Lately I've been thinking along these same lines myself. I have the
money set aside for a K5 but keep hesitating because I'm not sure that
the incremental improvement over the K7 will be worth it. I do a lot of
travel these days and many of the images I've like in the last year were
taken with my Nikon Coolpix P6000. That's a somewhat flawed camera,
burdened by a lot of poorly implemented 'features', a slow lens, and
really slow buffer write times - but it still manages to cough up some
nice images. So part of me thinks to upgrade to a better compact. But
I'm not seeing any compacts that seem to be worth upgrading to either....
MCC
On 9/15/2011 7:55 AM, Steven Desjardins wrote:
Our recent discussion of the Pentax Q got me thinking, which is
always dangerous. One big problem with list discussions is that so
much of photography is personal. On an email list like the PDML,
folks are typing quickly and often don’t make clear when they know
they are giving an opinion and when they think they are expressing a
fact. For example, I like small cameras because I am likely to grab
one as I walk out the door. That was one of the attractive features
of Pentax and it’s a very attractive feature of the current generation
of mu43 cameras like the E-P2. I am convinced the image quality of
the smaller four thirds sensors is not as good as APS-C. Of course, I
have a K7 and the difference is less obvious that it would be with a
K5. I could have gotten a K5 if I had sold the K7 and not bought my
more recent mu43 purchases. I didn’t and I still wouldn’t.
I am an amateur and my photography is there to let me play artist
and contribute to the family scrapbook. The latter is always good
enough with any of these cameras. My wife uses an Optio I-10 and
(annoyingly) seems to do as well as me. Noise just doesn’t bother me
very much so my high iso performance is more than adequate. The
biggest challenge for me is the limited dynamic range and I enjoy that
challenge. When I am taking pictures to please myself, I don’t mind
the limitations of the camera. Sure, I can delight in a new lens but
usually it’s a prime. My SOP is to go off with one prime and work
around it. I’ve recently realized that I’m a better adapter than a
chooser. I actually dislike having to pick from too many choices. I
find it much more satisfying to take a small camera and one prime and
try to make it work. I completely understand that a pro can’t do this
and when I’m asked to do weddings I show up with the K7, the flash and
the FA135, the DA 18-55, etc. Lately however, that stuff just sits in
the bag. I honestly think that if I had the money I would get a Q and
a few lenses rather than a K5. The Q system would be inferior for
every technical reason and it would get a lot more use.
Sorry for the manifesto but better here than going off topic in class. ;-)
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