bcooter,
if you like the M8 files, you should really take a serious look at the Leica S. Maybe not in just any Leica store, but ask Leica USA for a demo and play with the system for a few days. I've had the M8 and now the S2 and the files have the same look/quality, just bigger.
If a single purpose camera would work for me I'd go that way. If the S had a real oem dedicated tethering suite as robust as C-1 I'd also give it more thought, but my world has changed.
Yes I like the ccd m8 files, probably would like the m9 files (obviously some people do because those cameras are sold out everywhere), and I'm sure I'd love an S series.
The thing is we shoot so differently today. I'd love the time to set strobes for 2 hours, shoot 1 frame every few seconds (at most) and never here the word video, motion, A roll, B roll, C roll, a cam, b cam, c cam again, but honestly my world isn't like that anymore.
Even for a "dedicated" still shoot that requires "some" video, we'll spend a week on still post production, a month on motion and everybody forgets about the stills, and asks about the video.
I got out of a creative meeting yesterday in NY and the gig was a "still" shoot and was told video wasn't that important. By the end of the meeting we talked about the video for 1 hour, 20 minutes about the stills because everything shot will go on into in store lcds and on large time square panels and well, lcds move.
To me 7 years ago I'd jump at an S2 or S. Those were the days where I was a still photographer, not a content provider, but times have changed, client briefs are different and money has to be allocated towards what is expected.
$40,000 for a still camera only is a big outlay, considering the camera is beautiful.
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Rob,
If you hand held the 6x7 Pentax you did it wrong. Everybody I've known that used them (some still do) either used strobe with very little ambient light, or shot with 2.5 k hmi's and a full lighting crew and nearly everyone had them on a tripod.
They were great for that, but low light, anything close to 125th of a second produced mirror slap and with long lenses, even higher shutter speed.
With Polaroid you needed a second body, if you shot fast you needed 4 bodies because loading them took the dexterity of a brain surgeon and considering film cameras (not digital) they weren't cheap and Pentax also had a bad habit of saturating the market with product then disappearing for two years.
I bought one body two lenses once and sold it, because it just was too much work and for 6x7 the real winner was the Mamiya RZ. That was a huge camera, but for heavy Ad work, (back in the days when a few setups a day were fine), was the camera of choice.
In fact if someone made a new autofocus RZ that fit a cost effective digital back, had a rotating back that registered in the viewfinder, had faster lenses and didn't cost more than an S class Merc, they'd probably sell them like crazy.
Maybe not, because for the Milly generation the pro camera of choice is a 5d3 or a d800. That group is positive they're in pro territory because it's bigger than their other camera of choice, an I phone.
IMO
BC
