Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
På lørdag, 20. september 2003, kl. 23:20, skrev William Robb: - Original Message - From: Dag T Subject: Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd) Any WP version of ´95 may read (almost) any text written in its latest versions. Hows that for compatibility? My wife was using WP 6 at work. I sent her something written with WP 9. No go, she couldn't open it. Strange, I used both, one home and one at work. No problems, not even with equations. DagT
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On 21/9/03, [EMAIL PROTECTED] disgorged: Damn. And on my G4 Apple, I'm using an Epson scanner, an Epson printer, an ACOM firewire drive, a couple of IBM SCSI drives, and four PCI cards from several manufacturers. Now you tell me that Apple doesn't support anything but Apple hardware? Maybe I'm just lucky, because all of my gear runs flawlessly. I must be lucky too, my W2K work-station has been logged onto my server for over 14 days and has transferred over 8,000,000 packets on my 100Mbit network without error (it's been up for over 80days without a crash in the past and that's under hard use). My NT4 server well that's another matter, it's often up for over a year at a time. Computers are tools not religions. I bought a LaCie Firewire 52x CDRW and attached it to a Blue and White G3 assuming I would have to plug and pray. It worked out of the box, no driver, no software no nuthin. I can now burn in a couple of minutes rather than the 20 it took me before. I kneel before it each morning ;-) Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=| www.macads.co.uk/snaps _ Free UK Mac Ads www.macads.co.uk
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
I had the same experience when I put took out an old HP and replaced it with an AOpen 52X burner two weeks ago. No trouble at all. I use it with Nero and it takes longer to set up the 'lead in' and 'out' than it takes to burn the backups. But there is a disadvantage; those drives get rather hot and wear out much faster than the old ones. So I reduce the speed to 4X or 8X for reading and playing music. And I write the CDs at 40X rather than 52X. Don ___ Dr E D F Williams http://personal.inet.fi/cool/don.williams Author's Web Site and Photo Gallery Updated: July 31, 2003 clipped a lot of stuff ... I bought a LaCie Firewire 52x CDRW and attached it to a Blue and White G3 assuming I would have to plug and pray. It worked out of the box, no driver, no software no nuthin. I can now burn in a couple of minutes rather than the 20 it took me before. I kneel before it each morning ;-) Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=| www.macads.co.uk/snaps _ Free UK Mac Ads www.macads.co.uk
OT: Apple/Mac software [WAS: Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)]
Hi Paul, Fact is, Apple's software stability is the result of what used to be Apple's insistence that software coders follow Apple's coding methods (I don't know what else to call them) and to do it by the numbers. In other words, do it exactly according to Apple's cookbook -- their rules and such -- which is the way Apple themselves wrote software code for applications and utilities. If the third-party developers did it as Apple did it, they were guaranteed to come up with a successful piece of software. Many, perhaps most, followed Apples lead, and wrote their code just as Apple said to do it. All software worked well, gave few if any surprises, and the layout and features seemed quite familiar right out of the box, to any Apple/Mac user. There were mavericks who balked, and said, Who is Apple to tell ME how to write code? I've been successfully writing software for years and years. It was usually their software that exhibited bugs, crashed at odd times, and was generally unreliable and a bugger to use. Developers like that didn't last long, or decided to write for DOS or some other O/S. Apple was too strict. Seems that's pretty much over. The Apple Macintosh HFS/HFS+ operating system is a dead end street. Obsolete. Now, some form of UNIX is all. One more step toward a rather universal operating system that will work on myriad machines, no matter who developed it. So I see it. keith whaley Paul Stenquist wrote: graywolf wrote: Much of the reason for Apples software stability is the Apple philosophy, We support Apple hardware only. Where other brands of computers may have almost any hardware from any manufacture in it Apple only has to support Apple hardware that simplifies the task immensely. Damn. And on my G4 Apple, I'm using an Epson scanner, an Epson printer, an ACOM firewire drive, a couple of IBM SCSI drives, and four PCI cards from several manufacturers. Now you tell me that Apple doesn't support anything but Apple hardware? Maybe I'm just lucky, because all of my gear runs flawlessly.
Re: OT: Apple/Mac software [WAS: Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)]
I wasn't paying much attention to what I was typing, I guess, and I seriously mis-spoke! I have no idea how HFS slipped into the comments! Geez! Apologies all around! Remove HFS/HFS+ from the comments, and they read okay. Big ooops! keith whaley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quoting Keith Whaley [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Seems that's pretty much over. The Apple Macintosh HFS/HFS+ operating system is a dead end street. Obsolete. Now, some form of UNIX is all. One more step toward a rather universal operating system that will work on myriad machines, no matter who developed it. HFS/HFS+ is a file system, not an operating system, and is not obsolete. HFS+ continues to be the default file system for Macs, and appears to work just fine. Apple has even recently extended it to include support for journaling. Apple's form of unix actually still contains the same type of frameworks for developing applications. In fact, now things are much easier, as more of the basic components are built-in for you. Developers who use apple's instructions still make programs that work well, have few surprises, and are faniliar to any mac user. Developers can continue to use their old code, with a few updates (this is called Carbon, and is designed for updating old apps for the new OS) or can re-write from scratch using the easier and faster Cocoa (designed for brand-new app development. The Unix base of Mac OS X (called Darwin) will run on myriad machines, an Intel version does exist. The application development frameworks and GUI are specific to apple machines with PowerPC processors. -Matt (who used to study operating system design)
Re: My own little *ist D review
The camera is programmed to recognize if the lens is set to A or can be set to A. If it falls into one of these categories you must override the programming to fire the shutter. When you do this the camera shuts off the meter. It's a software feature. At 06:31 PM 9/17/03 +0100, you wrote: This would really be a very drastic way to have the *ist D meter with K and M lenses at alle apertures. However, it would only work in Av mode. In manual mode the meter would still be OFF. And you would have to use your crippled lenses with real aperture metering, only, on your film bodies, too. Can you explain exactly why it would not work in manual mode? Surely you set the camera to a certain shutter speed via the main dial, and the lens to the aperture, and the scale inside the viewfinder shows you whether you are underexposing, right on, or over-exposing, no? No. Arnold No??? Why not? Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=| www.macads.co.uk/snaps _ Free UK Mac Ads www.macads.co.uk To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze. O'Rourke, P.J.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Jeez, Cameron, get off it will you? Just cause your experience with Windows is much like Alan Chan's Pentax experience doesn't mean the rest of us have the same problems and experience. TAKE IT TO ANOTHER FORUM ABOUT COMPUTERS PLEASE! Bruce Friday, September 19, 2003, 6:13:28 PM, you wrote: CH On Friday, September 19, 2003, at 04:47 PM, CH [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Writing the code is less than 20% of a project's time. The rest is debugging the stuff, and getting it to conform to the original requirements. WindowsME is a bad example to compare against, because like a lot of MS software, it's written and released with as little testing as the customers will tolerate. CH I am more of the opinion that they (MS) test extensively and do it CH on purpose; why on earth would they need such an enormous 'campus' and CH the tens of thousands of people who work there unless they were CH deliberately planning just such inconveniences. CH Most of the world, if they just want to turn their computers on, do CH their work, and turn them off again, with as little dicking around as CH possible, should be on a Mac. PC's, since their invention back in the CH DOS 2.0 days, have always been for techno-weenies who like searching CH around for solutions to problems like VDX.386 stack dump CH 0011001011...