Okay, so we've covered the High Priced
spreads, Nikon and Canon, let's move on to something more reasonable.
Pentax.
Yes, I know you've never heard of it
and you don't trust things which you've never heard of and if it
isn't advertised on TV or used by top professionals then it can't be
any good so why bother?
Cause dollar for dollar your money buys
twice as much when you are buying Pentax.
The REAL problem with both Nikon and
Canon is not the cost of the camera body which is only slightly
higher than Pentax, it's the cost of the glass.
Now any serious photographer will tell
you that the body is the least important part of a camera system.
It's the glass.
And I agree completely and Nikon and
Canon make some pretty darned good glass. Just mosey on over to Art
Wolfe's site and have a look at what he packs in his camera bag.
“Digital technology has far surpassed
what film was ever capable of and has completely changed the game for
what one can shoot in the field.”
That's a quote from the Imperial
Omnipotent Stomper himself. So don't whine about not-as-good-as-film
and start thinking digital.
Art says that the Canon 200-400¼ L IS
USM is his workhorse lens and it only costs $10,990 dollars which is
more than I paid for my first real car. Nikon offers a 200-400 F4 VR
for $6,996.95 but it doesn't have the built-in 1.4x extender.
My that's a lot on numbers and I didn't
win the Powerball so maybe I should look elsewhere?
Pentax offers a 150-450 F4 which is a
very similar range for...$1.760.11, now that's a lot of extra Lotto
tickets you can buy!
And if you aren't too rigid you can buy
a Sigma, no it isn't a genuine, official, box-top prize Pentax lens,
but Sigma is one of the top independent producers of fine optics, and
their Bigma is the Grand-Forking-Daddy of long reach lenses with a
current range of 150-600 F5-6.3 in two flavors Sports and
Contemporary. Even the earlier model sported a 150-500 range and if
you go back one more notch you can get a 50-500 and...wait for
it...it's coming soon...astounding..tremendous. Amazing price of $
989 for the Contemporary and $1499 for the Sport and again that's a
lot of extra Lotto tickets.
But let's get back to basics before you
can get that amazing lens you have to have something to mount it on.
The camera body, remember?
So let's take a look.
Now I have been very upfront about my
preference for a camera which uses double A batteries. You can't find
a place on earth where there aren't double As and when you talk about
a camera which runs on batteries you are talking about a time when
those batteries go flat and if you are using a camera with
rechargeable batteries that have a special configuration and can only
use those expensive brand name batteries, then you are out of luck.
Okay, disclaimer, the new batteries are
much more user friendly than the old Ni-cads. With the old Ni-cad
batteries, if you didn't completely discharge them they developed a
memory and each time you short charged them they had less and less
storage capacity. Bad, very bad.
But the pointy-heads realized that this
was not a good thing and that out in cameraland where the real people
lived and bought cameras and spent untold thousands on cameras and
had their batteries go flat or lose so much storage that they were
useless, so they developed the new batters based on the Li-ion
technology which allows a top up and so you can do a short charge and
not lose your capacity so that your camera didn't develop early-onset
Alzcameras and you could shoot with confidence even when that once in
a lifetime image is at stake and so buying a camera with a
rechargeable battery is not the high-risk thing it was when digital
first came on the scene,
But I still think having a camera which
can be recharged with dime store batteries is a really, really good
thing.
So when I started looking for a camera
I found the Pentax K-x which is a 12 megapixel camera, (You remember
that that is a good number and still being used on top of the line
cameras being rolled out this very day with price-tags that would
make Donald Thump swallow his wig and choke and wouldn't that be
lucky but someone else already won the Powerball so they used up all
of the luck and now we will have to endure another year of political
speeches full of bad similes and false smiles winch are not the same
as similes but have the same effect when they are bad and maybe even
a busted metaphor or two but with the anti-immigration spirit running
so strong they might not even use metaphors because they grant
wordizanship without using like or as and unrestricted acceptance is
just not something they are prepared to do so that won't happen and
now so the Mop that Roared will keep on like March coming in like a
lion and that is probably a simile which is okay cause it is
qualified with like or as and doesn't give away anything without
proper authority.), and uses four double As for power.
I've lived with my little K-x for over
a year now and liked it so much that when the Long Sufferin wanted a
camera upgrade I got her one and now we have matching K-xs and isn't
that just special?
So if you are like me and think having
double A power is a good thing then you can find a K-x for $168 at
KEH, top flight reputation, great customer service and well respected
and they have a repair shop if anything ever goes wrong with the new
baby. Even cheaper if you go to the Pentax Forum, $125 and that's
where I found the Long Sufferin's camera.
But let's say that you aren't as
fixated as I am on double A power.
There's the K-r which is also a twelve
megapixel camera, uses both double A and the dreaded rechargeable
battery and I just saw one for $140 on the Pentax forum.
Still not sold okay let's move up to
Nikon/Canon price things. For $218-228 you can get a Pentax K30 which
is really an uptown camera. It has a 16.6 megapixel sensor, weather
sealed body, (Did you know that it rains in Oregon?), and for me it
isn't as small as some of the other brands.
Now size is an important thing if you
are a pro football player or a MMA contender, but in a camera it
isn't always great. All those dials and switches make getting the
right picture controls easier and they come in handy if you have set
your shot and suddenly the weather changes, (Did you know it rains in
Oregon), but in a small body they can be like typing on a Blackberry
keyboard, better in theory than in practice. And when it comes to
hanging on to the camera a beefier body gives you more to clutch,
like in a crowd or at a fair or when you are freezing your ass off at
the Polar Bear plunge and wondering why you thought this was such a
good idea and if anyone you know has seen you so that if you snuck
out would they rat on you the next time you were at one of the Museum
openings?
So maybe you think it is worth giving
Pentax a look?
This is a lot like being married, it
doesn't matter so much where you look it matters whether the Long
Sufferin catches you. Look well and chose wisely.
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