
All the cameras I lust after—still—are film cameras. This is downright strange, as I don't shoot film any more. Well, there's nothing stopping me from doing so, so I can still think about it. Actually, there is something stopping me from doing so: the fact that digital just plain makes it possible for me to take better pictures in a wider variety of situations. The advantages are impossible to ignore. I still shoot Tri-X in my dreams, though. (Another confession: I actually do dream of shooting pictures.)
Among postulated cameras, here's the crux of my dilemma: there's a sort of ordering of features that are important to me, each of which sort of rules out a large portion of the existing market.
Anti-shake in the body. I've said before, and I'll say again, that this may not be a crucial feature for every photographer. But it is for me. All that anti-shake (a.k.a. Image Stabilization, a.k.a. Vibration Reduction, etc.) does is take you 1.5 to 3 stops into tripod territory, with many of the same limitations. But when I look through my favorite shots of the past two years, it's just amazing how many of them were either helped, or were made possible, by this wonderful feature. Again: not a deal-breaker for many photographers. But a must for me. And so all cameras that don't have this feature are ruled out. All that's left in the current landscape are the Pentax K100D and K10D, and the Sony Alpha A100. (Right? Correct me if I'm wrong.)

But screw that. I want better, dammit. So the Sony Alpha A100 and the Pentax K100D are ruled out here.
You'll not have failed to notice that this leave me all of one current option should I happen to be in the market to replace the 7D—the Pentax K10D. Which I have not yet even seen.
Responsiveness. A crucial camera feature. ("Responsiveness" just means how fast the camera does what you tell it to, and, secondarily, how fast it does what it does, such as, say, autofocus in low light.) The 7D is adequate, but just barely. Nikon seems to be paying special attention to this.
Sensor size. I'm partial to the APS-C, 1.5X crop, 24x15mm class of sensors. I find it is just about what I want for d.o.f. and pixel quality. And some of my favored lenses are APS-C only. So I would want a camera with this size sensor. Maybe in ten years, or fifteen, I'll have slowed down enough, and the cameras will have improved enough, that I'll be hankering after a "645"-size sensor. Not yet.
The future? Well, it's astonishing that I'm already thinking of the 7D, which is the fifth or sixth most expensive camera I've ever bought, as disposable—but it is, and I am. (It's not exactly up to me.) But in two or three years I'll probably be looking at the K10D, the next Sony SLR that's upmarket of the A100—that's assuming Sony in its inscrutable mega-corporation fickleness decides to stay in the DSLR market—the Olympus "E-2," and any possible future Canikon that puts anti-shake in the body.

Dream cameras: they don't really exist any more. But we can always dream.
Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON
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