(on and on for at least 300 more places), whatever CH the hell that means. And if you phone the MS technical support phone CH line, and wait in a four hour cue, they will tell you to 'reinstall CH Windows from scratch' and lose all your work or we can't tell you; CH that's source code. CH What I do know is that when I got my miraculous Windows 95 CH computer, it came with 1 year of technical support, and I used it, CH constantly, for hundreds and hundreds of hours, sometimes far into the CH night making me late for work the next day. Sometime I stayed home from CH work just to try to get my damn computer back up, reinstalling Windows CH four or five dozen times in the first year alone. CH When my tech support ran out, I bought two more years and needed CH all of it. When that ran out, I was paying either $3.99 a minute, or CH $49.95 per incident to get my damn machine working again, and used it CH literally dozens of times, even though it was just fine when I least CH shut it off or tried to put it to sleep. CH Then, we all 'had' to upgrade to Windows 98, which was ten times CH the nightmare 95 was. I screwed around with that for about a year and a CH half, and finally wound up going back to 95. Then I tried to install a CH genuine Windows 95 plug-and-play soundcard for the next six months CH until finally giving up and returning it to the store. I had to blow a CH gasket to explain to them why I had it for six months, but never CH actually got to use it, because it never actually worked. This, BTW, CH was a $700.00 Turtle Beach Pinnacle sound card for allegedly high end CH hard disk recording on the PC, which also never worked. Not once. CH Christmas 2001 I bought a Mac, and when I got it home, there was a CH little card that said 90 days of free technical support. I thought, CH 'those cheap bastards, this is going to cost me a fortune! I think I CH used the Mac technical support line twice, in the first week I owned CH it, and have never used it since. I have installed more ram, new video CH cards, USB printers and scanners, firewire CD burner, and everything CH has worked just perfectly right out of the box. Just like it should. I CH had one major crash, which was my fault, and that was it. CH The Windows 95/98 scam was the biggest hoax ever pulled in the CH history of commercial enterprize; if cars, or cameras, or toasters were CH that unreliable, there would be rioting in the streets, and the company CH would be out of business so fast it would make your head spin, with CH class action lawsuits up the ying-yang. Bill Gates and his cronies have CH managed to convinced us all that we were idiots, or didn't know what we CH were doing, and that it was all our fault that the machine didn't work, CH even though it was fine the last time you switched it on. Gates should CH be in jail for what he did, and continues to do; instead, he is the CH richest man in the world, and is lauded as some kind of giant American CH hero. Time will prove that he has perpetrated the largest scam in CH corporate history. And we have all been his victims. CH Get a Mac, you'll never look back; just ask Cotty. CH Never again, CH Cameron Hood
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Doug Franklin wrote Uhhh. There weren't no .386 stuff when PCs or DOS was invented. The iAPX386 chip didn't come out until several years later. PCs used the 8088 chip which was an 8-bit external bus version of the 8086, which had a 16-bit external bus. Both had 16-bit internal busses. I rest my case: Mr. Franklin is a perfect candidate for a PC. The rest of us should be on Macs; far less aggravation. And I'm sorry, I can't remember the exact details of crashes that happened five years ago. And historically, I guess, computers didn't really become common until Dos 2.0 and later. And, BTW, the original PC was a MAC (Apple). C.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On Saturday, September 20, 2003, at 12:17 AM, Bruce Dayton wrote: Jeez, Cameron, get off it will you? Just cause your experience with Windows is much like Alan Chan's Pentax experience doesn't mean the rest of us have the same problems and experience. TAKE IT TO ANOTHER FORUM ABOUT COMPUTERS PLEASE! I use my computer extensively for my photography, as well as to communicate with this list. If you don't like the thread, you are free to not read it, just as I am free to write about things I feel are pertinent. BTW, I love your racing shots. Respectfully, Cameron
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Dear Boz, I love your site! Are you going to be posting those updated *ist D pics? The first ones were fairly terrifying to those of us who were planning to buy the camera. C.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
And for what it is worth the istD is supposed to allow for firmware updates throught the USB port. Boris Liberman wrote: Hi! KW Writing the code is less than 20% of a project's time. The rest is KW debugging the stuff, and getting it to conform to the original KW requirements. WindowsME is a bad example to compare against, because KW like a lot of MS software, it's written and released with as little KW testing as the customers will tolerate. It is really too general a statement, don't you agree? There is of course 80-20 rule - 80% of work for 20% of time that you might be referring to. Let us also not compare operating system that has to, well, operate tens of kinds of peripherals with firmware for a camera, no matter how complex the darn camera is. KW If anyone made a camera (or car, or cell phone, or TV) with as high KW level of bugs in it as a typical windows release, they wouldn't be in KW business to make a follow-up model... That's perfectly correct. KW Adding stop-down metering to the *ist-D would have required KW re-validation of the camera firmware, just as manufacturing was about KW to ramp up. Not a clever move, given the small number of customers who KW would even notice. I beg to differ. If your code is written with proper modularity, and you have tested each module separately and found it bug free, and if you then integrated your modules and tested the system, then of course a change in one or two modules would require re-testing of these modules plus testing of the integrated firmware. You don't have to re-validate all of it. I have noticed that both Canon and Nikon have put out upgrades of their DSLR firmware. So it can be done, and it should be done and even more, the camera should be built in such a way that it can easily be done by the user, not the in the service center. KW I wouldn't rule out this feature turning up in a future firmware KW upgrade, though, once the development team have some time to play with. I sure hope you're right. As for M$oft - well, it is completely, I repeat, completely, different story - another time, another place, different crew of actors. Respectfully. Boris -- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
I don't know why that Apple stuff keeps getting repeated. The Apple I was a kit computer produced in a garage. The Apple II was the first apple computer to come out as a production model. However, you could actually buy a Radio Shack TRS-80 (1977) before you could an Apple II, though I think the Apple II was announced first. There was a very different outlook between the two companies. The Apple was primarily a gaming machine, and the RS was primarily a business machine. The first microcomputer was the kit in Popular Electronics (1974?). Technically, though none of those were PCs. They were called microcomputers. IBM called their microcomputer the Personal Computer or PC. By extension all the subsequent clones of the IBM are PCs. Now-a-days the term is used willy-nilly for anything that is not a server, but is actually incorrect. Much of the reason for Apples software stability is the Apple philosophy, We support Apple hardware only. Where other brands of computers may have almost any hardware from any manufacture in it Apple only has to support Apple hardware that simplifies the task immensely. If limited hardware availablity, and limited software availablity, and higher cost is not a problem to you then Apple is a good choice. OTOH... Cameron Hood wrote: Doug Franklin wrote Uhhh. There weren't no .386 stuff when PCs or DOS was invented. The iAPX386 chip didn't come out until several years later. PCs used the 8088 chip which was an 8-bit external bus version of the 8086, which had a 16-bit external bus. Both had 16-bit internal busses. I rest my case: Mr. Franklin is a perfect candidate for a PC. The rest of us should be on Macs; far less aggravation. And I'm sorry, I can't remember the exact details of crashes that happened five years ago. And historically, I guess, computers didn't really become common until Dos 2.0 and later. And, BTW, the original PC was a MAC (Apple). C. -- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
Cameron's Mac Fervor; WAS Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Cameron quoted and posted as follows: On Saturday, September 20, 2003, at 12:17 AM, Bruce Dayton wrote: Jeez, Cameron, get off it will you? Just cause your experience with Windows is much like Alan Chan's Pentax experience doesn't mean the rest of us have the same problems and experience. TAKE IT TO ANOTHER FORUM ABOUT COMPUTERS PLEASE! I use my computer extensively for my photography, as well as to communicate with this list. If you don't like the thread, you are free to not read it, just as I am free to write about things I feel are pertinent. Yes, you are free to write about things you feel are pertinent. However, it's a little hard to tell people who aren't interested in rants about computer platforms to not read the thread if you persist in inserting your Mac vs PC diatribes into originally unrelated threads. Could you at least relabel the threads when you do that? Please.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
- Original Message - From: graywolf Subject: Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd) Much of the reason for Apples software stability is the Apple philosophy, We support Apple hardware only. Where other brands of computers may have almost any hardware from any manufacture in it Apple only has to support Apple hardware that simplifies the task immensely. This is pretty much the way my technician explained it to me as well. His thought is that people with unstable machines are probably using junk hardware which was assembled by girls in diapers and whose driver software was written in a basement in Pyong Yang. Use quality hardware, check to make sure it really is all intercompatable, with no driver conflicts, and don't put a half dozen freeware programs, all of which do exactly the same thing anyway into the machine and odds are, it will be stable. William Robb
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
