Don Sanderson wrote:
I'm in the process of evaluating my equipment and trying to decide which to keep and which to sell. I have 16-20 Pentax bodies that I will be selling and I'm trying to decide if the *ist should be among them.
It has 3 features that none of my other bodies have. 1.) Wireless flash with the 360FGZ 2.) 2 second mirror prefire. 3.) Continuous Auto Focus mode. (None but my SF-1n have this)
The downsides are: 1.) Long learning curve from the 5n's. (Especially control placement) 2.) Build quality? Is it reliable? 3.) Can't properly use K or M lenses. 4.) Just doesn't sound "right" with the noisey solenoid/motor driven mirror assy.
I would appreciate comments from anyone who has experience with this little beast.
Don
*ist compared with MZ-50 / MZ-5 for my personal use ;-)
+ nice features : auto bracketing / not completely rewinding film / mirror lockup.
- The body does not always report when something is in focus with a manual focus lens (The MZ-5 'beep' a lot ofter when playing around in the same conditions.)
+ Auto focus is better on the *ist (the MZ-5 misses the focus point more often, so focussing sometimes takes a few iterations, I think this is because the focusmotor of the MZ-5 seems stronger / faster to me.)
- A lot of focus points on the *ist, While I only use one.
- When you let the camera choose the focus point for you, it will always choose the wrong one.
+ Better use of external flash (AF220T). The MZ-5 does seem to know the power of the flash. When stopping down too much the MZ-5 thinks no photo can be taken, while the A.check of the flash indicates otherwise. The *ist does not have this problem.
- Using the *ist in manual mode is not as easy as with the MZ-50 / MZ-5. The scroll wheel does not turn as smooth as needed. (And they should have switched the AV / AE-L buttons)
- the *ist feels like a toy camera
- When rewinding film, the *ist does sound like it's having a very hard time.
So, the *ist is mostly loaded with color film for the quick pictures with autofocus lenses, while the MZ-5 is loaded with Black/White and a manual focus lens.
Bye.
Johan.
