Thread: Would You Buy This Camera?

Next up will be ultra-wide guy who says 24mm a compromise for him...

The funny thing is that 28mm is the one focal length that I am absolutely comfortable shooting 'blind' without viewfinder, LCD, whatever. I pretty much know what it's going to cover near or far. It's not so much that I can always nail the exact borders of the image, but that the viewpoint just feels so intuitive to me (even if I might prefer a less wide viewpoint for certain images.)

24mm is too wide for me from a compositional standpoint, and 35mm feels slightly 'cropped' so I feel the need to verify image composition/framing (but is more versatile.)

I'm an ultrawide guy and 24mm is a compromise for me

Decades and decades and decades of "fast fifties" would indicate that the 50mm focal length is just a tiny bit useful

Originally Posted by Luckypenguin

Decades and decades and decades of "fast fifties" would indicate that the 50mm focal length is just a tiny bit useful

Yeah, it is, but I think its historic dominance has less to do with any inherent usefulness and more to do with it being relatively easy to make good ones, being a fairly "neutral" focal length. Its still easier than most to do well, as evidenced by it still being the focal length where you're apt to find the fastest lenses. When I was a kid, every SLR I ever used or considered basically came with a 50-55mm prime lens, somewhere between f1.8 and f1.2. Wide angle and telephoto lenses were prohibitively expensive and/or not very good. Then you started being able to find 28mm and long lenses occasionally and then some half decent zooms started showing up but since there was no such thing as "digital correction" with film, it was a lot tougher to design at the wide end. So the 50's were the only good affordable lenses out there for a good long time. Now, lens makers are a lot better at this stuff than they used to be and we can get decent lenses in almost any focal length pretty affordably and good ones at a cost. And in the consumer market is a whole other thing, with tiny sensors and digital correction making all sorts of crazy zoom possible and pretty damn good for what they are.

I used nothing but 50's for years. I remember shooting high school football games with my K-1000 and 50mm and trying to make it work. Landscapes, portraits, EVERYTHING happened with that lens. And I didn't mind it because I didn't know anything else. But as soon as I started being able to shoot with wide angles regularly and telephotos occasionally, I haven't spent significant time with a 50 since. The 50 was a popular lens for a long time, but I don't think its because it was particularly good, just particularly available.

-Ray

I didn't say that 50mm was the most useful focal length, or even the equal most useful focal length. I was responding to the rather blunt assertion that it was "the least useful" focal length just because that photographer hasn't found a way to use it. I actually don't particularly have a favourite focal length, but if I have an inherently good (or even great) lens that doesn't stray too far from the normal perspective of the human eye I'll figure out make it work for me.

28 and 50mm both seem very useful for me. Lately, it's been 90% 50mm. For me, it is an intimate story telling focal length, whereas 28mm is the same but with much more context in the frame. Those and somewhere between 75-100mm are all I really need.

Give me a 28-50-75mm zoom Leica's done something along those lines in their tri-elmer.

Or why not allow those step-zoom cameras to do that? You define the steps and it only stops at those focal lengths. Now that would be a great tool!

I've shot so many indoor photos between 35 and 90mm FL, that yes, I would consider buying this camera. In fact, I would be more inclined to buy it than the real RX100.

I'm all for a fixed lens, but 35mm equivalent as a focal length for a fixed lens camera is the best compromise, as we saw years ago in film days with the Minox 35 and others.

What's really lacking today is some sort of viewfinder for composition. Having a fixed focal length lens makes it that much easier to add a viewfinder, and the two features go hand in hand.

I'll take any compact with a viewfinder, with any focal length lens, over any without a viewfinder.

Abe

I've been told by a friend working at Sony's imaging division that we can expect essentially the camera you outline. Don't know the MRSP, don't know the maximum aperture, and doubt very much that it'll have a viewfinder* but I'm 90% sure it'll have a 35mm lens and will be announced at or before Photokina.

Enjoy the site, thanks for posting this speculative thread. Apologies if this is a duplicate account but I couldn't locate it and/or defeat your Captcha.

*That said, I'm sure that they're aware of the success of the X-100.

Originally Posted by mwerneburg

I've been told by a friend working at Sony's imaging division that we can expect essentially the camera you outline. Don't know the MRSP, don't know the maximum aperture, and doubt very much that it'll have a viewfinder* but I'm 90% sure it'll have a 35mm lens and will be announced at or before Photokina.

Enjoy the site, thanks for posting this speculative thread. Apologies if this is a duplicate account but I couldn't locate it and/or defeat your Captcha.

*That said, I'm sure that they're aware of the success of the X-100.

Well, then I guess we'll still have to leave it to Ricoh to make one with a 28...

-Ray