På lørdag, 20. september 2003, kl. 22:41, skrev William Robb: - Original Message - From: graywolf Subject: Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd) Much of the reason for Apples software stability is the Apple philosophy, We support Apple hardware only. Where other brands of computers may have almost any hardware from any manufacture in it Apple only has to support Apple hardware that simplifies the task immensely. This is pretty much the way my technician explained it to me as well. His thought is that people with unstable machines are probably using junk hardware which was assembled by girls in diapers and whose driver software was written in a basement in Pyong Yang. Use quality hardware, check to make sure it really is all intercompatable, with no driver conflicts, and don't put a half dozen freeware programs, all of which do exactly the same thing anyway into the machine and odds are, it will be stable. Sure, I made a Powerpoint presentation yesterday, nice, but it didn´t work in the next Powerpoint version I tried. I guess it´s my fault, but I´m glad I didn´t trust it. It was the same with the Access 2.0 data base I once made. It didn´t work in Access ´97 - or any later version. I guess I should have known better... DagT
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Well I don´t care about the history, I bought an iMac a year ago because I liked Unix and Xwindows, in 1987. Windows 3.0 was a big disappointment, and though MS may have improved I still don´t like it. We complain about compatibility with Pentax, but MS cripples the mount every second year. I´ve also used WordPerfect which is closer to html-code in structure. Any WP version of ´95 may read (almost) any text written in its latest versions. Hows that for compatibility? As for prices, my iMac came with a very good LCD screen and a DVD-R, as well as a lot of software. The processor was slow, but more efficient, so by comparing with other prices I got a good screen and a DVD burner for a normal price, with a computer and software attached to it :-) DagT På lørdag, 20. september 2003, kl. 19:40, skrev graywolf: I don't know why that Apple stuff keeps getting repeated. The Apple I was a kit computer produced in a garage. The Apple II was the first apple computer to come out as a production model. However, you could actually buy a Radio Shack TRS-80 (1977) before you could an Apple II, though I think the Apple II was announced first. There was a very different outlook between the two companies. The Apple was primarily a gaming machine, and the RS was primarily a business machine. The first microcomputer was the kit in Popular Electronics (1974?). Technically, though none of those were PCs. They were called microcomputers. IBM called their microcomputer the Personal Computer or PC. By extension all the subsequent clones of the IBM are PCs. Now-a-days the term is used willy-nilly for anything that is not a server, but is actually incorrect. Much of the reason for Apples software stability is the Apple philosophy, We support Apple hardware only. Where other brands of computers may have almost any hardware from any manufacture in it Apple only has to support Apple hardware that simplifies the task immensely. If limited hardware availablity, and limited software availablity, and higher cost is not a problem to you then Apple is a good choice. OTOH... Cameron Hood wrote: Doug Franklin wrote Uhhh. There weren't no .386 stuff when PCs or DOS was invented. The iAPX386 chip didn't come out until several years later. PCs used the 8088 chip which was an 8-bit external bus version of the 8086, which had a 16-bit external bus. Both had 16-bit internal busses. I rest my case: Mr. Franklin is a perfect candidate for a PC. The rest of us should be on Macs; far less aggravation. And I'm sorry, I can't remember the exact details of crashes that happened five years ago. And historically, I guess, computers didn't really become common until Dos 2.0 and later. And, BTW, the original PC was a MAC (Apple). C. -- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
- Original Message - From: Dag T Subject: Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd) Sure, I made a Powerpoint presentation yesterday, nice, but it didn´t work in the next Powerpoint version I tried. I guess it´s my fault, but I´m glad I didn´t trust it. It was the same with the Access 2.0 data base I once made. It didn´t work in Access ´97 - or any later version. I guess I should have known better... Was that a software issue or a hardware issue? My post related to hardware. I have found that things often aren't backwards compatable to earlier generations. This applies to cameras, software, etc. William Robb
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
- Original Message - From: Dag T Subject: Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd) Any WP version of ´95 may read (almost) any text written in its latest versions. Hows that for compatibility? My wife was using WP 6 at work. I sent her something written with WP 9. No go, she couldn't open it.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
At least one of them, I'm not sure which is being sold as the standard on the *ist and the MZ/ZX 60 in some advertisement I saw recently so they better, or else there will be some very disappointed customers. At 12:52 PM 9/18/03 -0600, you wrote: - Original Message - From: John Francis Subject: Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd) But, for those of you who need it spelled out in detail: Which bodies can use the FA-J lenses in aperture priority (and/or manual)? Wouldn't the cameras that control everything from the body (MZ-30? as an example) be able to use them? As an aside question, are the Fa-J lenses able to cover the entire 35mm frame, or do they have a smaller image circle? William Robb I drink to make other people interesting. -- George Jean Nathan
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Doug Franklin wrote: Uhhh. There weren't no .386 stuff when PCs or DOS was invented. T Of course when PCs were invented, there already were several PCs on the market, the Apple among them.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Bruce Dayton wrote: Jeez, Cameron, get off it will you? Just cause your experience with Windows is much like Alan Chan's Pentax experience doesn't mean the rest of us have the same problems and experience. TAKE IT TO ANOTHER FORUM ABOUT COMPUTERS PLEASE! I was pleased to hear about Cameron's experience with Windows. Computers are an important photograpic tool. I'm very happy with my current setup, but I like to know what the rest of the photographic world is doing. Paul
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
graywolf wrote: Much of the reason for Apples software stability is the Apple philosophy, We support Apple hardware only. Where other brands of computers may have almost any hardware from any manufacture in it Apple only has to support Apple hardware that simplifies the task immensely. Damn. And on my G4 Apple, I'm using an Epson scanner, an Epson printer, an ACOM firewire drive, a couple of IBM SCSI drives, and four PCI cards from several manufacturers. Now you tell me that Apple doesn't support anything but Apple hardware? Maybe I'm just lucky, because all of my gear runs flawlessly.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On 20 Sep 2003 at 23:03, Paul Stenquist wrote: Damn. And on my G4 Apple, I'm using an Epson scanner, an Epson printer, an ACOM firewire drive, a couple of IBM SCSI drives, and four PCI cards from several manufacturers. Now you tell me that Apple doesn't support anything but Apple hardware? Maybe I'm just lucky, because all of my gear runs flawlessly. I must be lucky too, my W2K work-station has been logged onto my server for over 14 days and has transferred over 8,000,000 packets on my 100Mbit network without error (it's been up for over 80days without a crash in the past and that's under hard use). My NT4 server well that's another matter, it's often up for over a year at a time. Computers are tools not religions. Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/ Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Hi! I couldn't agree more. Take Linux for example wink. There is another point to what you saying, Doug. I think that shareware/freeware usually written by a single programmer during their off hours like a weekend mechanic has much less ambition than similar piece of quite often junk written by a group of paid programmers. To make a rough comparison - William Robb recently mentioned how good it was to return to be an amateur (or unpaid photographer) - to be able to watch the scene until the light goes away. I suppose here it is very similar. As a professional programmer I often have/had to do things that I wouldn't do in my normal mind, but I was given instructions and I had no choice. Same problem, isn't it? Only rarely a programmer finds a job where they not only earn their living, but also enjoy what they're doing. I guess it applies to all professions. Shaking a hand of a fellow professional grin. Boris ===8==Original message text=== DF On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 00:00:35 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeah, well, I've never supported that philosophy. You know a lot of shareware things on the Net are more bug-free than stuff one can buy off the shelves. DF A lot of shareware/freeware is better planned and executed that the DF expensive software developed by companies. It's done as a labor of DF love by someone who, many times, cares more and spends _way_ more time DF worrying about it, planning it, rewriting crufty code, etc., than paid DF staff. And I say that as paid staff for the past twenty or so years. DF TTYL, DougF KG4LMZ ===8===End of original message text===
