Hello Christian, The reality of the situation is that because of the deep pockets and powerful marketing of Canon, no other manufacturer can really compare the way you are wanting to. Frankly, Nikon doesn't hold up very well either. They have an aging D70 and the D2x. Really nothing in between. Yes there is the D2h but it is a more specialized camera that has too small of a pixel count.
So, in answer to your question, there are no major compelling reasons to buy the Pentax over the Canon (hope you feel better with that answer). However, given an even playing field (no salesman pressure, in stock, etc), the new user may choose the Pentax based on build, ergonomics, viewfinder, etc. Not being a very fair environment, few will get the opportunity to even try/compare the Pentax offerings. I can tell you that a friend of mine was ready to buy her first DSLR - coming from a Nikon N50 and one 28-80 zoom. She was all set to buy the D70 and then talked to me. I asked her what she really intended to do with the camera and she indicated that she mostly wanted to work into portraiture. I told her that she should be considering manual focus control allowing her to compose and focus exactly where she wanted without having the AF get in the way. I had her go to several stores to look at the Nikon D70, Pentax *istDS, Canon RebelXT and Olympus 300D. After handling them all and focusing with them the way she would actually work, she chose the Pentax over all the others. The sad thing about this is, that Pentax has to be WAY better than Canon or Nikon to be able to get any attention. There is no way for any other manufacturer to be WAY better than Canon. They can be a little bit better all the way around, but it won't matter much. It would be a sad day indeed, if we ended having only one or two choices of cameras in the long run. -- Best regards, Bruce Wednesday, June 1, 2005, 8:27:10 PM, you wrote: C> ----- Original Message ----- C> From: "Don Sanderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> I hate to say this but the only things that have kept me >> loyal to Pentax are the viewfinders and the abundance of >> inexpensive yet excellent lenses. >> Can the other two make a similar claim? C> There's nothing wrong with your reasons. I stayed with Pentax for 20 years C> for the inexpensive (used), quality glass. And I'm assuming you are C> refering to the used market here. Correct me if I'm wrong. Of course, C> there seems to be a run on A*, F* and FA* lenses recently as well as the C> better A, F and FA lenses. The days of eBay bargains are over. C> But loyalty wasn't the question. :-) disqualified! C> My new experience with Canon in the realm of backwards compatability is C> almost non-existent. I still own some nice SMC Taks that work on the 20D C> just as well as on the D or Ds. I do know that some Sigmas (like the EF C> mount 300/4 AF Macro I had in K-mount, need to be "re-chipped" to function C> on the Canon DSLRs (whatever "re-chipped" means). Other third party EF C> mount lenses apparently suffer the same problems. I choose now to buy new C> lenses... because I can. :-) >> Don (Who just bought a Nikon FM to see what the 'other >> side' was really like.) C> I used to lust after F3-HPs until I held and used an LX. C> Christian
