Ken Norton wrote:
> No twist-n-tilt LCD, no built-in image-stabilization,
Yup, yup
> same tired interface...
>
Nope. What looks old and tired to pundits and non-users feels familiar
comfortable and efficient to long time users. It's worth a great deal to
be able to upgrade to a new model and have only a slight handling and
menu learning experience. Especially if the old model is kept as
back-up. Awkward though they may feel to others, or may have felt to me,
years ago, my fingers know all by themselves where everything is and I
know where to find the couple of things I actually use in the menus.
Didn't I hear some corn-fed guy grumping when the E-3 came out about the
changes in the interface from the E-1? ;-)
> Oh, but look at ALL those pixels!!!!
>
:-)
> Just another new model with some techno-whizbang (to quote Chuck) to convince
> the weak among us that it is the magic bullet needed to transform us from
> hohum photographers into Ansel Adams reincarnate.
>
Certainly a big factor. I'm a little leery, though, of the "A great
photographer will make great images with any camera. A poor one won't
make a good image with the best equipment." True enough, within limits.
But a great photographer will find it easier to make great images with
decent equipment and be able to capture more of them.
As to the other end ... My ex sister-in-law went to Europe for a summer
with an Instamatic. She didn't have anything developed until she got
back - and ended up with a big stack of fuzzy pics. She's a bit of an
artist, so a smallish subset would have been rather nice, based on
subject and composition. A larger subset would have been valuable as
mementos of the trip before she almost lost her life and its direction
was changed forever. A better camera would have made many better images.
I believe that up to a point, better equipment makes for better images,
even from the great unwashed. Does that make them better photographers?
I dunno.
When I started dating a woman some years ago, I sat, stayed interested
and commented as she showed me all her travel slides. [Which went a long
way toward moving the relationship forward, I think. :-) ] It was
quite amazing. She was a first rate selector of subject, light, angle,
composition, etc. Had she been a different person, I could easily see
some of her slides turning up as calendar images or on gallery walls.
She had one of the best shots of the Potala Palace in Lhasa that I've
ever seen. Some of her shots of Greece were to die for.
If she had taken all these shots with some P&S piece of junk, the poor
technical quality would have overwhelmed the other god qualities. But
somehow, probably through the advice of a friend, she had a match needle
Pentax with 50mm lens that never was taken off, and created some real art.
The weird thing was - she didn't recognize herself how much better her
images were than the snaps of her friends. When we went to Costa Rica,
she was happy to leave the picture taking to me, the one with all the
technical knowledge and equipment. I wonder though. I'll bet if she'd
done the photography the overall level might have been poorer and shots
that required WA, macro or tele would have been missing. But I suspect
the few best would have been better than mine.
We can sit in our ivory towers, looking down on the great unwashed who
don't know an f-stop from a door-stop. But the advent of many recent
techno-wonders has meant that millions of people have better images of
their family, friends, pets, vacations and so on as a result.
Being condescending about those improvements doesn't reflect well any of
us who do so.
> At the end of the day, it's still no more than a light-tight box with a
> sensor.
>
> The M9, on the other hand....
>
Is a light tight box with a sensor system, albeit beautifully made and
really expensive.
Moose
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