----- Original Message -----
From: "andrew fildes" <afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 10:56 PM
Subject: Re: [OM] E-1 4/3 vs. full sensor
> >There's a new, 35/1.2 from Cosina/Voigtlander, introduced this year.
> >That's the only f/1.2 lens south of a 50mm that I've ever heard of.
> >
> >There is also an 85/1.2 Zeiss lens that was produced for the Contax
> >SLR mount (limited production).
> >
> >I haven't heard of any other maker with an f/1.2 lens outside of the
> >"normal" ~50-60mm range.
> >
> >Skip
Canon has an 85/1.2, weighs a "mere" 2.2lbs!
This raises a big beef I have with the current crop of SLRs and DSLRs, the
size and weight of the system. If I absolutely had to go digital tomorrow,
it'd be Canon (the E-1 is tempting but I'd want to see where the system is
going). However, I left Canon for the OM system. Since then I've been
spoiled by a small and lightweight system with fast lenses (compared to the
28-105/3.5-4.5 that I had with the Canon). I've been getting into selective
focus more so I really want to stick with fast lenses to get the shallow DOF
(this is also one of the main draws for me for a full size sensor). Canon
offers a lot of nice fast primes and zooms but they're really big and weigh
a lot. Nikon is no better in this regard. Even Olympus seems to have lost
it's edge in this regard, the only thing it seems they're doing is
leveraging the multiplication factor from the sensor size to create a
"lightweight system". I don't want to start the whole "effective focal
length vs. actual focal length" debate again but I'll just leave it at
saying that right now Olympus doesn't have the fast lenses I want and with
the smaller sensor I'm not going to be able to get as shallow a DOF as with
35mm.
What I'm waiting for is to see a manufacturer come out and say that a
professional level DSLR system doesn't have to be a tank, sort of the same
way that Olympus came out in the late 70's with the OM system and said that
a professional level 35mm SLR system doesn't have to be a tank.
Actually, one thought just occured to me, Contax once developed a camera
which performed autofocus by moving the film plane (as well as the mirror
assembly (I believe the camera was the Contax AX). If this can be done with
film, it should be possible for digital as well. It might even be an easier
task because you'd only have to move the mirror and a sensor. The big
advantage I could see here is that all of the autofocus capabilities would
be in the body. You could then manufacture a lens line with either no focus
or only manual focus. This should allow for a pretty small and lightweight
system. You wouldn't save any size or weight in the body but you'd make up
for it in the lenses. Seems like it'd be a good idea to me.
Andrew "frugal" Dacey
frugal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.tildefrugal.net/
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