What’s the occasion?

[crowecg]

I thought all the big events were over and done with but there has been a barrage of new products in the last few days - all mirrorless !

 

first a new Nikon Z Lens; a new Canon R body plus a slew of R mount lenses previewed and a new body and lens from Fuji.  There was also a Panasonic announcement a week or two earlier.

[Dallas]

The world finally woke up!

[Hugh_3170]

I can remember all of the heated arguments as to why mirrorless would never replace DSLRs about five years ago.  I figured back then that it would be in around five years before mirrorless really took off.  Actually Olympus, Panasonic, and Fuji took off long ago (and video cameras with their electronic viewfinders well before that), but now everyone is in on the act and many of the DSLR devotees from 5 or so years ago are now enthusiastically buying and extolling the virtues of Sonys A7 's  and  Nikon Z's (and no doubt Canon R's in the coming months).   In the meanwhile my Olympus E-M1 and E-M1 MkII are doing just fine!

 

I should not be too surprised by such behaviour - I have seeen similar resistance to tech change amongst IT practitioners, so photographers are in fact little different!

 

Edit:  And the forthcoming Panasonic/Leica/Sigma L system.

Edited 16 February, 2019 by Hugh_3170

[vivionm]

And Fuji have announced what is effectively 90 per cent of an XT-3 at less than half the price.

[Dallas]

The Olympus E-M1 is an extremely capable camera, despite being over 5 years old. I have been using 2 of them professionally for that amount of time and only 1 of them has had to be sent in for repairs (it's currently having a shutter replacement and I should get it back soon). I can say emphatically that for me the photography I do for money got a whole lot easier when I moved to mirrorless. My quality also improved because the AF on the E-M1 was so fast and accurate that OOF shots became a thing of the past.

 

Not everybody was convinced, but I know that a lot of the resistance was from people who had zero experience with the systems I was praising yet many felt compelled to dismiss my insights as the ravings of a lunatic. There is never a shortage of nay-sayers when it comes to photography equipment though.  

[Hugh_3170]

Prophets are never recognised in their own lands  and in any event you were by that stage actively using the mirrorless equipment on paid assignments, and I just wonder how many of the nay sayers paused to consider that your comments were based on such real world experience.  Just my 0.02c.

[vivionm]

I earnestly hope we are not inadvertently reigniting the 'mirrorless is better than DSLR" debate which almost destroyed this site.

[Dallas]

The debate isn't really about mirrorless vs DSLR. It's about old tech versus new tech. I'm in favour of new tech that helps me to do my job more efficiently and provide better results for my clients. The new Canon EOS RP is evidence that this new tech will be in the hands of the average consumer a lot sooner than expected and at affordable prices. I think it will provide the same momentum that the Nikon D700 did to get the bulk of consumer shooters back to FX from DX. 

 

I am also fairly confident that FZ has been thoroughly detoxed to the point where such a discussion amongst the members who are still here wouldn't devolve into the childishness we have seen in the past. Let's hope. 

[Alan7140]

I hope I don't start up that old argument of film vs digital again, but....

 

I just bought a 60 year old SLR to use with film, the stuff the SLR configuration was designed for.  

Although it wears the Pentacon name (which many think of as communist junk and which did eventually become the rabidly mass-produced Praktica), bear in mind the name Pentacon evolves from PENTAprism and CONtax joined together. The name is in fact the result of a 50's era argument between West vs East German rights to use the Zeiss brand names, which the West won in this instance, and while the new Zeiss factory at Oberkochen continued to make Zeiss-Ikon Contax cameras, the original Zeiss factory in Dresden produced the same camera design with the Pentacon badge. At this stage the two factories still worked together to a degree with both design and staff as the Iron Curtain hadn't fully come down as yet.

 

Take it a step further, and another name fielded at the time was PENTA(prism conta)X, which was bought by Asahi in the early 1960's. So but for the luck of the draw, all the Pentax users these days would be running around with Pentacons, and Pentax would have become Praktica.   

