RikWriter Wrote:No, we haven't. Don't put your words in my mouth, please.
You're right, I apologize for that. You did say that MF has higher image quality than your camera, you don't use a MF camera because of cost, and that Image quality is your primary requirement when choosing a camera.
My argument is that digital cameras in each price point / marketing niche all have acceptable image quality, so that's the last thing that should be considered in the purchasing decision. Every camera manufacturer is trying for the best possible image quality. They're not all making the same design and marketing decisions about features, engineering tradeoffs, and how they expect their products to be used.
Based on your discussion with Toad, I don't really think we're far off on this. We're both agreeing that features are important, but maybe I'm not making sense in my description. I'm not suggesting that image quality is
irrelevant or
unimportant.
Bear with me: when I was deciding on my dslr, I considered reliability, usability, affordability before image quality. "Reliability" to me means that I can use it any time, including monstrous rain and snow storms. That removed most of the market, but this was a must-have feature. I'm now looking at only a few cameras: Canon 1D series, Nikon D1/D2 series, Olympus E-1. For usability, this includes the whole 'feel' of the camera and controls -- they Oly passed the test, and I didn't bother trying the others on my list because of my factor #3, affordability. If life was different, and there were two affordable, usable, rain-proof cameras,
then it comes down to which camera has the higher image quality. If image quality was my second requirement (after affordability) I would probably be using a 20D or a SD10, and I wouldn't have been outside enjoying the rain today.
It's like the sports shooter we discussed earlier. Clearly the D70 has advantages over the 300D in this application: higher frame rate and a selectable continuous AF mode. I wouldn't bother agonizing over individual pixels to decide which one is better, and I certainly
wouldn't pick the 300D based on such scrutiny. If the D70 was obviously
bad that's another thing -- but how many cameras have you seen in the last two years that are bad?