Dear All, As you might have guessed from the subject line (!), I am a new member. I recently found this esteemed list from a reference on DPReview.
I currently own a Canon 20D and am preparing to switch to Pentax, either to a K100D or possibly the upcoming "K10D" (not the K10D if it turns out to be noisy like the Nikon and Sony 10MP DSLRs). I am fortunate enough to be able to travel a fair amount in my spare time and my camera goes everywhere I do. It is important to me that a camera be (relatively) lightweight and because I often can't carry a tripod and need to shoot in low-light situations, I've been attracted to Pentax's system largely by the in-camera shake reduction which I see as a "must have" feature. However, I am not completely new to the Pentax fold. (Note: long, boring story to follow. You may want to quit reading here and move on to the next post ;-). I write this only as a matter of record so as to get out of the way questions about my background etc.!) My first "real" camera - OK, it wasn't really mine per se - was a Pentax ME with the 50mm f/1.7 lens. This was, as the saying goes, "long ago and far away", when I was ten years old and my parents took me on a trip to London. It was my first time to Europe and they bought me a cheap fixed-focus Fujifilm point and shoot to bring with me. This is something they may have later come to regret ;-)! I quickly discovered that I liked photography a lot and moreover seemed to have a natural aptitude for it, so when we returned home, my dad loaned me his old ME. He had succumbed to the convenience of point-and-shoots (shock horror!) so it had gone unused and I suppose he saw no harm in letting me play around with it. (I should point out at this point that my paternal grandfather was a very serious photographer, using a various Leica rangefinders, Rollei TLRs and Nikon SLRs among others. I don't think he ever owned a Pentax though.) I was delighted with the ME and used it for several years - learning the basics of photography in the process - before I decided to invest in a brand new AF SLR. At the time I didn't know a great deal about cameras but I had narrowed it down to the Canon EOS Elan II, Minolta Maxxum 600si and Pentax ZX-5N. (Sorry, I don't know just what these were called outside the US!) They seemed to be good "middle of the road" cameras and they were at the vanguard of a revolution: they went back to "analogue" controls (dials) after the electronic control frenzy of the late 1980s and early 1990s. This appealed to me very strongly. I didn't even consider Nikon; their offering in that class at the time was the infamous N70, whose control interface could only have been designed by a sadist. (It was soon replaced by the much more conventional N80, a camera I certainly would have considered had it been available at the time.) Alas, the local photo shop salesman convinced me that these cameras were serious overkill for someone buying his first AF SLR. I was (very) young and impressionable and didn't know much at all about AF SLRs or even cameras in general, so I figured that perhaps he was right after all and I would've been over my head with one of my original choices. He showed me a Canon Rebel, a Minolta XTsi (I think), a Nikon N60 and a Pentax ZX-7. He pushed the Canon - kickbacks, I can only assume - but I immediately dismissed it and the Minolta as much too cheap and plasticky feeling. I'm a very tactile person and I hate anything that feels "cheap". This left the Nikon and the Pentax for me to consider. The Nikon felt a a bit chunkier and more sturdily built - the N60 /was/ a pretty sturdy camera, about the only thing it had going for it - and not knowing enough to figure out the other differences, I went with the Nikon. If my naïveté at the time was not already apparent, the fact that I chose the N60 has probably made it pretty obvious now ;-)! If any of you here have ever had the misfortune of using an N60, you undoubtedly know it was an absolutely miserable camera, solidly made but crippled by a very awkward control interface (even though it /looked/ a lot like the F100's) and the most woeful AF system you could imagine. (I'd have focused manually, but trying to manually focus my new Nikon AF lenses was an excercise in futility...) After not very long, I realized the N60 was a piece of junk, so I looked to upgrade. I considered switching manufacturers, offered a really good deal on a just-discontinued Nikon N90s and it seemed exceptionally nice for the price, so I bought it. And indeed, it was an excellent camera. The N60 had taught me a lot about modern cameras, and I was able to appreciate the excellence of the N90s. At the time I had my AF Nikons, my dad owned an Olympus C-2020Z digital P&S (or "digital rangefinder" as Olympus preferred). One day, purely out of curiosity, I borrowed it from him and immediately got hit by the digital bug. Being able to instantly see