Shel Belinkoff mused:
>
> It seems that Pentax may soon be coming out with a replacement for the
> istD. How many istD owners would be interested in trading in the D for the
> newer camera, and what features or improvements would be needed in order to
> make that choice?
I have no interest in trading up, but I'd like a second digital body.
(Or, more accurately, a primary digital body, with the D as backup).
I expect the next announcement from Pentax to be a digital body that
accepts the 645/67 lenses. Apart from that I don't expect to see any
body above the D for at least a year, from what I've seen reported
from conversations with Pentax spokesbeings.
There are a lot of features I'd like to see. I doubt if all of them
will find their way into a new body, but I expect enough of them will
that I'd find it to be a worthwhile improvement.
o The one single factor that would sway me the most, even if every
other factor were missing, would be support for IS & USM lenses
(or body-mounted IS, if it proves to be effective). An IS body
would be nice - it would mean all my existing lenses suddenly
became IS. But if Pentax go with lens-mounted IS, I hope they
also begin moving towards electronic focus coupling.
o Anti-dust technology, such as that in the Olympus E-series.
This might actually be one reason that body-mounted IS would
be preferable; you could probably use the same transducers
to shake the dust off the sensor.
o RAW+JPEG, or (preferably) control of the quality of the embedded
JPEG that's already present in the RAW file.
o Faster frame rate, larger buffer size, more pixels, yada, yada.
These will happen, just to keep up with the marketplace. For my
purposes I'd rarely want more than 6MP, but I'd expect any new
body a year from now would have at least 8, and probably 10.
o HyperProgram/HyperManual, with two control dials. That's one
of the major reasons why I'm not considering getting a DS.
o Shares media with the D. I don't expect to see SD catch up
with CF capacity (for the next year or so, at least), so CF
is going to be the high-end choice. If Pentax want to add
SD support as well, fine; just not as a replacement for CF.
o Battery/Vertical grip (but fix the 'low battery' problems).
For extra credit, add wireless download capabilities.
o Get the extra functions (ISO, WB, ...) off the mode dial.
There are two classes of *ist-D/DS users; those that have
missed a shot because they had the mode dial set to one of
those positions, and those that are going to. This control
modality destroys the 'always ready to shoot' paradigm.
Etc., etc. I'm not too bothered; I don't expect to see any such
body announced for at least a year. Then it will be another six
months before the camera ships, which will be plenty of time to
evaluate the features, and decide whether I'm going to buy it.
And, of course, plentry of time for the PDML to be flooded with
posts from people complaining that Pentax got it wrong because
their own particular favourite feature got left off. Including
the aperture simulator, of course; I don't expect it to return.