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Chris wrote: CB Like any other huge change CB designed to slip in under the radar and avoid pissing off tons of people CB at once, the disappearance of the aperture ring will be slow, subtle, and CB almost inevitable. Pentax in their wisdom waited for a long time for an occasion to drastically alter the K mount. Until now they were not in the position to come up with lenses without aperture rings as well as high end bodies with crippled mount. People would have quickly seen there is no value added behind such propositions. There would have been a general laughter and no one would have bought it. Fortunately for Pentax, the digital suddenly put them finally in the advantageous position to offer a product desirable enough to sneak the crippled mount in the package. CB And, coincidentally, all those people who love their M42/K/M lenses will CB suddenly have to buy new lenses if they want to move up to AF. Won't be CB long now. Haven't you heard they're a negligible quantity!? Pentax is riding big horses nowadays, they can afford to dump the fan base. Servus, Alin
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Chris Brogden wrote: Actually, the *ist will work fine with MF lenses. No, it's a cripple-mount, so it won't work with non-A lenses. The best it can work with them is like the MZ-50 (metering at full, but stopping down for the exposure, thus underexposing). Kostas
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Kostas, I have several MF lenses that are also A lenses. I expect the D to work fine with them. Cory Waters - Original Message - From: Kostas Kavoussanakis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 19, 2003 4:29 AM Subject: Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd) On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Chris Brogden wrote: Actually, the *ist will work fine with MF lenses. No, it's a cripple-mount, so it won't work with non-A lenses. The best it can work with them is like the MZ-50 (metering at full, but stopping down for the exposure, thus underexposing). Kostas --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.518 / Virus Database: 316 - Release Date: 9/11/2003
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Is it not interesting that people are predicting Pentax's Future from crippled (and mostly LowBall) bodies? Hell, I am too. Well, the old glass is still cheap, may get cheaper, and as long as my eyes can still focus, the hell with it. Chris Brogden wrote: Now Pentax users know *exactly* how Nikon users felt when the F80 (N80) was introduced, with its deliberately designed inability to meter with pre-autofocus Nikkors. That wasn't the reason why I abandoned Nikon for Pentax, but it was probably *one* of the reasons. Now Pentax have done it, and Canon and Minolta did it a long time ago, I have nowhere to go! So if the Nikon D100 will stop down an MF lens in manual mode (no meter), then it's actually a step ahead of the *istD, which won't even stop down an MF Pentax K-mount lens. That's sad. I was scared of this happening when Pentax first started messing with their entry-level bodies. First the MZ-50, which would only meter at full aperture but would still stop down a K/M series lens properly. Then the MZ-30 and 60, which won't even work with non-A lenses or with A-series lenses taken off the A setting. Then the FAJ lenses, which don't even have aperture rings. And now we have their first, and flagship, DSLR, which essentially works like a digital MZ-60. This completely and totally hoovers. Canon users must be feeling some rumblings of unease, considering that Canon's new 18-35mm lens for the Digital Rebel won't fit on their 35mm bodies, but Pentax has a history of excellent body/lens compatibility, which they now seem to be doing their best to throw away. Pentax can't hope to compete with N/C in many ways, but they've still been able to carve out a niche for themselves by offering inexpensive entry-level bodies, high-quality lenses, and excellent compatibility. Once their compatibility decreases, and the lenses they produce (like Nikon's G-series) stop working on MF bodies, then they've just alientated a lot of people. They'll still make money selling cheap SLRs and ps cameras, but they'll simply be a lesser company than C/N instead of a different one. chris
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Arnold, I 'spects you are right. This is just as awkward and stupid as using a K-1000 to get DOF. Pentax needs to change the firmware. PENTAX NEEDS TO CHANGE THE FIRMWARE. (repeat after me:) PENTAX NEEDS TO CHANGE THE FIRMWARE. PENTAX NEEDS TO CHANGE THE FIRMWARE. PENTAX NEEDS TO CHANGE THE FIRMWARE. Arnold Stark wrote: In manual mode, the *ist D does stop down a K or M lens (or A/F/FA lenses that are not in A position). Only it does not meter. It is in Av mode (metered!) that a K or M lens (or A/F/FA lenses that are not in A position) does not get stopped down but stays wide open all the time (unless one unlocks the lens and turns it 15 degrees anti-clockwise, so that one gets stopping down and real aperture metering). Arnold Chris Brogden wrote: So if the Nikon D100 will stop down an MF lens in manual mode (no meter), then it's actually a step ahead of the *istD, which won't even stop down an MF Pentax K-mount lens. That's sad.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Mark, I think this is crap. Pentax has been screwing with DLSRs for 4 years. That's enough time to hatch, say, WindowsME. And cameras ain't as hard as operating sytems. Pentax may need to hire some more SW engineers. Mebbe they can find some in Pakinstan. Mark Roberts wrote: whickersworld [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chris Brogden wrote: So if the Nikon D100 will stop down an MF lens in manual mode (no meter), then it's actually a step ahead of the *istD, which won't even stop down an MF Pentax K-mount lens. That's sad. Yes, it is sad. In each case, the necessary engineering would have cost only a nominal amount of money. In the case of stop-down metering in the *ist-D I suspect that money wasn't as much of a factor as time. Even with the lack of the aperture simulator, stop-down metering certainly could have been implemented in software (using the DOF preview) but would have required more software coding, and the attendant debugging and hardware testing. Given the lateness of the DSLR project as a whole (just look at how much complaining there still is about having to wait) it was a predictable corner to cut simply to get the camera to market quicker.
My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On Friday, Sep 19, 2003, at 20:49 Europe/Dublin, Lon wrote: Mark, I think this is crap. Pentax has been screwing with DLSRs for 4 years. That's enough time to hatch, say, WindowsME. And cameras ain't as hard as operating sytems. Pentax may need to hire some more SW engineers. Mebbe they can find some in Pakinstan. Writing the code is less than 20% of a project's time. The rest is debugging the stuff, and getting it to conform to the original requirements. WindowsME is a bad example to compare against, because like a lot of MS software, it's written and released with as little testing as the customers will tolerate. If anyone made a camera (or car, or cell phone, or TV) with as high level of bugs in it as a typical windows release, they wouldn't be in business to make a follow-up model... Adding stop-down metering to the *ist-D would have required re-validation of the camera firmware, just as manufacturing was about to ramp up. Not a clever move, given the small number of customers who would even notice. I wouldn't rule out this feature turning up in a future firmware upgrade, though, once the development team have some time to play with. -- Kristian
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Gee, I sure hope the istD works better than WinME. Lon Williamson wrote: Mark, I think this is crap. Pentax has been screwing with DLSRs for 4 years. That's enough time to hatch, say, WindowsME. And cameras ain't as hard as operating sytems. Pentax may need to hire some more SW engineers. Mebbe they can find some in Pakinstan. Mark Roberts wrote: whickersworld [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chris Brogden wrote: So if the Nikon D100 will stop down an MF lens in manual mode (no meter), then it's actually a step ahead of the *istD, which won't even stop down an MF Pentax K-mount lens. That's sad. Yes, it is sad. In each case, the necessary engineering would have cost only a nominal amount of money. In the case of stop-down metering in the *ist-D I suspect that money wasn't as much of a factor as time. Even with the lack of the aperture simulator, stop-down metering certainly could have been implemented in software (using the DOF preview) but would have required more software coding, and the attendant debugging and hardware testing. Given the lateness of the DSLR project as a whole (just look at how much complaining there still is about having to wait) it was a predictable corner to cut simply to get the camera to market quicker. -- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
RE: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
