Rating the new DSLRs

David J. Littleboy wrote:
"Wilba" wrote:
Pete D wrote:

Why would anything be more important than image quality?

Because a crap shot with fabulous IQ is still a crap shot?

Exactly! If all you are capable of taking is poor photos, then all
you need is a P&S.

That's why P&S types don't understand how important IQ is.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

David,

My need is different - sometimes it's better to get /an/ image of an event
than no image at all. Of course, I try to maximise IQ when I can, but it
is not the be all and end-all for my photography.

Cheers,
David

David J. Littleboy wrote:
Wilba wrote:
Pete D wrote:

Why would anything be more important than image quality?

Because a crap shot with fabulous IQ is still a crap shot?

Exactly! If all you are capable of taking is poor photos, then all you
need is a P&S.

Ah, I think you're confusing me with someone else (I'm not fighting that
war).

That's why P&S types don't understand how important IQ is.

OK, if you insist, but how does that support your claim that IQ is always
and for everyone more important than ergonomics?

"Wilba" wrote in message
...
Pete D wrote:
Wilba wrote:
Chris Malcolm wrote:
Wilba wrote:
David J. Littleboy wrote:
Wilba wrote:
David J. Littleboy wrote:

Anyway, ergonomics is way overrated. It's the image quality that
matters when one is showing/delivering prints.

That makes as much sense to me as this:

Anyway, image quality is way overrated. It's the ergonomics that
matters when one is capturing images.

It's not ergonomics that helps you get the hard shot, but things like
AF
performance, burst rate speed, high ISO performance.

That is relevant to shots that require a high performance camera, but
I'm
not referring to one particular narrow field.

And a user capable of thinking ahead. Weegee got a lot more great
shots
than any of us ever will: with a 4x5 speed graphic. To say nothing of
HCB
with his Leicas.

Right. They had tools that worked for them, that enabled them to do
what
they wanted to do. That's what ergonomics means.

That may be what ergonomics means, but it's not what the old pioneers
of photography had. They found out what they could do, and under what
conditions, with what they had, which was a far more limited range of
possibilities, with far poorer ergonomics, than is available to us
today. They then sought opportunities to make good photographs with
what they had. My camera kit gives me enormously more photographic
opportunities than Ansel Adams had with his, and far more
ergonomically. But he was far more capable than I of seeing the
opportunities available to him and exploiting them.

And when one is setting up studio lights, or using a tripod,
ergonomics
doesn't make a lot of difference.

Yes, we can all find niches that support a particular point of view.
But you
can't prove that for all photographers, in all situations, IQ is more
important the ergonomics.

Both photographic and psychological IQ.

Ansel Adams could have written a book about how to use a view
camera. There are posters here whose photographic knowledge would be
greatly improved if they read the manual that came in the box with the
camera.

Yeah ... OK. What does that tell us about the question - is image
quality more important than ergonomics for every photographer in every
photographic situations?

Why would anything be more important than image quality?

Because a crap shot with fabulous IQ is still a crap shot?

I will always assume that the shot is framed exactly as you are wanting, why
would you press the shutter otherwise. Damn it man lots of people use the
big Canons and the ergonomics are seriously flawed yet we seem to get around
that and take photos with staggeringly good IQ.

"David J Taylor"
wrote in message .uk...
David J. Littleboy wrote:
"Wilba" wrote:
Pete D wrote:

Why would anything be more important than image quality?

Because a crap shot with fabulous IQ is still a crap shot?

Exactly! If all you are capable of taking is poor photos, then all
you need is a P&S.

That's why P&S types don't understand how important IQ is.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

David,

My need is different - sometimes it's better to get /an/ image of an event
than no image at all. Of course, I try to maximise IQ when I can, but it
is not the be all and end-all for my photography.

Cheers,
David
"When you can"???? Every bloody time I would say, why would you try for less
even under the most difficult conditions you will still try for the best IQ
under those shooting conditions, to do less you may as well pull out your
bloody crayons and hold them by sticking them up your nose and then draw
what you see.

"Wilba" wrote:

OK, if you insist, but how does that support your claim that IQ is always
and for everyone more important than ergonomics?

The reason I object to the ergonomics squawking is that the issues discussed
are completely trivial.

There really isn't a significant difference between the dSLRs in handling.
They are all far more similar to each other than any two other cameras I've
ever owned. A Hasselblad 500C is far more different from a Mamiya 645 than a
D200 is from the latest Sony.

Also, the particular review was rating the ergonomics from the standpoint of
someone who uses a new camera every week, not from the standpoint of someone
who uses the same camera every day for several years.

There are noticeable differences in handling between the low end (D40/400D),
midrange (D200/5D), and pro (1DIII/D2x) cameras, but that wasn't what was
being discussed.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

On Nov 16, 12:39 pm, "David J. Littleboy" wrote:
"Wilba" wrote:

OK, if you insist, but how does that support your claim that IQ is always
and for everyone more important than ergonomics?

The reason I object to the ergonomics squawking is that the issues discussed
are completely trivial.

There really isn't a significant difference between the dSLRs in handling.
They are all far more similar to each other than any two other cameras I've
ever owned. A Hasselblad 500C is far more different from a Mamiya 645 than a
D200 is from the latest Sony.

Also, the particular review was rating the ergonomics from the standpoint of
someone who uses a new camera every week, not from the standpoint of someone
who uses the same camera every day for several years.

There are noticeable differences in handling between the low end (D40/400D),
midrange (D200/5D), and pro (1DIII/D2x) cameras, but that wasn't what was
being discussed.


