From: Bong Manayon
On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 2:54 AM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote:
I have no idea how other brands fare as student cameras, ?but consistent multiple
failures is a serious issue. ?Is there anyone at Pentax I could point him to? ?At the
very least, they might find his class a good source of "torture testing", as
the cameras probably get a lot more usage than the vast majority of entry level cameras.
?His problems are kind of a shame, because I think that a big part of the reason that the
K1000 was such an iconic student camera was its robustness.
Okay...here's some observation in the school I teach in:
1. The Fuji S2s (ca.2002) are now dead.
2. The Nikon D70s (2004) are barely hanging on; some the LCDs are
gone, some the buttons or dials does not work anymore and in some the
viewfinder LEDs are dead.
3. The Canon 350Ds (2003? but they outwardly appear to be newer
compared to the D70s) are beginning to go "Error 99" but when they
work...they work.
There are a couple of Canon 5Ds but are kept for faculty use; there
are newer Canon 450Ds and Nikon D90s that are farely new.
I've seen students drop them, allow them to swing off the strap to hit
desk and what have you and even heard of a story of a student actually
poking the sensor with his finger to see what "photo" would come out
(I suppose while on B with the lens off)...
Bong
Where I went to school, photography students were required to have a
medium-format film camera. Didn't matter what kind as long as it could
handle 120 film and was not a Holga.
They've recently dropped that requirement & bought a bunch of Mamiya
645s the students can check out. The requirement now is for every
student to have a DSLR. IF the student equips with CaNikon, the school
has lenses the students can check out. If you use any other brand,
you're on your own.
There was surprisingly little breakage considering the majority of
students were 1 year out of high school.
Fortunately, I already had a selection of lenses in Pentax mount to meet
the requirements (fast tele-prime for baseball).
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