It works better than XP, just try it... And XP is very stable. Ziggy -Original Message- From: graywolf [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 20 September 2003 00:20 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd) Gee, I sure hope the istD works better than WinME. Lon Williamson wrote: Mark, I think this is crap. Pentax has been screwing with DLSRs for 4 years. That's enough time to hatch, say, WindowsME. And cameras ain't as hard as operating sytems. Pentax may need to hire some more SW engineers. Mebbe they can find some in Pakinstan. Mark Roberts wrote: whickersworld [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chris Brogden wrote: So if the Nikon D100 will stop down an MF lens in manual mode (no meter), then it's actually a step ahead of the *istD, which won't even stop down an MF Pentax K-mount lens. That's sad. Yes, it is sad. In each case, the necessary engineering would have cost only a nominal amount of money. In the case of stop-down metering in the *ist-D I suspect that money wasn't as much of a factor as time. Even with the lack of the aperture simulator, stop-down metering certainly could have been implemented in software (using the DOF preview) but would have required more software coding, and the attendant debugging and hardware testing. Given the lateness of the DSLR project as a whole (just look at how much complaining there still is about having to wait) it was a predictable corner to cut simply to get the camera to market quicker. -- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On Friday, September 19, 2003, at 04:47 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Writing the code is less than 20% of a project's time. The rest is debugging the stuff, and getting it to conform to the original requirements. WindowsME is a bad example to compare against, because like a lot of MS software, it's written and released with as little testing as the customers will tolerate. I am more of the opinion that they (MS) test extensively and do it on purpose; why on earth would they need such an enormous 'campus' and the tens of thousands of people who work there unless they were deliberately planning just such inconveniences. Most of the world, if they just want to turn their computers on, do their work, and turn them off again, with as little dicking around as possible, should be on a Mac. PC's, since their invention back in the DOS 2.0 days, have always been for techno-weenies who like searching around for solutions to problems like VDX.386 stack dump 0011001011...(on and on for at least 300 more places), whatever the hell that means. And if you phone the MS technical support phone line, and wait in a four hour cue, they will tell you to 'reinstall Windows from scratch' and lose all your work or we can't tell you; that's source code. What I do know is that when I got my miraculous Windows 95 computer, it came with 1 year of technical support, and I used it, constantly, for hundreds and hundreds of hours, sometimes far into the night making me late for work the next day. Sometime I stayed home from work just to try to get my damn computer back up, reinstalling Windows four or five dozen times in the first year alone. When my tech support ran out, I bought two more years and needed all of it. When that ran out, I was paying either $3.99 a minute, or $49.95 per incident to get my damn machine working again, and used it literally dozens of times, even though it was just fine when I least shut it off or tried to put it to sleep. Then, we all 'had' to upgrade to Windows 98, which was ten times the nightmare 95 was. I screwed around with that for about a year and a half, and finally wound up going back to 95. Then I tried to install a genuine Windows 95 plug-and-play soundcard for the next six months until finally giving up and returning it to the store. I had to blow a gasket to explain to them why I had it for six months, but never actually got to use it, because it never actually worked. This, BTW, was a $700.00 Turtle Beach Pinnacle sound card for allegedly high end hard disk recording on the PC, which also never worked. Not once. Christmas 2001 I bought a Mac, and when I got it home, there was a little card that said 90 days of free technical support. I thought, 'those cheap bastards, this is going to cost me a fortune! I think I used the Mac technical support line twice, in the first week I owned it, and have never used it since. I have installed more ram, new video cards, USB printers and scanners, firewire CD burner, and everything has worked just perfectly right out of the box. Just like it should. I had one major crash, which was my fault, and that was it. The Windows 95/98 scam was the biggest hoax ever pulled in the history of commercial enterprize; if cars, or cameras, or toasters were that unreliable, there would be rioting in the streets, and the company would be out of business so fast it would make your head spin, with class action lawsuits up the ying-yang. Bill Gates and his cronies have managed to convinced us all that we were idiots, or didn't know what we were doing, and that it was all our fault that the machine didn't work, even though it was fine the last time you switched it on. Gates should be in jail for what he did, and continues to do; instead, he is the richest man in the world, and is lauded as some kind of giant American hero. Time will prove that he has perpetrated the largest scam in corporate history. And we have all been his victims. Get a Mac, you'll never look back; just ask Cotty. Never again, Cameron Hood
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
I have always found it interesting that as soon as Mr Gates quites supporting a product for a fee, he comes out with a final upgrade and from then on it works pretty good. But then I have be told that I paranoid and distrustful. (And for the literately challenged, please note that comma is after the word fee, and not the word product.) Cameron Hood wrote: On Friday, September 19, 2003, at 04:47 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Writing the code is less than 20% of a project's time. The rest is debugging the stuff, and getting it to conform to the original requirements. WindowsME is a bad example to compare against, because like a lot of MS software, it's written and released with as little testing as the customers will tolerate. I am more of the opinion that they (MS) test extensively and do it on purpose; why on earth would they need such an enormous 'campus' and the tens of thousands of people who work there unless they were deliberately planning just such inconveniences. Most of the world, if they just want to turn their computers on, do their work, and turn them off again, with as little dicking around as possible, should be on a Mac. PC's, since their invention back in the DOS 2.0 days, have always been for techno-weenies who like searching around for solutions to problems like VDX.386 stack dump 0011001011...(on and on for at least 300 more places), whatever the hell that means. And if you phone the MS technical support phone line, and wait in a four hour cue, they will tell you to 'reinstall Windows from scratch' and lose all your work or we can't tell you; that's source code. What I do know is that when I got my miraculous Windows 95 computer, it came with 1 year of technical support, and I used it, constantly, for hundreds and hundreds of hours, sometimes far into the night making me late for work the next day. Sometime I stayed home from work just to try to get my damn computer back up, reinstalling Windows four or five dozen times in the first year alone. When my tech support ran out, I bought two more years and needed all of it. When that ran out, I was paying either $3.99 a minute, or $49.95 per incident to get my damn machine working again, and used it literally dozens of times, even though it was just fine when I least shut it off or tried to put it to sleep. Then, we all 'had' to upgrade to Windows 98, which was ten times the nightmare 95 was. I screwed around with that for about a year and a half, and finally wound up going back to 95. Then I tried to install a genuine Windows 95 plug-and-play soundcard for the next six months until finally giving up and returning it to the store. I had to blow a gasket to explain to them why I had it for six months, but never actually got to use it, because it never actually worked. This, BTW, was a $700.00 Turtle Beach Pinnacle sound card for allegedly high end hard disk recording on the PC, which also never worked. Not once. Christmas 2001 I bought a Mac, and when I got it home, there was a little card that said 90 days of free technical support. I thought, 'those cheap bastards, this is going to cost me a fortune! I think I used the Mac technical support line twice, in the first week I owned it, and have never used it since. I have installed more ram, new video cards, USB printers and scanners, firewire CD burner, and everything has worked just perfectly right out of the box. Just like it should. I had one major crash, which was my fault, and that was it. The Windows 95/98 scam was the biggest hoax ever pulled in the history of commercial enterprize; if cars, or cameras, or toasters were that unreliable, there would be rioting in the streets, and the company would be out of business so fast it would make your head spin, with class action lawsuits up the ying-yang. Bill Gates and his cronies have managed to convinced us all that we were idiots, or didn't know what we were doing, and that it was all our fault that the machine didn't work, even though it was fine the last time you switched it on. Gates should be in jail for what he did, and continues to do; instead, he is the richest man in the world, and is lauded as some kind of giant American hero. Time will prove that he has perpetrated the largest scam in corporate history. And we have all been his victims. Get a Mac, you'll never look back; just ask Cotty. Never again, Cameron Hood -- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Gates should be in jail for what he did, and continues to do; instead, he is the richest man in the world, and is lauded as some kind of giant American hero. Time will prove that he has perpetrated the largest scam in corporate history. And we have all been his victims. Get a Mac, you'll never look back; just ask Cotty. Never again, Cameron Hood Frankly, I don't think it's that simple. Being a computer programmer (for fun) and having been a computer programmer (for wages), I am not sure it was all deliberate (I think some of it was to force people to buy technical support -- I've long had my suspicions about that). But I also think some has to be attributed to ineptitude and too many fingers in the pie (programming-wise). Murphy's Computer Law, if it can have a bug, it will. At least in MS products. Doe ;-) OTOH, I've had a lot less problems with 98, 2000, and Me that it sounds like you have had.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Doe ;-) OTOH, I've had a lot less problems with 98, 2000, and Me that it sounds like you have had. Fewer. Drat slipped up. Bugs everywhere. Anyway, fewer for those who care. Marnie aka Doe :-)
