On Aug 9, 2008, at 7:59 AM, Adam Maas wrote: > It depends on how you shoot. Some capabilities of the camera you need > to know intimately, others you don't. For example, I haven't bothered > to learn the complexities of my D300's AF system (which is extremely > complex) because those complexities don't affect my work, I rarely > shoot action and when I do, centre AF with tracking handles it just > fine. Heck, AF in general is unnecessary for most of my work. The flip > side is I've delved heavily into Nikon's Picture Control system > because I love how it interacts with the CaptureNX processing > software, allowing me to get a good idea of how the final image will > look in-camera without giving up the advantages of shooting RAW.
Absolutely. But I hope you don't wait until you're out in the field doing a paid job to whip out the instruction manual and learn that great new feature which is essential to what you are doing... ! >> I haven't seen much that actually improves photographs' quality by a >> significant amount since 2005 or so. Mostly more speed and more >> pixels, neither of which are essential to my work. ... > > It really depends on what you shoot. The major advances I've seen in > that time period are in high ISO quality and resolution. The former is > a big advantage for me, the latter not as much. I'd happily shoot an > 8-10MP body if that meant better high ISO IQ than my current 12MP > body. And again I agree: if you *NEED* more sensitivity, then the newer bodies are a great value. I find I only infrequently use greater than ISO 400. I shoot at ISO 800 and 1600 only very infrequently: most of the time, I'm at ISO 100-200. Of the ~29,000 image files in my current working Lightroom catalog, greater than 17,000 of them were made at ISO 200 or less and 4,300 or so were made at greater than ISO 400. Only 1000 were made at all ISO settings between 800 and 3200. It's great that so much new equipment has become available, it presents options for people who need them. But a lot of people buy equipment for reasons other than that they need the new features. Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
