Why we should all hope the D2X is great

I won't ever be buying one but any advance in design, image quality,
or features only makes the other manufacturers try harder. I was
really happy to see the Minolta come out with a body based system of
image stabilization because the other camera manufacturers must now be
taking good looks at that feature, especially if it sells well. Until
digital took over Canon claimed the photojournalist market by dropping
their lens prices to reasonable rates. Up until the 80's Nikon had
owned that market and had got complacent. I am happy whenever I see
new features become standard items on cameras. I think people looking
for failure are a little messed up.

 

Well, certainly I hope the D2X can provide some competition to Canon's
rule of the professional market. Unfortunately, that just doesn't seem
like it will be the case for those individuals who want low noise
performance or full-frame imaging.

Nor does the D2Hs seem like it will pull a significant share of the
market from the 1D Mark II. It doesn't even look like it will retain
the customers Nikon does have. So, a lot of hopes are pinned to the D2X
to answer the Canon call.

So, I would like to see Nikon compete with Canon on the high end. The
problem is, they're not doing a very good job as far as I can tell.

The thing is, I really, really want a full-frame 16+ megapixel camera.
I want low noise and I don't want to pay for it. So the faster the two
knuckleheads at the top race to get ahead of the other, the closer my
dream comes to being a reality.

 

Altogether well said.

Looking for 'failure' is not all bad. Making it one's sole mission in life is.

Cheers,
Alan.

 

Me too. That, I agree with.

Cheers,
Alan

 

I think you're disagreeing more with your idea of Brian than actually
WITH Brian.

Brian finds this hilarious when his closet conservative friend accuses
him of all sorts of liberal treachery, even when opinions on the subject
have not been offered.

Ok, I'll stop referring to myself in the third person now... Or will he?

 

This is all a bit like rooting for a team. We are all diehard fans of one
brand or another, and win or lose we will still be diehard fans.
Competition is good for everybody. It's just that some companies tend to
take a wait see, while others try to be on the cutting edge. The hope is
that everybody keeps moving forward.

Personally, I'm very happy with my D70, and will be until something comes
along (from Nikon) that blows it away at a reasonable price. Heck, my old
F's still take great photos. I just have to work around the fact that they
don't focus for me, and I have to think a bit more when it comes to
exposure.

And I kept my old point and shoot digital until it would still point, but
wouldn't shoot anymore. Just remember, it's not the camera but the person
behind the lens that makes or breaks a picture.

 

How does his employer refer to him? ... them?

 

"HEY! YOU!"

 

Just accept the two phrases as the simple statements they are. I'll even
upgrade the second sentence as follows:

"I agree with Brian on this."

How's that?

Cheers,
Alan.

 

Nope.

I demand total loyalty to my reality. Anything less would be...
unacceptable.

 

Or, are we? I like my Canon but I no die-hard Canon fan. Nor am I a
Nikon hater. And I own a nice film Minolta SLR too.

Die-hard fanatism only produces an Apple ;-) Very nice but over-priced.

- Siddhartha

 

Yeah, but the price of those PowerBooks G4s has been dropping precipitously
lately. No doubt Apple is getting ready to roll out a new product line, but
I am looking at replacing the ThinkPad. For what I spend on the G4 I can
replace the ThinkPad and all my software and still have money left over. The
only downside is the PowerBooks is 1.67 GHz while the ThinkPad would be 1.8
GHz. OTOH, I would be getting a bigger hard drive, more memory, a 17" screen
instead of a 15" screen, and a better DVD writer. Also, IBM has been making
noises that the ThinkPad is a money loser, so getting another one could mean
an orphaned machine. I could go Dell, but that is no cheaper. I think the
PowerBooks is bug ugly, but I could probably live with it.

 

IBM sold off the entire ThinkPad line to a company in China about a month or
two ago...

 

There's at least one person here who just likes to make images.
Oh sure, the equipment for doing that is cool in and of itself.
But that's a distraction from the main point, as far as I'm
concerned.

 

It's not a done deal. The federal government has some national-
security concerns that will have to be addressed before the sale
can proceed.

http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2005/02/21/daily24.html

 

[ ... ]

However, the PowerBook is running a RISC processor, while the
ThinkPad would be a CISC processor. CISC is better to an
assembly-language programmer, but RISC can produce much faster code
using the output from a compiler (which describes most programs these
days, except for extreme die-hards), so you will probably get better
performance from the PowerBook. Note that I am not a particular fan of
either Microsoft's OSs or those from Apple, preferring a nice unix
system, but from here, it looks like a wash in speeds. If I had a
PowerBook I would probably install some unix variant like OpenBSD on it.

Ugly doesn't bother me, as long as it does what I ask of it.

And for the purposes of this newsgroup, I would think that the
better DVD writer would be a win -- transfer your camera's flash cards
(or whatever format it uses) into the computer, and then immediately
burn a DVD-ROM of it to protect against crashes. *And* you would not be
entrusting your photos to a machine running the target of all those
virus-writers out there. (The thought of having a particularly good
image get infected with a virus is particularly painful, though there
are ways around the problem once it occurs, as long as the image data is
preserved.)

Enjoy,
DoN.

 

The Mac OS *is* a Unix variant like OpenBSD. (More like FreeBSD, from
the user's perspective.)

 

Fanatism also produces the likes of Digital. Very nice, but no longer
in production ;-)

- Siddhartha

 

However, from dealing with OS-X (the only version which is built
on a unix underpinning) by long distance (e.g. making suggestions to a
friend and then seeing what he turns up), certain parts of it are *very*
difficult to get to -- with even the root account locked out (except
perhaps when booting to single-user mode.)

Filesystems are really strange on there -- especially with older
disks mounted from earlier versions of Mac's previous OS.

And the GUI designed to maintain compatibility with older
programs, and to preserve the "Mac experience", is a major overhead,
even compared to running X11 (the usual Unix windowing system) on the
same hardware.

So -- *I* would kick aside the OS-X, and install OpenBSD from
scratch, so I had a unix that *behaved* like a unix.

Enjoy,
DoN.