At 12:14 PM 10/25/2005, Ag wrote:
><snip>
>The investment in the 4/3 format is nice for this interim period
>until full-frame 35mm (or even 645) is affordable. No, I don't
>consider $3,000 for a camera body (5D) with a 24month usage
>cycle to be affordable. We're no longer comparing digital to
>film costs, but digital to digital costs. I can justify $1,000
>per year in DSLR purchases, but taking perfectly usable gear and
>trading it off for a much more expensive (bigger boat, faster
>car) camera just isn't wise. My depreciation cycle on equipment
>is either three or five years depending on the equipment.
>Anytime my ownership period is shorter than that period it costs
>me too much money.
Fortunately I don't have to be a "practical photographer" and
justify my gear by making money with it. In fact, I loose money on
any camera gear I buy. The real value is not monetary for me, but
along the lines: I ain't getting younger and this brings a certain
pleasure. It's a quality thing versus quantity. Although I did give
up a good chunk of OM film gear to pay for the new puppy.
I did shoot my daughters wedding this weekend, and there were
definite shots I never could have made with the E-1. The difference
was not in the 5 versus 12 mega-pixels, but in the performance
of the cameras, auto-focus in lower light, not failing under lights
with dimmers, being able to go to high iso on occasion for candid
shots, IS for handheld shots. The E-1 just does not have the kind
of performance to be as flexible. Under controlled situations where
all shots can be 100iso, the E-1 is fine. It was the dismal failure I
experienced during a previous wedding (candid shots) using the
E-1 that caused me to upgrade. Since I was paying for my daughters
wedding, and I didn't want the camera system to fail on me,
in the over all scheme of things, the borg 5D was a big win. I didn't
want to have to work around the E-1's limitations. Since I don't
do this kind of photography for a living, I needed all the help I could
get. I could have easily spent the money to pay a photographer,
but the results would not have been the same. My daughter is
very happy so far. The shots are not professional, lot's of mistakes,
but the emotions were captured. So the big wins for me were,
the flash, the IS, the higher ISO/lower noise performance, and the
intimacy I was able to create as the photographer.
I work with engineers every day, and I have to be practical to
the hilt and justify rationally everything I/we do, spend money on,
or spend time on. I do agree that there are tangible reasons
for making choices in gear. And I think Ag probably has the
best handle of any one I know on practical photography. I'm sure
he can do things with less than I can with any kind of gear.
Who else can turn a 100/2.8 distorted silver nose and come out
with a stunning photo, working with the so-called limited performance?
Me, I'm not in that league, for sure, I just want to have some fun.
The borg 5D is the first reasonably priced full frame toy. Whether
I trade off my E-1 is another question. And I believe you can even
put OM lenses on it, with no crop factor. Something Oly abandoned.
But then, I don't have the OM lens arsenal I once had.
As for jpegs, even with the E-1 I was mostly shooting raw and converting
after the fact. The workflow backend can definitely be a time sink. At
the moment I'm using the camera raw conversion in CS2. If I were
in volume production, this might not be a good choice. The 5D has
a clean function you can initiate. I'll report back if I have any + or -
experiences with it, the borg version of "chunk-o-caster". Raw files
on E-1 are 10.5mb for 5mp, and the 5D 12.8mp are 12-14mb.
Wayne
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