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 18:13:28 -0700, Cameron Hood wrote: PC's, since their invention back in the DOS 2.0 days Uhhh. Your history is a little foggy. PCs were invented before DOS 1.0, which was purchased from Seattle Computer Systems (I think) and was a knock off of CPM-86. around for solutions to problems like VDX.386 stack dump 0011001011... Uhhh. There weren't no .386 stuff when PCs or DOS was invented. The iAPX386 chip didn't come out until several years later. PCs used the 8088 chip which was an 8-bit external bus version of the 8086, which had a 16-bit external bus. Both had 16-bit internal busses. The rest of what you said I mostly agree with. TTYL, DougF KG4LMZ
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 21:31:34 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Frankly, I don't think it's that simple. Being a computer programmer (for fun) and having been a computer programmer (for wages), I am not sure it was all deliberate (I think some of it was to force people to buy technical support -- I've long had my suspicions about that). It was and is deliberate, but not in the sense of having a team of programmers that does nothing but foul up what the rest of the teams are doing. It is deliberate in the sense of intentionally choosing not to use best practices in the development cycle, from inception to coding to testing to delivery. It's not just M$, either. It's the bulk of the industry. TTYL, DougF KG4LMZ
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
It was and is deliberate, but not in the sense of having a team of programmers that does nothing but foul up what the rest of the teams are doing. It is deliberate in the sense of intentionally choosing not to use best practices in the development cycle, from inception to coding to testing to delivery. It's not just M$, either. It's the bulk of the industry. TTYL, DougF KG4LMZ Yeah, well, I've never supported that philosophy. You know a lot of shareware things on the Net are more bug-free than stuff one can buy off the shelves. And when I wrote my own programs for people I tried to make them 100% bug free. I didn't always succeed, but most of my bugs were minor. I prided myself on being much less buggy than stuff one would buy off the shelf. Even the last thing I did, which had a bug (an Access database for a non-profit -- the director thought it was a major bug but it wasn't), the bug was minor considering what COULD go wrong (like corrupted tables, etc. She has no idea). I have seen once, many long years ago, someone that wrote something deliberately buggy to sell technical support. Now this was a one person operation (software for public storage places -- renting the various sizes of spaces), and not a company, but still. It was sold to a lot of storage places. It happens. Marnie aka Doe Test Debug Test Debug Test Debug then Test again.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Hi! KW Writing the code is less than 20% of a project's time. The rest is KW debugging the stuff, and getting it to conform to the original KW requirements. WindowsME is a bad example to compare against, because KW like a lot of MS software, it's written and released with as little KW testing as the customers will tolerate. It is really too general a statement, don't you agree? There is of course 80-20 rule - 80% of work for 20% of time that you might be referring to. Let us also not compare operating system that has to, well, operate tens of kinds of peripherals with firmware for a camera, no matter how complex the darn camera is. KW If anyone made a camera (or car, or cell phone, or TV) with as high KW level of bugs in it as a typical windows release, they wouldn't be in KW business to make a follow-up model... That's perfectly correct. KW Adding stop-down metering to the *ist-D would have required KW re-validation of the camera firmware, just as manufacturing was about KW to ramp up. Not a clever move, given the small number of customers who KW would even notice. I beg to differ. If your code is written with proper modularity, and you have tested each module separately and found it bug free, and if you then integrated your modules and tested the system, then of course a change in one or two modules would require re-testing of these modules plus testing of the integrated firmware. You don't have to re-validate all of it. I have noticed that both Canon and Nikon have put out upgrades of their DSLR firmware. So it can be done, and it should be done and even more, the camera should be built in such a way that it can easily be done by the user, not the in the service center. KW I wouldn't rule out this feature turning up in a future firmware KW upgrade, though, once the development team have some time to play with. I sure hope you're right. As for M$oft - well, it is completely, I repeat, completely, different story - another time, another place, different crew of actors. Respectfully. Boris
Re: My own little *ist D review
That wasn't the reason why I abandoned Nikon for Pentax, but it was probably *one* of the reasons. Now Pentax have done it, and Canon and Minolta did it a long time ago, I have nowhere to go! You can always go LEICA, the final destination... Alan Chan http://www.pbase.com/wlachan _ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
In manual mode, the *ist D does stop down a K or M lens (or A/F/FA lenses that are not in A position). Only it does not meter. It is in Av mode (metered!) that a K or M lens (or A/F/FA lenses that are not in A position) does not get stopped down but stays wide open all the time (unless one unlocks the lens and turns it 15 degrees anti-clockwise, so that one gets stopping down and real aperture metering). Arnold Chris Brogden wrote: So if the Nikon D100 will stop down an MF lens in manual mode (no meter), then it's actually a step ahead of the *istD, which won't even stop down an MF Pentax K-mount lens. That's sad.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Chris Brogden wrote: So if the Nikon D100 will stop down an MF lens in manual mode (no meter), then it's actually a step ahead of the *istD, which won't even stop down an MF Pentax K-mount lens. That's sad. Yes, it is sad. In each case, the necessary engineering would have cost only a nominal amount of money. However, the whole point of its deliberate omission is to maximise sales of new lenses. Cynical, but now that the caring, sharing 1990s have gone, a new commercial reality means that screwing your existing customers is the way to go ... I was scared of this happening when Pentax first started messing with their entry-level bodies. First the MZ-50, which would only meter at full aperture but would still stop down a K/M series lens properly. Then the MZ-30 and 60, which won't even work with non-A lenses or with A-series lenses taken off the A setting. Then the FAJ lenses, which don't even have aperture rings. And now we have their first, and flagship, DSLR, which essentially works like a digital MZ-60. This completely and totally hoovers. Very well put, Chris. Canon users must be feeling some rumblings of unease, considering that Canon's new 18-35mm lens for the Digital Rebel won't fit on their 35mm bodies, but Pentax has a history of excellent body/lens compatibility, which they now seem to be doing their best to throw away. Pentax can't hope to compete with N/C in many ways, but they've still been able to carve out a niche for themselves by offering inexpensive entry-level bodies, high-quality lenses, and excellent compatibility. Once their compatibility decreases, and the lenses they produce (like Nikon's G-series) stop working on MF bodies, then they've just alientated a lot of people. They'll still make money selling cheap SLRs and ps cameras, but they'll simply be a lesser company than C/N instead of a different one. Exactly so. That's why the *ist and *ist D make me slightly sadder than I already was. ;-) John
Re: My own little *ist D review
Alan Chan wrote: whickersworld wrote: That wasn't the reason why I abandoned Nikon for Pentax, but it was probably *one* of the reasons. Now Pentax have done it, and Canon and Minolta did it a long time ago, I have nowhere to go! You can always go LEICA, the final destination... Well, I do use Leica M as well as Pentax ... but I still need an SLR system for those shots that are difficult or impracticable with a rangefinder camera - basically anything needing a telephoto 90mm, macro and architectural shooting and anything where I need to see the depth of field in the viewfinder. I do like the Carl Zeiss manual focus lenses for Contax but even that brand is offering two separate, totally incompatible 35mm film SLR systems! ;-) John
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Hello, Canon users must be feeling some rumblings of unease, considering that Canon's new 18-35mm lens for the Digital Rebel won't fit on their 35mm bodies Exactly so. No, not exactly so. Pentax and Nikon made a marketing decision to drop support for their oldest lenses. Canon made a marketing decision to deliberately drop support for some functions in the 300D. But their decision not to support the new wide-angle on the existing bodies is a technical one. That lens protrudes too deeply into the lens mount, and owuld interfere with the mirror. The 300D has a complex mirror mechanism that allow it to clear the rear-element of the new wide-angle. Cheers, Boz
Re: My own little *ist D review