Actually the D200 and the D2x are almost the same in handling, except
that the d200 has no vertical grip... Not that this is relevant.

Seriously, it's not trivial, no matter how many times it gets called
that. Now what I find amusing is those who go on about how "IQ" is the
only important thing and then go and use a crappy raw converter, or
don't know how to process their photos afterwards, or dismiss others
as pixel peepers etc. Brilliant!

Pete D wrote:
Wilba wrote:
Pete D wrote:
Wilba wrote:

Yeah ... OK. What does that tell us about the question - is image
quality more important than ergonomics for every photographer in
every photographic situations?

Why would anything be more important than image quality?

Because a crap shot with fabulous IQ is still a crap shot?

I will always assume that the shot is framed exactly as you are wanting,
why would you press the shutter otherwise. Damn it man lots of people
use the big Canons and the ergonomics are seriously flawed yet we seem
to get around that and take photos with staggeringly good IQ.

OK, so what are you claiming? IQ is always, everywhere, and for everyone
more important than ergonomics? (That's the claim that I'm challenging.) How
would you prove it?

David J. Littleboy wrote:
Wilba wrote:

OK, if you insist, but how does that support your claim that IQ is always
and for everyone more important than ergonomics?

The reason I object to the ergonomics squawking is that the issues
discussed are completely trivial.

For example?

There really isn't a significant difference between the dSLRs in handling.
They are all far more similar to each other than any two other cameras
I've ever owned.

So when you said, "the differences are tiny and seriously inconsequential",
you were talking only about current DSLRs, or the three(?) in the review, or
....?

A Hasselblad 500C is far more different from a Mamiya 645
than a D200 is from the latest Sony.

How is that relevant to your global claim?

Also, the particular review was rating the ergonomics from the standpoint
of someone who uses a new camera every week, not from the standpoint
of someone who uses the same camera every day for several years.

So are you saying that bad ergonomics becomes good ergonomics when you have
learned to use it well enough that you don't have to think about it?

There are noticeable differences in handling between the low end
(D40/400D), midrange (D200/5D), and pro (1DIII/D2x) cameras, but that
wasn't what was being discussed.

OK, so give me the exact context in which you believe your claim to be
valid.

On Nov 16, 2:44 pm, acl wrote:
On Nov 16, 12:39 pm, "David J. Littleboy" wrote:



"Wilba" wrote:

OK, if you insist, but how does that support your claim that IQ is always
and for everyone more important than ergonomics?

The reason I object to the ergonomics squawking is that the issues discussed
are completely trivial.

There really isn't a significant difference between the dSLRs in handling.
They are all far more similar to each other than any two other cameras I've
ever owned. A Hasselblad 500C is far more different from a Mamiya 645 than a
D200 is from the latest Sony.

Also, the particular review was rating the ergonomics from the standpoint of
someone who uses a new camera every week, not from the standpoint of someone
who uses the same camera every day for several years.

There are noticeable differences in handling between the low end (D40/400D),
midrange (D200/5D), and pro (1DIII/D2x) cameras, but that wasn't what was
being discussed.

Actually the D200 and the D2x are almost the same in handling, except
that the d200 has no vertical grip... Not that this is relevant.

Seriously, it's not trivial, no matter how many times it gets called
that. Now what I find amusing is those who go on about how "IQ" is the
only important thing and then go and use a crappy raw converter, or
don't know how to process their photos afterwards, or dismiss others
as pixel peepers etc. Brilliant!

Well never mind, after reading about compacts over the last few days,
I got curious and went to dpreview to look at the output of this
panasonic fz18, he
http://www.dpreview.com/gallery/panasonicfz18_samples/
I give up! This thing is noiseless: no yellow blobs at ISO 100 at all;
its images do not look like watercolour paintings, and, according to
what I've read here, it's also faster than the camera I currently use.
So never mind the ergonomics!

On Nov 16, 6:44 am, acl wrote:
On Nov 16, 12:39 pm, "David J. Littleboy" wrote:



"Wilba" wrote:

OK, if you insist, but how does that support your claim that IQ is always
and for everyone more important than ergonomics?

The reason I object to the ergonomics squawking is that the issues discussed
are completely trivial.

There really isn't a significant difference between the dSLRs in handling.
They are all far more similar to each other than any two other cameras I've
ever owned. A Hasselblad 500C is far more different from a Mamiya 645 than a
D200 is from the latest Sony.

Also, the particular review was rating the ergonomics from the standpoint of
someone who uses a new camera every week, not from the standpoint of someone
who uses the same camera every day for several years.

There are noticeable differences in handling between the low end (D40/400D),
midrange (D200/5D), and pro (1DIII/D2x) cameras, but that wasn't what was
being discussed.

Actually the D200 and the D2x are almost the same in handling, except
that the d200 has no vertical grip... Not that this is relevant.

Seriously, it's not trivial, no matter how many times it gets called
that. Now what I find amusing is those who go on about how "IQ" is the
only important thing and then go and use a crappy raw converter, or
don't know how to process their photos afterwards, or dismiss others
as pixel peepers etc. Brilliant!


I would say that handling _is_ extremely important. But I would also
qualify that by saying that the differences between DSLRs right now
are so small that the question of what is "good" and "bad" handling is
entirely subjective and non-measurable. If a camera does not fit well
in my hands that does not mean it has bad ergonomics; it just means
that it's not for me.

The same thing with "IQ". The only differences between APS-C format
DSLRs that really matter have to do with colour, contrast and
exposure. And "good" and "bad" are entirely subjective.