At 15:24 12/2/01, George S. wrote:
I took the original discussion of 'student' cameras to mean something
other than to include $600 bodies. I thought we were talking more along
the lines of a $100 K-1000 or $75 OM-10 for a beginner to learn the basics
on. I'm taking the 'student' tag seriously- someone in say, a freshman
High School photography class. I may be wrong, but I feel a 'student'
doesn't have $600 to sink into just a body.
Yes, I wouldn't argue that . . . for most young H.S. students. It was a
correction to the posting guessing the F3a doesn't have an AE mode (it does).
What would be suitable depends on seriousness and ability level; much like
musical instruments. I was thinking about $100-$200 for a used body. A
fully functional FE2 with "bargain" cosmetics could fall into this range
with some knowledgeable searching (if the H.S. student can be convinced
appearance isn't all-important). I wouldn't recommend an OM-10 for a
student studying exposure. An OM-PC would be better, or an
OM-1[n]/2[n]. They allow direct manual control. A 50/1.8 (MC) would work
well as a first lens. Basic flash would be a Vivitar 283 or Sunpak 383;
inexpensive used and while packing plenty of GN. Halfway through H.S. I
bought a used a Yashica J-5 with 50/1.2 Yashinon, never-ready case and some
equivalent of a Vivitar 283. Don't remember what it cost, but it couldn't
have been much because I didn't have much (had to work for *all* of it at a
real job outside the household; what a concept).
A pro friend of mine uses a battery of Pent*x K bodies (some of them
battered too). His wife uses an FE2 plus one other Nikon body. There are
plenty of pros still using manual focus bodies. It depends on the type of
pro work being done and desire/need for direct control.
You and I may appreciate the FM3a (which I do), but the slow sales tells
me the rest of the population doesn't share our love of manual focus
cameras. This certainly doesn't bode well for our hopes of a new Olympus
body, or re-tooling an old one, does it? The public is increasingly being
shown 'the latest' AF SLRs, P&S, and digital bodies and being told 'this
is what you need'. Nobody, Nikon included, is advertsiing a line of manual
focus cameras. Sad situation, I agree.
FM2n sales supposedly aren't as slow; it's why the note I read about FM3a
sales surprised me.
My cynical opinion:
The "this is what you need" strategy has been going on for decades, but it
is taking a new direction. Camera makers have found the product life
trajectories and business models for personal computers and their
software. They don't want camera systems to be "durable goods." It won't
be long before ads appear touting Wunderbrick 3.1, 7.0 and '02-SE. I'm
surprised they haven't created flash programming capabilities for selling
updated matrix focusing and metering firmware. [We didn't get it quite
right to begin with; thanks for beta-testing it; please buy the version
upgrade with all the irritating glitches fixed.] The goal is shortening
time between generations (read: model lifespan). Development work is done
on two or three product generations simultaneously. About 1/2 to 1/3 way
through the product develeopment cycle creating the next generation,
another team starts on the generation to follow that one.
A few early entrants into the digital race were thinking they could create
image download system software drivers once. A number of consumer models
designed under Win-95/98 were obsoleted by new operating systems
incompatible with the original Win-95/98 drivers. The cameras still work
but they're useless with PC's running current operating systems. The
camera maker(s) will not support them with new drivers because the models
are no longer in production! Buying a new computer can obsolete a
perfectly good digital camera! Several hundred $$$ new, a few years later
it suddenly has the same resale value as a 126 film camera. Yet one more
issue to wrestle with when the itch for digital twitches (think about the
entire system; not just the camera).
Now I'm ranting . . .
I think I'll go burn a few more frames of Kodachrome or Tri-X in my Contax
IIIa with its advanced neural network exposure program and USF
focusing. Obsoleted by the SLR prisms, lever wind, and coupled TTL
metering, it still works as new after 50 years, and it doesn't care what
operating system my computer has (or whether I even have one).
-- John
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