the entire field adequately. The 120-300 would accomplish this. I have a 100-300 but it is an f4 and that just isn't fast enough for the night games. I have made do with what I have but often wonder if switching would be better. So far the *istD has kept me at the Pentax home.
So let me get this right: you're considering switching from Pentax to either Nikon or Canon because they're better supported by *Sigma* ??
Surely if you switch to N or C you do so for other reasons like IS, VR, upgrade paths, etc?
Or do you hold shares in Sigma??
Understand that the main focus of my photography at this point in time is my son's soccer. That is what rekindled my interest in photography five years ago. And from what I have researched, what I believe would be best suited for that endeavor is an f2.8 lens in the 100-300 range attached to a digital SLR able to go to ISO 1600 and at times ISO 3600 at a reasonable price and as far as I could determine there was only the Sigma that met that criteria. (Of course an even faster lens would allow a lower ISO and better picture quality but then if one existed it would not exist at a "reasonable" price.) Certainly one can argue weather $2000 is a reasonable price for a lens, and I have argued that with myself more than once, but it is certainly more reasonable than 3 or 4 or more thousands of dollars. In the end, however, I have made the determination that: 1) I like my Pentax equipment (from my 30 yr old K1000 to the ZXM to the *istD) in terms of the quality of the build and of the pictures it allows me to produce; 2) the lenses that I have purchased for this (Tokina 100-300 f4 and 80-200 f2.8) are adequate (but not optimal) and they were certainly more than reasonable in cost; 3) the cost to change (for a new DSLR plus the lens) was not worth it versus what I would be gaining.
So I have not switched. However, there are still times when I wish that my 80-200 f2.8 was a 300 on the long end because while I can get the shot, when I run it through Photoshop and crop it and enlarge it I am sometimes disappointed with the result. Now I have considered a 300 f2.8 which is available but I much prefer a zoom for this type of shooting. (I experimented with shooting a game with my 100-300 only at 300 when a 300 f2.8 was up for sale on eBay and I did not like shooting that way.)
Finally, this situation points out, to me, a weakness with Pentax and that is the availability of lenses. If Pentax doesn't make it, and they only make a limited set of lenses which are often hard to find, then you have to go to a third party and apparently the business case is not strong enough for them to fully support the Pentax mount. With Canon or Niikon there is greater variety and availability.
Larry
