I think that most photographers would agree that there maybe a dozen
"must have" features on a camera. I know that I almost never touch
most of the bells and whistles on my K20. The problem that designers
face is that for every person, those dozen features are different.
The problem that the marketing department faces is to convince
potential customers that their camera has the most of the "must have"
features. This is easiest to do with performance metrics that are
easy to measure: megapixels, frame rate, sensor size. Do you ever see
an ad that says "Our product may not have the best numbers, but it's
good enough, and chances are you'd never notice the difference"?
One of the most important lessons of my engineering career is that
people don't come to you asking for a solution to their problem. They
come to you asking you to do what they think will solve their problem.
Let's say that the D700 has the level of low-light performance that I
need/want. It has a full frame sensor, does that mean that I need
Pentax to make a full frame camera to get that level of performance?
Not really, I'd be happy with an APS sensor with have the pixels of
the D700, if it had the same level of performance. In some ways I'd be
happier, because APS format lenses tend to be less expensive for the
same level of performance as full frame. I wonder if the reasons
there isn't a smaller sized version of the D700 sensor aren't:
1) If they reserve the best sensor for the full frame lenses, they get
more profit on the more expensive lenses that go with it.
2) There aren't any good, standardized metrics for noise and ISO
performance, and if there were, they'd be hard to understand. It's a
lot easier for the marketing droids to sell "bigger sensors" and "more
pixels" than it is for them to sell lower noise, especially when the
SNR probably isn't linear with either ISO or light level.
Besides, if Pentax were to sell a direct competitor to the Nikon D3S,
I wouldn't be complaining about lack of features on the camera, I'd be
complaining about lack of money in my bank account.
I will also note that from the marketing perspective that it is easier
to sell BIGGER and MORE!!!, than esoteric subtleties of performance
and usability, that the 645 will trump full frame.
In any case, I use the tools that I have, and can (pretend to)
afford. With a little extra work on my part and manual exposure and
focus, I can get similar image quality to people who have cameras that
do that all for them. I do miss an occasional shot because it takes
me longer to set up, but the lower cost of my system allows me to get
shots that they wouldn't because they spent all their money on a more
expensive body and a couple of slow, image stabilized lenses.
--
Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est
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