"...I avoid Contax N because of bulk, slow AF, limited selection, and price. The ND allows use of WA primes without sensor crop but... there are no WA primes in the N system!
..."
Rico,
it is for sure that the AF of the N-system is slower than of the similar priced Canon or Nikon models. But this says nothing about usability of the N-System. But how much differences is this in milliseconds? The AF-Speed is for my personal use fast enough. Additionally I prefer in 95% of the cases to focus manually. But not because the N-AF is to slow. I just enjoy it more to see how the object gets into focus with a split screen. Of course that is my personal taste.
I agree on the limited selection of primes, especially in the WA area. A fullsize chip system does not make sense, if you can not use the major benefit of it - the true wideangle without cropping factor. The WA-zooms are very good (both the 2.8/17-35 and the 24-85), but they can not replace primes like a 25, 21, 18 and 15. If Kyocera is not offering soon more primes, they will have even more problems with sales numbers in the future...
But you have to accept that all N-lenses are better in image quality than the manual focus equivalents. Sometimes significant better (zooms), sometimes only by a small margin (primes). We detected even differences between the N50/1.4 and the equivalent manual focus 50/1.4 - although both are the same "design". This is because of improvements in the area outside of the pure design. Flare reduction for ex&le.
So looking only at the image quality, the N-System is in my opinion the better system. Although it has some objective disadvantages. These are:
- the size of the bodies and the lenses
- the AF speed
- the lack of enough primes
- more difficult manual focus behaviour than the MF system
- prices are too high compared to the MF system
- Lack of 2-3 different Digital bodies and 1-2 more film bodies.
I am sure that the mentioned points combined with the lack of communication and marketing know-how are the reasons why the sales are not at all in the area where Kyocera would like to have them.
I personally do not need digital at the moment. Nikon just introduced 2 days ago 3 new film scanners. A clear sign that there are still enough film users out there who do not want to switch to digital yet.
IMHO I have the perfect combination with film and filmscanner. I still can see my slides on the wall, what no digital sytem can give me. And I do not need to worry about storage issues and the failure of beeing able to read my digital files in 15 years from now. The latter one alone would be a very intersting subject to discuss about.
Also the unablity of digital chips to give me that range of dark to light areas on an image, which is easy available with modern film, is an argument against digital cameras right now.
I think within the last 3 years, too many people got pushed in a "digital hype" by the marketing departments of the big companies. Sure, some professionals need it, because their clients ask for faster working chains. But all the private users - and the camrea manufacturers are living from the mass market, not from the professional market - they do not really need that speed.
If everybody is honest to himself, do you really need the instamt verifying effect? or is this digital use more a seduction to produce more photos, which have to be deleted later on, because they are too bad? If I look at some friends of mine, I have the feeling, that they skip the "thinking" before they make a picture and replace it with the delete buttom on their digital camera.
They shoot more pictures than before with film cameras, but have less good results. The ratio is just horrible. And I think the fun is also not the same afterwards. And all these sacrifices only for the 1-second benefit of viewing the images immediately. Sounds not logical for me...
Just my 2 cents
..."
Rico,
it is for sure that the AF of the N-system is slower than of the similar priced Canon or Nikon models. But this says nothing about usability of the N-System. But how much differences is this in milliseconds? The AF-Speed is for my personal use fast enough. Additionally I prefer in 95% of the cases to focus manually. But not because the N-AF is to slow. I just enjoy it more to see how the object gets into focus with a split screen. Of course that is my personal taste.
I agree on the limited selection of primes, especially in the WA area. A fullsize chip system does not make sense, if you can not use the major benefit of it - the true wideangle without cropping factor. The WA-zooms are very good (both the 2.8/17-35 and the 24-85), but they can not replace primes like a 25, 21, 18 and 15. If Kyocera is not offering soon more primes, they will have even more problems with sales numbers in the future...
But you have to accept that all N-lenses are better in image quality than the manual focus equivalents. Sometimes significant better (zooms), sometimes only by a small margin (primes). We detected even differences between the N50/1.4 and the equivalent manual focus 50/1.4 - although both are the same "design". This is because of improvements in the area outside of the pure design. Flare reduction for ex&le.
So looking only at the image quality, the N-System is in my opinion the better system. Although it has some objective disadvantages. These are:
- the size of the bodies and the lenses
- the AF speed
- the lack of enough primes
- more difficult manual focus behaviour than the MF system
- prices are too high compared to the MF system
- Lack of 2-3 different Digital bodies and 1-2 more film bodies.
I am sure that the mentioned points combined with the lack of communication and marketing know-how are the reasons why the sales are not at all in the area where Kyocera would like to have them.
I personally do not need digital at the moment. Nikon just introduced 2 days ago 3 new film scanners. A clear sign that there are still enough film users out there who do not want to switch to digital yet.
IMHO I have the perfect combination with film and filmscanner. I still can see my slides on the wall, what no digital sytem can give me. And I do not need to worry about storage issues and the failure of beeing able to read my digital files in 15 years from now. The latter one alone would be a very intersting subject to discuss about.
Also the unablity of digital chips to give me that range of dark to light areas on an image, which is easy available with modern film, is an argument against digital cameras right now.
I think within the last 3 years, too many people got pushed in a "digital hype" by the marketing departments of the big companies. Sure, some professionals need it, because their clients ask for faster working chains. But all the private users - and the camrea manufacturers are living from the mass market, not from the professional market - they do not really need that speed.
If everybody is honest to himself, do you really need the instamt verifying effect? or is this digital use more a seduction to produce more photos, which have to be deleted later on, because they are too bad? If I look at some friends of mine, I have the feeling, that they skip the "thinking" before they make a picture and replace it with the delete buttom on their digital camera.
They shoot more pictures than before with film cameras, but have less good results. The ratio is just horrible. And I think the fun is also not the same afterwards. And all these sacrifices only for the 1-second benefit of viewing the images immediately. Sounds not logical for me...
Just my 2 cents
