On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 5:50 PM, frank theriault <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 7:47 PM, John Sessoms <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Y'all probably already knew this ... I may have forgotten it. >> >> Reading an article on full-frame DSLRs today, and it said the *FIRST* FF >> DSLR was Pentax's MZ-D 6MP prototype shown at Photokina and PMA in 2001. >> >> First PRODUCTION FF DSLR was the Contax N Digital, using the same Phillips >> CCD image chip. >> >> Pentax canceled the project due to "cost", but the article suggested it >> might have been due more to poor image quality that didn't meet Pentax's >> standards. >> >> Don't really mean nothin', but it IS Pentax related. > > Kind of the opposite of Pentax' claim that the Spotmatic was the first > "commercially viable" ttl metering slr. No matter how you look at it, > Topcon brought it to market first, but theirs didn't sell well, and > the Spottie (as we all know) was a sold pretty decently. ;-) > > There were a few reasons why the Topcon didn't sell well, including > the need to dial the maximum f-stop of the lens into the body each > time lenses were changed - a somewhat cumbersome procedure that, if > forgotten, produced badly exposed photos. > > So, in reality: > > The MZ-D wasn't the first FF digital, because it was never produced. > > The Spottie wasn't the first ttl metering slr because it wasn't. > > But I still love Pentax. > > ;-) > > cheers, > frank > -- > "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson >
Actually, the Spotmatic was the first TTL metering SLR, the Topcon was the first _production_ TTL metering SLR. Pentax showed the working Spotmatic prototype before anyone else (Additionally, it was the only spot-metering Spottie, despite the name). -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
