I haven't had much time for PDML or personal photography lately since I'm
in school again as well as working full time. Hopefully I did get a pic
into the May PUG--I haven't checked yet.
If I did, folks will notice that I now have a Canon 20D. As a digital
sensor system, it's great. As a camera, I hate it. Some of it is just
the way Canons work compared to the way everyone else works, but some of
it is in my opionion just bad design.
But the acquisition of an expensive Canon doesn't mean I'm ditching
Pentax. On the contrary, I'm looking increasingly seriouly at a new or
used *ist-D (not DS because I've got too many CF cards to consider SD!).
The *ist-D is still as far as I know the only DSLR to allow AA use out of
the box, and I wound up buying expensive battery grips to allow my 20D and
D100 to use AA batteries. Sure, AAs give no battery life, but they are
and probably will continue to be readily availible. I'm betting my
$3500 Nikon D1H becomes a paperweight in about 5 years when Nikon is no longer
required to sell the proprietary batteries.
For my personal uses, a DSLR has to allow AA battery use and accept M-42
screw-mount lenses without an optical adapter (I've got almost all of the
Super-Tak and SMC Tak lenses, and they're mighty good). That rules out
Nikon and leaves Canon and Pentax (and maybe Minolta and Sigma, which look
much more like dodos than Nikon and Pentax to me). I got the 20D because
it was (and still is) far and away the most capable camera at its price point.
Pentax isn't really competing for the "$1500" DSLR market. They're
probably right, as Canon and Nikon have both joined Pentax in aiming at
the "$750-1000" DSLR market.
Neither 20D nor *istD works all that well with the old Takumar lenses, of
course, because there's no mechanical communication.
Ironically, my Nikons work BETTER, because they give me realistic focus
assist and metering, but using an optical adapter to get infinity focus
just kills the image quality.
I'll probably get my girlfriend one of the new Pentax 12-24s, too, once
Nguyen gets a few put together. I can sympathize with the "full frame
DSLR" crowd because wide-angle options for DSLRs remain expensive, rare,
and generally inferior (same could be said for FF DSLRs, though).
It's even worse in M-42 of course. Pentax supposedly made fewer than
1000 15mm SMC Takumars, so the widest screw-mount I've been able to get my
hands on is the mediocre 20/4.5 and a Tamron Adaptall 17mm with no A/M
switch. Pity Pentax didn't come out with the K18/3.5 in 1972!
DJE
