On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 08:18:24PM +0100, Jens Bladt wrote:
A 5 FPS camera from Pentax (Autumn 2006) is a little late, isn't it?
I am speaking from experience, you know. I have shot almost 30.000 frames
with a *ist D. I believe I know very well, what I'm talking about.
I don't really do action shots.
Well, make up your mind.
If experience matters, then I think my thousands of action shots,
taken with the *ist-D, suggest that perhaps *I* know what I'm
talking about when I say that the D is adequate for all but the
most demanding situations. Not ideal, by any means, but adequate.
And some of the limitations were fixed, some time ago, in the DS;
I've yet to encounter a situation where a D with the write speed
and buffer size of the DS, (plus, on a few occasions, the 4fps
frame rate of the PZ-1p), would have prevented me getting just
the shot I was trying for.
As, by your admission, you don't do action photography, then your
experience isn't really relevant, no matter how many frames you
have shot.
As others have pointed out, it's the photographer, far more than
the equipment, that determines how good a shot you can bring home.
I've even managed to get first-class results from a simple Canon
Powershot G1 (an 8x10, from a 3.3MP camera, of a Porsche 911 at
racing speeds) - when I mix it in with my best DSLR and scanned
shots nobody has yet been able to pick it out as the P&S sample.
If you expect the camera to do everything for you, then of course
you're going to be disappointed. It's best to pre-focus at about
the right distance, so that even if you're using focus tracking
the camera is starting from roughly the right setting. That's
where the *ist-D and siblings are much better than the MZ-S - the
AF logic predicts which way to correct far more often, so you lose
less shots while the AF hunts to the end-stop and back again.
It's also best to select the AF point, rather than letting the
camera choose (this becomes more important at long focal lengths).
This isn't rocket science. In fact if you look carefully at how
most of those full-time professionals with a truckload of Canon
gear work, you'll find that they use their equipment in just
that way - letting their experience guide the camera's automation.
