Shel Belinkoff wrote:
I'd take issue with the initial premise. The quality of a camera body is, and has always been, an important consideration and a strong factor in obtaining and making quality photographs.
Lens alignment to the film plane is important, so the lens mount on the body and the mechanics of lens alignment are critical. Likewise a pressure plate that holds the film flat, film rails that do a good job, and a body that is sturdy enough to hold everything together properly under a variety of conditions. I can pretty much guarantee that putting a $2,000 Planar on a Holga will not provide the same results as that same lens on a Hasselblad.
The body and the lens work as an integrated component.
Shel
In the good old days of film, what eventually mattered was the lens and film quality. Except the case of some very particular applications, the camera body was just a box holding the lens in front of the film. Put a standard 50/1.7 lens on the simplest cheapest body, use a tripod, and you get the same image quality as the next "pro" guy using a $3000 camera body. Yes he has a better viewfinder some extra gadgets and so on but the image quality is the same.
With the advent of digital, bodies and lens are of equal importance. The sensor type and MP, the image processing algorithms, everything is as important as the lens. If you want to be succesful in digital, making nice lenses ain't sufficient.
