On 13/04/2013 7:38 AM, George Sinos wrote:
I think I subscribed to PDML in 2000 or 2001. It seems like the last
couple of years, and especially the last few months the topic of other
brands supplementing Pentax gear or just plain switching to other
brands has significantly increased.
I'm pretty uncertain about changing brands unless the brand you are
changing to just plain does what you want it to be good for better, or
at least better enough.
I want a camera with a fast standard lens, it's something I have long
complained about with Pentax digital. I don't want to carry around a
massive camera, so for me the full frame DSLR offerings aren't so good.
I'm also somewhat of a lens junkie, and I look for certain qualities in
an image such as soft bokeh, but also high apparent sharpness and what I
can only describe as smoothness and a sense of depth. None of these are
really quantifiable things. It's like porn, you can't identify it, but
you know it when you see it.
It's the lens qualities that brought me to Pentax in the first place.
So, I want a camera with a fast standard lens, I want something that is
fairly compact, and I want certain lens qualities that I have to see to
know.
I feel quite fortunate that the Fuji X-Pro1 and the 35/1.4 standard lens
fits that description.
Thom Hogan started a series called "How to Choose a Camera (Intro with
Homework)" on <www.bythom.com> He starts with this:
"...at this point in the digital era, almost all cameras are highly
competent. At the DSLR level, image quality even with the entry models
surpasses what most people could have gotten from film SLRs (assuming
you understand the camera, what it can actually do, and how to make it
perform optimally). As I've written for a number of years now about
all DSLRs: if you can't get a good-looking image at the largest size a
desktop inkjet printer can create (13x19"), it isn't the camera that's
the problem. Assuming your DSLR is not broken, it will be your
decisions and your handling of the camera that are the gatekeepers on
image quality these days."
I don't disagree with him.
Sure, technically any camera will do the job, but this discounts
ergonomics or a particular camera's bias towards being somewhat better
at certain things that the photographer places more importance on.
Of course, people will switch brands simply because one brand leapfrogs
another one slightly. Often though, these people only take pictures of
charts.
bill
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