what I'd shot and to re-shoot if I didn't like it seemed like absolute magic; I decided on the spot that I NEEDED to go digital sooner rather than latter. However, I absolutely hated the awful optical viewfinder and equally hated using the LCD. DSLRs were still exclusively in the $3000+ range at the time so I began looking at the "pro-sumer", electronic viewfinder (EVF) digicams that most of us who now would buy "consumer" D-SLRs were buying at the time. They all seemed grossly overpriced - as much as a good film SLR. I wasn't biting. Eventually I found a very cheap Olympus C-2100UZ (like my dad's 2020 but with a big 10x stabilized soom and, important for me, an EVF) and bought it. I was hooked and decided to save up for a DLSR rather than buying any better Nikon lenses, something I had intended to do at the time. So, I snapped away with my Olympus P&S for what seemed like an eternity and, selling my N90s (the N60 and lenses were practically worthless but the N90s actually still had value at the time), saved up for a DSLR. I thought the moment had come when I found a very low price on a demo Nikon D1 - a camera which was virtually identical to the then-top-of-the-line D1H/D1x and thus seemingly a real steal at $1000 or so. I promptly bought it but, alas, it was defective and the shop had no other to replace it with. Sorely disappointed, I returned it. Instead, I decided to look at the current options: at the time, they were the Canon 10D, the Nikon D70, the Olympus E-1, and the *ist D; the Nikon and Olympus had just been released. A friend of mine had an *ist D and, despite the moronic name, loved it, but I found the handgrip too shallow and anyway it cost a lot more than the D70. The Canon, when paired with a decent lens (good Canon glass is VERY expensive) was way too expensive. I would have bought the Nikon - despite its known (and perhaps overstated) problems with moiré - but I was made 'an offer I couldn't refuse' on the E-1 and, admiring the quality of the lens (the 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5, then the "standard" Olympus zoom) and the camera's incredible build quality, I bought it. The E-1, unfortunately, was a great camera with a horrible sensor. Kodak and Olympus touted its superior low noise levels because it was a full-frame-transfer (not interline transfer) CCD, but this turned out to be bunk! One of the reasons I really wanted a DSLR was to be able to use it in low light, something very useful for the travel photography I do (museums, churches and so on). Alas, the E-1 was basically useless above ISO 400. After a year or so, I realized it was the wrong camera for me. Dell happened to be offering a great buy on the brand-spanking-new Canon 20D - the camera du jour at the time - so I bought one along with a 17-40mm f/4L and sold my Olympus kit for a very good price to a guy who already had lots of pro Canons but wanted a (relatively) compact kit with top-notch build quality (something the E-1 did offer). The Canon has served me very well, but its rather obtuse (to me) control layout has begun to get on my nerves and, more importantly, I have been drawn to either Pentax or Konica Minolta/Sony because of in-camera anti-shake. I'm always looking for ways to improve low-light performance so to me, having this feature with any lens I wish is a dream come true. I've considered the Konica Minolta 7D - a body I really love, because of its control layout (it has a dial for everything, no menus needed) - which is quite inexpensive now, but I really am not fond of the lens choices for it, and moreover it seems to be rather troubleprone and Sony's support (Sony being Sony) leaving a great deal to be desired. This leaves, of course, Pentax. I've always liked Pentax, and looking at the K100D, I realized that despite its supposed "entry-level" status, the only thing my Canon really offers that it doesn't is fast continuous shooting, something totally irrelevant to my use. I'm going to wait until Photokina to see what the K10D is, but if its noise performance can't meet that of the K100D, I'm going to buy the less expensive body. I could use the extra money for lenses, anyhow. I think my first lens will be the 12-24mm f/4 - I've always wanted to try an ultrawide, and this is supposed to be a great one and is relatively affordable, so why not? In the future I'm hoping to add the coming 16-50mm f/2.8 and 50-135mm f/2.8 which together with the 12-24mm would make a really great, relatively compact and very high-quality three-zoom kit. I imagine the two new lenses will be rather expensive, another reason to buy the K100D instead of the K10D... So, anyhow, here I am - a lapsed Pentax user about to come full circle. I look forward to joining the ranks of Pentax users (again) sometime in the next month or two and to learning from and sharing with all of you. Best, Doug __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
