As for brand vs brand, I’m not surprised at some of the postings, it’s endemic to the Internet in just about any arena you can imagine (look at Apple vs Microsoft, for example). However, many such posters are, really, children. Nikon, Canon, and Pentax all make good equipment and that’s all any of us need, the rest is up to the eye taking the shot. No camera in the world can make up for a bad photographer and a great photographer can work wonders with the lowliest point and shoot.

What that doesn’t mean, for sure, is that Nikon is the absolut best camera because I keep seeing other camera brands being sold.

Pentax me super, mz5n

Minolta x300, A2 (Sony) A100

Olympus Om2sp, Om40

Canon AE1P

And the last one I tried was Nikon. I doubt very much I’ll ever change again.

That should say something right ?

The BIG question here is not “How can Pentax do it?” but “HOW LONG can Pentax do it ?”

I have a D90. I love it, and I’m consistantly pleased by what I’m able to do with it. The most impressive thing to me is how I can shoot at mind-boggling ISOs and still have excellent print quality. Notice I said “PRINT” quality? Too many people get caught up in how their camera’s images look 100% on screen. Who cares? Pictures are for printing, damn it! When was the last time you “feature geeks” tried printing something?

My D70s looked FANTASTIC printing 8×12, my D90 looks even better and can do so at even higher ISOs thanks to less noise and higher resolution… BUT I HARDLY EVER PRINT THAT BIG! Seriously – how often are you printing 8×12 or larger? If a 6mp D70s can do it, why is everyone so bothered about a Pentax MF system? The pros who NEED it will buy it, the rest of us who never print posters will keep shooting 35mm type cameras. Why are we all arguing? Don’t tell me about the need to crop… if you crop that much you need a longer lens and some composition skills.

My love for my Nikon stuff hasn’t got me putting down other manufacturers… I think competition improves the breed and I agree with those who clearly point out that Nikon needs to pull up its socks in the lens department. I just may go get some Pentax 645 primes and an adapter for my F-mount Nikon and see what happens!

I had to chuckle at all the rabid bashers of this camera. If it was called Nikon MX they’d be gooing over it like a dribbling baby and saying “Look what Nikon can do”!!

Funny, then, how it’s also a ‘sweet deal’ for ‘old timers’ reluctant to put up with digital.

“pentax sells crappy cameras today. it’d rather buy a sony now than a pentax.”

I am so glad I get my information from places like the British Journal of Photography, who directly compared Pentax to Sony. No, Sony didn’t win.

Thankfully in the real world the Nikon shooters I know always looks with great interest at my gear and want to try it out for themselves. (This includes at least one pro). Then we get back to taking pictures. Which is what it should be all about.

They make nice images, those, …problem there being a rather big gulf between those and the kind of stuff I’d *really* want to be shooting with. (Nikon seems to be working on this, with an affordable normal that’ll function with those, ) But the numbers didn’t work out, that’s all.

Contrary to what some seem to imagine, most Pentaxians chose the brand for simple reasons: those being love of the glass and its qualities, alongside very practical evaluations of the system. I used to shoot the 6×7 way back when, …in my hands, a huge, cantankerous thing that made me think “It’s a Spotmatic for Andre the Giant.” But it made me loo *soo* good. So I have a love of the glass. Also, for a lot of practical reasons, Pentax just had the stuff. Showed a lot of design thinking that’s very compatible with the old school. Weather seals, so you can treat the camera like you always treated a camera, instead of like an expensive computer anyway….Not making you pay two grand to have that and a PC socket… Shows some respect for the photographer, that. Not everyone who takes their photography seriously needs the biggest and fastest pricey beastie out there.

Sure, a lot of people do shoot Nikon, and now Canon, for the brand name. There certainly are a lot of Nikon types who come off kind of like weenies who figure anything with that name on it outclasses anything with another…. And that this applies to the respective photographers, too, (I think Canon EOS shooters kind of inherited a chip on their shoulder about that, and Nikonian pride was hurt by the brand lagging behind for a lot of years) ….. but actually, most Pentax folk are pretty practical about it all.

I think most good photographers are, too. Makes no sense to feel somehow diminished if another brand comes out with something nice. That’s a *sure* sign hot air is involved.

I really think that in coming times, it’s not the Canon community, not the Nikon community, not the Pentax community, but the *photo* community that’s kind of got to stick together *toward* the companies who make the stuff we need. Cause, really, with the money-men in a panic, the companies are liable to do anything. If they think they *can* cut corners and have an item defended blindly by an Internet following, well, as we’ve seen, corporate types will probably in fact do that.

Probably it’s pretty cheap to set people to posting on the Internet about how this or that company is inexorably doomed if they don’t put half-*ahemed* video in a still camera…But that’s not necessarily what’s real, you know?

One of my best students ever, in fact, loves a D40. And in a sense, great that it can’t meter with a lot of lenses, he had to learn the handheld type. Use yours well.