 

The Contax camera which brought the Zeiss name into SLR post-war was a mirror-added to the pre-war Contax Rangefinder design, the self same Contax Rangefinder that was the direct pre-war competitor to Leica (and both of which the Russians copied as the Kiev and the Zorki rangefinder cameras after the war).

 

Thankfully the new Zeiss SLR design also brought the 42x1mm lens mount into common use, hence the Pentacon, Contax and later the Pentax cameras all used that mount, which later became almost universal in the '50's and '60's therefore an absolute shipload of excellent used lenses from numerous manufacturers is still available for bargain-basement prices.

 

The thing is that this 60 year-old camera is still in full working order, came with a more modern MC Pentacon 2,8/29 (i.e. Myer-Optik Görlitz) wide angle lens, which is not the best lens on the planet, but for the princely eBay total of AUD$60 (US $43) for the lot, how could I NOT buy it at that price with all that history in its little body? I doubt any DSLR or Mirrorless camera bought this year will still be anywhere other than dead on a museum shelf sixty years from now, let alone being lined up to be actually used. I also couldn't help myself given how many of the design and visual styling features are shared at a different scale with the Pentacon Six TL, which has turned out to be one of the most enjoyable medium format cameras I have ever used.

Sorry (not really) to bring a dose of history of photographic equipment into this, but it's relevant. And probably interesting as well.

[crowecg]

4 hours ago, Alan7140 said:

I hope I don't start up that old argument of film vs digital again, but....

 

I just bought a 60 year old SLR to use with film, the stuff the SLR configuration was designed for.  

Although it wears the Pentacon name (which many think of as communist junk and which did eventually become the rabidly mass-produced Praktica), bear in mind the name Pentacon evolves from PENTAprism and CONtax joined together. The name is in fact the result of a 50's era argument between West vs East German rights to use the Zeiss brand names, which the West won in this instance, and while the new Zeiss factory at Oberkochen continued to make Zeiss-Ikon Contax cameras, the original Zeiss factory in Dresden produced the same camera design with the Pentacon badge. At this stage the two factories still worked together to a degree with both design and staff as the Iron Curtain hadn't fully come down as yet.

 

Take it a step further, and another name fielded at the time was PENTA(prism conta)X, which was bought by Asahi in the early 1960's. So but for the luck of the draw, all the Pentax users these days would be running around with Pentacons, and Pentax would have become Praktica.   

 

The Contax camera which brought the Zeiss name into SLR post-war was a mirror-added to the pre-war Contax Rangefinder design, the self same Contax Rangefinder that was the direct pre-war competitor to Leica (and both of which the Russians copied as the Kiev and the Zorki rangefinder cameras after the war).

 

Thankfully the new Zeiss SLR design also brought the 42x1mm lens mount into common use, hence the Pentacon, Contax and later the Pentax cameras all used that mount, which later became almost universal in the '50's and '60's therefore an absolute shipload of excellent used lenses from numerous manufacturers is still available for bargain-basement prices.

 

The thing is that this 60 year-old camera is still in full working order, came with a more modern MC Pentacon 2,8/29 (i.e. Myer-Optik Görlitz) wide angle lens, which is not the best lens on the planet, but for the princely eBay total of AUD$60 (US $43) for the lot, how could I NOT buy it at that price with all that history in its little body? I doubt any DSLR or Mirrorless camera bought this year will still be anywhere other than dead on a museum shelf sixty years from now, let alone being lined up to be actually used. I also couldn't help myself given how many of the design and visual styling features are shared at a different scale with the Pentacon Six TL, which has turned out to be one of the most enjoyable medium format cameras I have ever used.

Sorry (not really) to bring a dose of history of photographic equipment into this, but it's relevant. And probably interesting as well.

You should create a whole article on this.  It would be an interesting read

[Dallas]

I agree with Chris. 

[Alan7140]

9 hours ago, crowecg said:

You should create a whole article on this.  It would be an interesting read

 

I'll probably do something like that after the camera arrives and I've used it. No instant return mirror, though, but it does have auto-stop down, so even the operating experience will be similar to its big brother Pentacon Six TL. It also doesn't have a meter, nor the option of one, unlike the Six with its removable/interchangeable viewfinders.