On 9/16/06, Cotty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My lad had a cheapy Powershot A310 from eBay (£39) but he took it on a > school trip and put it in his big bag - that went in the coach (bus) > underneath storage compartment and when retrieved, the LCD was cracked > and unreadable. The camera was fine - it would take shots but you > couldn't see anything on the screen, menus, nothin'. We also have a G2 > camera and that has the flip LCD, hence I was looking for something > similar. The Pentax 750Z fit the bill, but not many about. A retailer > advertised 3 refurbished / grad A stock at £139 each so went for it. I > imagine the plastics are probably on a par with Canon's but the flip > screen will be a bonus as I presume it can be flipped closed (with the > screen facing inwards) like the Canon.
Sounds like a decent deal. Christie and I bought one a little over a year ago. It's been a pretty good camera. Read on. > > Short of getting him a Leica M8, it will hopefully do. Even then, these > LCDs are so vulnerable. Anyone make a really robust camera with a way of > protecting the LCD? The 750z is fairly robust. However, the hinge/pivot for the screen isn't. Ours always felt un-precise. It failed before the warranty had expired, so we sent it back to Pentax. It took them about four weeks to get it back to us, but all is now well. It still feels wonky (just like new!) Couple of other gripes: The viewfinder is very, very small. And the eye point is just that, a point. It took a while for me to get the hang of using it, getting my eye in just the right place. It also doesn't cover anywhere near the full frame. 80%, maybe. Typical P&S shutter lag. No RAW. (TIFF and JPG only.) Write times. (We have a couple 256MB cards and a 1GB card. The write times on the 1GB card become excruciatingly slow once the card is about half full. It could be the card. I don't know. The 256MB cards are fine.) Low light photos (night sky, fireworks, funky night-time trailing shutter flash kid photos) require an obscene amount of time to clear the buffer. The good stuff: It travels well and has nice ergonomics for a brick. The control lay-out makes sense. My hands aren't aching after holding the damned thing for an hour. The pivoting LCD is readable in bright conditions. If you're ever stuck in a crowd you can hold the camera over your head and keep shooting. Waist level viewing is nice if you want to be discreet. It also very nice on a tripod, not having to bend down to camera level. Your son's going to love the LCD. Image quality isn't bad. My wife routinely has 5x7 and 8x10 photographs printed. She only shoots JPG. The video function records in MOV. (I think this is dumb, but you Mac guys will probably like it.) I'm sure there are other aspects that I like and don't like, but it's early, last night's beer has worn off, and this morning's coffee hasn't kicked in. -- Scott Loveless http://www.twosixteen.com Shoot more film! -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
