Pansonic 16X9 28mm digi

djon said:
I
It's true that D70 and 20D, advanced amateur DSLRs, are better than current digital viewfinders...but they're nowhere near as good as film SLRs have been since the first Exaktas, in the Fifties.

Those Exaktas must have been much better than my Contax RTS from 1976 :)

And the results from my D60s 6 MPixel sensor at EI 400 is way better than the Kodak and Fuji films I used in the 80s.
 
This seems to be turning quickly into a "religious" debate, and I usually try to stay out of those.

All I said, in summary, was:

-- Cameras with non-interchangeable lenses, no matter how zoomy, aren't going to be versatile enough for some people.

-- Electronic viewfinders, at any realistically foreseeable pixel count, aren't going to satisfy some people. (Even if detail rendering eventually becomes a non-issue, the issue of extra battery drain may not go away so easily!)

And consequently, those people -- who admittedly may be a small minority of the digital-camera-buying public -- are going to desert prosumer digicams in favor of DSLRs; the market figures say that's exactly what's happening right now. (And let us hope that some of those deserters might be tempted to try an optical-rangefinder digital camera instead!)

Sensors with 10 megapixels, or 12, or 18, or 22, or 37 aren't likely to change anything; they'll show up in DSLRs as well as digicams, and sooner or later people are going to start catching on to the fact that pixel count is just a planned-obsolescence scheme anyway. What's ironic about the yutzes who are dumping their 6mp prosumer cameras because they can now get an 8mp model is that most of them don't do anything more demanding with their images than spit 4x6 prints (1800x1200 pixels) out of an inkjet, or view them on a computer monitor (1024x768 pixels) or on a TV (1920 x 1080 if you've sprung for HDTV; much, much lower if not.) They're getting absolutely no benefit from upping their pixel count; they're just doing it because the salesman told them, "Like, more has just got to be better, ya know?"

But as you say, in the long run the marketplace will tell the story, and in a year or two we'll be able to see whether the techno-geeks continued their shift to DSLRs or were lured back by the appeal of 16:9 prosumer digicams.

Gee, I'm really glad I don't have to care about this; now that I've tried enough cameras to realize that optical RF cameras are what work best for me, I don't have to pay any attention to ANY digicam gossip except about possible successors or competitiors to the Epson R-D 1 (who, what, when, how much, etc.) It's been a tremendous relief!
 
djon said:
Nay-sayer: the chip itself is oversized, larger than on Canon 20D or Nikon D70.
Uh? I really doubt that.

djon said:
The idea of interchangable lenses in prosumer cameras like 20D and D70 is mere marketing.
Sure.

djon said:
Noise is easily dealt with in post-processing. It's a reviewer's preoccupation, at worst simply a feature, no more a problem than grain in silver film.[.
What about people who actually do like the grain of silver film?

djon said:
This is obviously not the ultimate, but it's one of the reasons the majority of today's dedicated film shooters will drift digitally within a year or two at most.
What exactly is the reason? The ability to look at boring, oversaturated pictures of flowers and butterflies on a HDTV screen? I'm exaggerating a bit here, but you get my point.
 
JLW, we're on the same page. The technology's moving faster than we know and that D70 and 20D are mere momentary gizmos...no sooner than someone has one than he'll want 2006's thousand-dollar 12MP version.

I mostly shoot Neopan 400 (at 1000ei) and Reala 200 or NPZ, scanning with a Nikon V. I think this will be viable for another several years, until 35mm film becomes too expensive, convenient same-day labs stop processing C41, and digital becomes too tempting. A Digilux 3 might do the trick, but I doubt we'll see a next-generation Epson.

The digital photography coming currently from Iraq validates the technology far more than do photos of cats and flowers. We don't see much in our timid US press, but if you search Al Jazeera and the like, or if you visit soldier's blogs, you'll see digital stuff that's fabulous.

Inability to deal with digital noise (technically or aesthetically), while claiming to love silver grain, demonstrates a certain kind of point.
 
btw, isn't it interesting to see how many posts there are on this topic...must be important to panorama-shooters
 
For my purposes the production of a digital semi-panoramic camera is a milestone. Not just for the development of a semi-panoramic sensor, but for the fact that a digital camera manufacturer recognizes the fact that this form of photography exists, and could be a potential market.

Sure you can stitch images together in Photoshop, and make a panoramic image. How many of you have ever tried it?? It is not easy to take a good series of photos on a tripod with special panoramic head, and nodal point adjustment slide. The white balance, and exposure can't really change, or you can get that terrible look of different images fused together instead of a smooth even looking photograph. I recently visited the wine country in California, and took my trusty Xpan. The hassle of going through security with a film camera was enough to make me consider the Panasonic LX-1.

I am not complaining about the quality of the Xpan images. They are great. Sharp, and well exposed even with a center weighted meter. However, the digital conversion of these images is not convenient, and after all that work you must deal with manipulating a second generation image.

But, the thought of a digital semi-panoramic with the advantages in ISO variation (even with some noise) instant review, and easy digital manipulation (RAW format) has me quite interested.
No product is perfect. They are all compromises. I am just glad to see that the market has been discovered by at least one manufacturer.

After all hasn't digital RF been recently discovered??

Martin
 
True digital 360pano has long existed. I don't know if anybody's bothered to do it with a scanning back or a 22mp back in MF, but nothing's standing in the way technically
 
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