William Robb wrote: Nikon was doing this sort of thing long before the F80. I don't recall which model, it may have been the N601 from the late 1980s which would not work at all with non AI lenses, though they would mount with no problem. The F401 (N4004) had this problem, but I didn't (and don't) see it as a major issue on entry-level cameras. The F80 (N80) is a different matter, because of its wider appeal to both new and existing Nikon customers, including advanced amateurs and pros looking for a second body to their F100 or F5. Heck, I really wanted to buy an F80 until I realised it would not meter with my AIS lenses! It was a big reason for my abandoning Nikon. If I am totally honest with myself, it was the final reason and the one that tipped the balance. I also wanted to return to using a rangefinder outfit so I sold all my Nikon gear, bought a small Leica M outfit and started to build a manual focus Pentax outfit. The problem is, I find that the market for my 35mm work is shrinking rapidly unless I supply scanned images, and that takes me time. It's far easier to shoot digital and my Olympus E-10 is now my main source of income. Nice camera, but not exactlyin the LX mould! If only the *ist D would meter with my K and M lenses I would buy one in an instant, and the knowledge that less than $20 has been saved on an $1800 camera by the omission of that feature causes me dyspepsia. Large format. Always 100% compatability. I use Nikkors, Schneiders and Fujinons on my 4x5. Large format is NICE! ;-) John
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
whickersworld [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chris Brogden wrote: So if the Nikon D100 will stop down an MF lens in manual mode (no meter), then it's actually a step ahead of the *istD, which won't even stop down an MF Pentax K-mount lens. That's sad. Yes, it is sad. In each case, the necessary engineering would have cost only a nominal amount of money. In the case of stop-down metering in the *ist-D I suspect that money wasn't as much of a factor as time. Even with the lack of the aperture simulator, stop-down metering certainly could have been implemented in software (using the DOF preview) but would have required more software coding, and the attendant debugging and hardware testing. Given the lateness of the DSLR project as a whole (just look at how much complaining there still is about having to wait) it was a predictable corner to cut simply to get the camera to market quicker. -- Mark Roberts Photography and writing www.robertstech.com
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
I have no doubt the market pressure had no influence on Pentax decision to cut the backwards mount compatibility. Mechanical aperture coupler and corresponding firmware were nothing new, P could have inherited the solutions from previous bodies just as they did with various other common SLR features. It was a deliberate, cynical move to force owners of old lenses to buy new ones. It was also carefully planned over several years, starting with the release of the MZ-50. The timing also denotes a good analysis of the Pentax owner psychology. Just remember how many on the list cried loudly about the backwards lens compatibility, yet how many of those placed their order for *ist d and now can't wait for the delivery. Only digital could manage to break their resistance and P knows that very well indeed. Servus, Alin Mark wrote: MR In the case of stop-down metering in the *ist-D I suspect that money MR wasn't as much of a factor as time. Even with the lack of the aperture MR simulator, stop-down metering certainly could have been implemented in MR software (using the DOF preview) but would have required more software MR coding, and the attendant debugging and hardware testing. Given the MR lateness of the DSLR project as a whole (just look at how much MR complaining there still is about having to wait) it was a predictable MR corner to cut simply to get the camera to market quicker.
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Chris, I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the Nikon D100 will NOT meter with older lenses. I'll ask my buddy who has one tomorrow. Bruce Wednesday, September 17, 2003, 6:28:19 PM, you wrote: CB So if the Nikon D100 will stop down an MF lens in manual mode (no meter), CB then it's actually a step ahead of the *istD, which won't even stop down CB an MF Pentax K-mount lens. That's sad. CB chris
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Alin Flaider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It was a deliberate, cynical move to force owners of old lenses to buy new ones. I don't buy this at all. The target demographic for the DSLR does not consist of a significant number of people who own old lenses. They certainly comprise a significant portion of this mailing list but not the public at large. Not even close. Quite right. It's funny how all the tirades seem to be aimed at the newer bodies, and not at the new FAJ lenses. These have even worse compatability problems with old bodies, but I don't hear them being described as a plot to force people to buy new bodies (even though this is a more defensible claim). Bodies made in the last twenty years have the ability to directly set the aperture of lenses made in that time, rather than relying on a manually-set limit on the lens itself (which is pretty much what the aperture ring is). But only now are we beginning to see bodies that depend on this ability. And, rather more significantly, we're beginning to see lenses that don't even have that preset ring. That's where the cost savings will be found, not on the high-end digital body. Perhaps it's because there isn't a really tempting new FA-J lens on the market, so nobody is bothered about the lack of compatibilty with older bodies. This is *far* worse than the old lens compatibility problem. If I put an FA-J lens on my MX I expect to have some issues. But what about my Super Program? I've lost Aperture Priority Manual modes; all I've got is shutter priority and full program. The same is true for any camera that requires a lens aperture ring to specify the aperture; That would be almost every body Pentax have made. Certainly the only camera in my collection that could use such a lens without loss of functionality is my PZ-1p (and, of course, the *ist-D when it arrives). That excludes my MZ-S, a recent (and expensive) body. So which bodies *can* use the FA-J lenses?
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
. . . Canon made a marketing decision to deliberately drop support for some functions in the 300D. But their decision not to support the new wide-angle on the existing bodies is a technical one. That lens protrudes too deeply into the lens mount, and owuld interfere with the mirror. The 300D has a complex mirror mechanism that allow it to clear the rear-element of the new wide-angle. Is that true? Or does it just have a smaller mirror?
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Which bodies can use the FA-J lenses in aperture priority (and/or manual)? Wouldn't the cameras that control everything from the body (MZ-30? as an example) be able to use them? Yes. But I haven't been keeping up to date - which are these? Let's start with the PZ-1p *ist-D. Any others? MZ-30? *ist?
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
John Francis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alin Flaider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It was a deliberate, cynical move to force owners of old lenses to buy new ones. I don't buy this at all. The target demographic for the DSLR does not consist of a significant number of people who own old lenses. They certainly comprise a significant portion of this mailing list but not the public at large. Not even close. Quite right. It's funny how all the tirades seem to be aimed at the newer bodies, and not at the new FAJ lenses. Perhaps that's because the new camera bodies are actually *desirable*, unlike the J lenses? g Seriously, the J lenses are too slow (f/3.5 or f/4.0) to be of interest to me unless they have some other truly outstanding characteristic, which they don't. Their low weight might be appealing for a lightweight travel kit, but they're too large - I take an M-series prime when space is at a premium. Marketing-wise, I think that Pentax got it right for the most part with the J lenses: Their limitations won't bother the people who want this kind of lens. The people who are bothered by the lack of the aperture ring are people who, with a few exceptions, wouldn't want one of these lenses in the first place. With the cameras it's a different story. The DSLR is a highly desirable, top-of-the-line item. Even the film *ist is a great mid-level camera. For someone with mostly modern lenses it's a worthy successor to the 5n - fits nicely below the MZ-S and the entry-level cameras. Heck, I even considered one as a replacement for the ageing MX because of its small size and low weight. (Problem is, my lightweight kit usually consists of an MX and either an M-28/3.5 or M-50/1.4, neither of which will work with the *ist. I'm undoubtedly an oddball exception in the grand scheme of things!) Anyway, since the cameras appeal to a wider audience than the lenses they are bound to attract more attention, scrutiny and criticism. -- Mark Roberts Photography and writing www.robertstech.com
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
John wrote: JF It's funny how all the tirades seem to be aimed at the newer JF bodies, and not at the new FAJ lenses. Actually they had their share (don't know if you were here by then). People still find it hard to believe FAJ is the future - maybe because the first incarnations are cheap consumer grade. But it's obvious Pentax stripped the aperture ring for good. We'll see FA/FA* around for a while, not necessarily to support classic bodies like MZ-S and MZ-5n, but simply because Pentax was always slow to replace their lens line. Servus, Alin
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, John Francis wrote: Which bodies can use the FA-J lenses in aperture priority (and/or manual)? Wouldn't the cameras that control everything from the body (MZ-30? as an example) be able to use them? Yes. But I haven't been keeping up to date - which are these? Let's start with the PZ-1p *ist-D. Any others? MZ-30? *ist? MZ-50, and perhaps MZ-6 too, I think they have similar (great) interface. Kostas
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
