Shel Belinkoff wrote:
Sure - used lenses can be a great source, if you can find what you want in
good condition. Personally, I enjoy hunting down lenses and maybe even
finding a good deal. But sometimes it's just as nice to buy something new.
Some of my used lenses took more than a year to locate, some i had to
return because of quality issues, and start searching again..
A big concern for me is that if I buy a Pentax DSLR (and I'm ~this close~
to doing so), there's no assurance that there will be lenses available in
the focal and aperture range that I'd like. As it stands now, there are
only a few primes faster than f2.0 that are available (31,43,77 - did I
miss any?) and these are only minimally faster. Should I want a fast auto
focus prime lens, what's out there? If I want a constant aperture zoom,
what's available?
Shel
I actually agree with you completely. [Except for the bit about being
close to buying a DSLR 8-)] The manufacturers have the buying public
over a barrel. The buyers are told what is good and what to buy and,
generally, just go right out and buy it. Whilst I was bimbling around
the tourist traps of Europe, I saw probably tens of thousands of cameras
being used. The great majority were phones or tiny compacts, probably
digital. About 10% seemed to be film cameras of all types.
(Interestingly, many of these were Pentaxes. A smattering of exotica,
like Russian stuff and one new-looking F4) Difficult to be sure in the
case of compacts. There was the occasional person carrying spanky new
DSLR gear. Another 10% or so carrying top end fixed lens digitals. One
LF, no MF. So most people (~80%) are happy with low (ish) grade
electronic mementos of their travels. My father in law has a couple of
digital compacts in the _2Mpixel range. He insists on printing the
results at A4 size and proudly showing them to me. They look like out
of focus shots taken with Scotchchrome 1000 but who am I to tell him
that? He is happy.
Someone who is serious (take that whatever way you will) about
photography but does not want to carry some battery-gripped behemoth
with motorised lenses is pretty much SOL in the new market.
mike
[Original Message]
From: mike wilson
But there's always secondhand. How exciting!