Makes sense. Mark Roberts wrote: In the case of stop-down metering in the *ist-D I suspect that money wasn't as much of a factor as time. Even with the lack of the aperture simulator, stop-down metering certainly could have been implemented in software (using the DOF preview) but would have required more software coding, and the attendant debugging and hardware testing. Given the lateness of the DSLR project as a whole (just look at how much complaining there still is about having to wait) it was a predictable corner to cut simply to get the camera to market quicker. -- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On 18 Sep 2003 at 14:07, John Francis wrote: Quite right. It's funny how all the tirades seem to be aimed at the newer bodies, and not at the new FAJ lenses. These have even worse compatability problems with old bodies, but I don't hear them being described as a plot to force people to buy new bodies (even though this is a more defensible claim). Isn't it more the point that there are plenty of other lenses that you can use if the FAJ option doesn't appeal. In the case of Pentax digital cameras there is one choice (well sort of) and it is crippled (seemingly unnecessarily). Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/ Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
Re: My own little *ist D review (fwd)
On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, whickersworld wrote: Once their compatibility decreases, and the lenses they produce (like Nikon's G-series) stop working on MF bodies, then they've just alientated a lot of people. They'll still make money selling cheap SLRs and ps cameras, but they'll simply be a lesser company than C/N instead of a different one. Exactly so. That's why the *ist and *ist D make me slightly sadder than I already was. Actually, the *ist will work fine with MF lenses. It's the entry-level bodies with the crippled mount, the dSLR with the crippled mount, and--worst of all--the FAJ lenses with no aperture ring that really worry me. chris
My own little *ist D review
As reviews of the *ist D are flying in here is my own little contribution. I have been able to play with the *ist D pre-production model serial number 5645034 last weekend. I helped Boz in taking pictures for his comparison with the Canon 10D (see his review at http://kmp.bdimitrov.de/bodies/digital/review.html), and I did my own little experiments, especially some resolution test. See some of my test shots taken with the 43 Lmited and the FA-J 18-35/f4-5.6 at http://www.arnoldstark.de/bilder/030914_istD_testtafellinien.jpg. The area displayed is from the image center. Its size on the test chart is 10x7 centimeters while the whole test chart is 92x62 centimeters and fills the whole frame. The shots taken with the 43 Limitzed were taken at a distance of 188cm, i.e. the magnification was 1:42.7. The shots shown are the best ones from a series of manually (focus bracketing) as well as automatically focused shots (The AF of the *ist D sometimes snaps at different positions.). From the most narrow line pairs being resoved, I measured the resolution to be 50 line pairs per millimeter for both lenses at f8. This value is not bad but well below the resoving power of the 43 Limited (I have measured that the 43 limited can resolve more than 80 line pairs per millimeter on Agfapan25.). This is no surprise: To test the limits of the resoving power of this lens, one would need a sensor with 4 times as many pixels. As you can see, the images taken with the camera settings for saturation, sharpness and contrast each set to +1, are more pleasing than those taken at 0 Now, beyond resolution, this is what I like about the *ist D: - small yet rigid body that is easy to hold - easy to understand controls most of which are easy to operate, too - the menu is easy to understand, and selecting user functions is easy, too. - I manged to figure out all I needed and wanted WITHOUT manual. - relatively large and bright viewfinder with lots of information which can be well seen. - compatibilty with older flashes, A and F lenses. - instant image control (which is still new to me). - very good histogram and full information about picture when pressing the info button. - lots of user functions. - image quality sufficient for computer use and prints up to 20cm x 30 cm. - there still is more than enough reason for using my film cameras for big prints and slides. - the focusing noise actually does not disturb me. I can get used to: - having to change the settings for saturation, sharpness and contrast away from the standard settings - having to selecet the aperture from the body. - operating the 4-way/OK controller which needs a little practise as it is just a little bit too small. - plastic outer body on sturdy steel chassis. - battery consumption seems to be normal for a digital SLR but is of course way beyond what I know from film cameras... Things that are not so nice: - AF is fast but not always accurate on this particular pre-production model. - crippled k-mount: - battery compartment door is difficult to close and looks like it will have to be replaced at some time. On the topic of compatibilty with K- and M lenses I again confirm that in manual mode, a K or M lens (as well as a A/F/FA lens not in A position) would stop down, but unfortunately no metering is available. However, as one can judge the image right after taking it, one can take a test shot, judge it, adjust aperture and shutter speed and just take another (and yet another) picture -at least with subjects and lighting conditions that don't change.In AV mode, with K and M lenses (as well as with A/F/FA lenses not in A position), one gets operation wide-open, only. The aperture simply will not stop down to the value selected on the aperture ring, but it will stay wide open all the time, not only when metering but also when DOF previewing as well as during exposure. The metering is correct for wide open. To have the lens stop down to the selected value in AV mode, one needs to unlock the lens and turn it 15 degrees anti-clockwise. The aperture levers of camera and lens disengage so that the diaphragm stops down. In AV mode, one can thus have real aperture metering, even with exposure lock (With srew mount and manual aperture lenses one always gets this withiout having to unlock the lens). I have tried this several time, and it works well enough. However, one must take care that the lens stays in the right position. Others have suggested a solution for this problem. Will I eventually buy the *ist D? Yes! Unless Pentax soon presents a follow-up model with better k-mount compatibility (it would be sufficient not to switch the meter ON when DOF previewing in manual and/or AV mode) Arnold
Re: My own little *ist D review
thanks. i had a look at the center where you would look to see the highest resolution and you can see some JPEG compression artifacts, so that is why i asked. Herb - Original Message - From: Arnold Stark [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2003 7:52 AM Subject: Re: My own little *ist D review Actually, the image at http://www.arnoldstark.de/bilder/030914_istD_testtafellinien.jpg. is not compressed but stored at the maximum size available in JPEG. I believe that in this case there are no JPEG artifacts. However, I can send a portion off the TIFF original later
Re: My own little *ist D review
No. Arnold This would really be a very drastic way to have the *ist D meter with K and M lenses at alle apertures. However, it would only work in Av mode. In manual mode the meter would still be OFF. And you would have to use your crippled lenses with real aperture metering, only, on your film bodies, too. Can you explain exactly why it would not work in manual mode? Surely you set the camera to a certain shutter speed via the main dial, and the lens to the aperture, and the scale inside the viewfinder shows you whether you are underexposing, right on, or over-exposing, no? Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=| www.macads.co.uk/snaps _ Free UK Mac Ads www.macads.co.uk
Re: My own little *ist D review
This would really be a very drastic way to have the *ist D meter with K and M lenses at alle apertures. However, it would only work in Av mode. In manual mode the meter would still be OFF. And you would have to use your crippled lenses with real aperture metering, only, on your film bodies, too. Can you explain exactly why it would not work in manual mode? Surely you set the camera to a certain shutter speed via the main dial, and the lens to the aperture, and the scale inside the viewfinder shows you whether you are underexposing, right on, or over-exposing, no? No. Arnold No??? Why not? Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=| www.macads.co.uk/snaps _ Free UK Mac Ads www.macads.co.uk
Re: My own little *ist D review
Cotty schrieb: No??? Why not? Well, in maual mode, the *ist D simply does not meter with any lens that is not set to A position. Why they chose tthe *ist D to behave like this, only the Pentax engineers would be able to explain. Arnold
Re: My own little *ist D review
On 17/9/03, [EMAIL PROTECTED] disgorged: Cotty schrieb: No??? Why not? Well, in maual mode, the *ist D simply does not meter with any lens that is not set to A position. Why they chose tthe *ist D to behave like this, only the Pentax engineers would be able to explain. Arnold You're kidding. dawning realisation Now I see why folk are upset. Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=| www.macads.co.uk/snaps _ Free UK Mac Ads www.macads.co.uk
Re: My own little *ist D review
Cotty wrote: You're kidding. dawning realisation Now I see why folk are upset. Now Pentax users know *exactly* how Nikon users felt when the F80 (N80) was introduced, with its deliberately designed inability to meter with pre-autofocus Nikkors. That wasn't the reason why I abandoned Nikon for Pentax, but it was probably *one* of the reasons. Now Pentax have done it, and Canon and Minolta did it a long time ago, I have nowhere to go! :-( John
