gaius1 Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Nikon won:<ul><li>Scanner (Coolscan V ED)<li>Consumer Digital Compact (Coolpix 5200)<li>35mm SLR (F6)<li>DSLR (D70)<li>Product of the year (D70)</ul>Just for comparison's sake, Canon won:<ul><li>Printer (Pixma IP8500)<li>Enthusiast Digital Compact (G6)</ul> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_franklin Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Yes. The D70 beat out Canon's 1D Mk II and 20D, and the KM D7D to win that category (just for completeness' sake you understand!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShunCheung Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 The F6 must have won by default. What are its compeitions, anyway; some Canon Rebel version 5?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hique Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 The D70 presence in the list makes sense. It's an amateur award. Of course it beats the 1Ds-whatever, it is much cheaper! :) The rebel would be a more apropriate comparison. I don't know what the F6 and the Coolscan V make in that list, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
constance_cook Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 I don't know what the competition for the F6 was. It is good enough to have beaten whatever the competitors threw at it. Conni Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jorgeortega Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 What is wrong with the Coolscan V ED? It is probably the best scanner for an amateur as the title said it is the amateur photographers award. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom_burke3 Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Well the EOS 30V/33V would have been the main competition for the 35mm SLR award, and they're very good cameras, a worthy update of their predecessors. But obviously they don't equal a fully-featured pro SLR like the F6. I think the race between the D70 and 20D must have been very close. The 20D is an excellent camera. About the only area where the D70 betters it is the spot-metering feature. I wonder if in the end the judges were swayed by the rest of the kit? - there's no doubt that the Nikkor 18-70 is better than the EF-S 18-55. As a package, the D70 + 18 -70 might indeed just edge the 20D + 18-55. You don't even get USM with the kit version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewpgrant Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 <i>"I think the race between the D70 and 20D must have been very close"</i> <p></p> There's quite a price difference there - given it's promoted in the context of "amateur" photography, I would assume that value-for-money would factor into the game? That would definately be a substantial consideration in a D70 win over, say, a 20D... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vivek iyer Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 So, this award has nothing to do with any photographer I suppose? All these expensive gadgets do things on their own to win awards? Smart, indeed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lex_jenkins Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 I'm not sure that the 20D was even in the running for this award this year. It's probably like the Oscars and other film and music awards programs for which cutoff dates determine whether an entry will be allowed to compete in a given year. If I'm recalling correctly the 20D hit the stores quite a bit later than the D70. What, no award for the Casio Exilim EX S100? I think that's the coolest P&S digicam this year. I'd carry a P&S digicam a lot more often if it were that size. My Olympus C-3040Z is nearly as large as a compact SLR. Doesn't even fit into my cargo jeans pockets. I can carry my Agfa Isolette medium format folder more easily. Nikon? Care to pick up the tiny gauntlet in the P&S digicam category? Olympus used to own the tiny camera market. Now they've pretty much blown it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arnabdas Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 If talking about AMATEUR gear, my take would be Scanner: Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV Consumer Digital Compact: Canon Powershot A95 DSLR: Canon EOS 20D Product of the year: Minolta Maxxum 7D Enthusiast Digital Compact: Olympus C8080 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arnabdas Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Oh yes, and I didn't realize the F6 is considered an amateur camera. I thought the EOS Rebel T2 would be it. Just think about it ... D70 has got to be a serious amateur/semi pro camera, since the other D2H/D2Hs/D2x are pro cameras -- but F6 is still considered amateur gear. Hmmm .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gaius1 Posted February 24, 2005 Author Share Posted February 24, 2005 Other candidates for 35mm SLR: EOS 30v, EOS 300x, EOS 3000v, Dynax 60. Other candidates for DSLR: EOS 1D-II, EOS 20D, Dynax 7D. The D70 won, they say, because it's the one of those that most exceeded their reviewer's expectations for the price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grant_. Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 what does this all mean? im confused Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vivek iyer Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 According to Amateur Photographer, the F6 is an amateur camera that is the bigg news here! Confusing? Heck, no! This what all the reviewers do nowadays. Promote one company's product over the other. Of course, they do not have any monetary gain from such promotions. They are just trying to be funny to make their reviews/awards more enjoyable! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gaius1 Posted February 24, 2005 Author Share Posted February 24, 2005 I think there is some confusion among many people about this use of the word "amateur". It is not unusual at all these days for an amateur to be better equipped AND produce higher quality work than a professional. Think about it. The minimum-wage kid in your local McDonalds is a "professional" cook. The cabbie who has to ask his passenger for directions is a "professional" driver. Why do so many photographers worship the "pros"? Judge someone ONLY on the quality of their output, says I, there's no such thing as "pro" equipment, it's just a marketing term in that case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom_burke3 Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 AP doesn't just restrict themselves to equipment aimed purely at amateurs. They do have a noticeable bias towards 35mm, however, and pros who use MF (and LF) equipment won't get much coverage in AP. That's not to say there's no coverage of other formats than 35mm (in film, I mean) but it's much less common. So I think that's why the F6 is included. In recent years they've also covered 35mm range finder cameras but not much on point & shoot compacts. Go back far enough and that would all be different - TLRs and other MF cameras, eg folding cameras, would have been among their main subects. In recent years they've also extended themselves to digital point & shoots in a way that perhaps they hadn't in regard to film point & shoot cameras, and also of course digital SLRs. They have also covered non-camera items. Traditionally this would have included enlargers and other items of processing equipment/chemistry; today it means scanners, printers, and media storage. Don't forget that this magazine is very old - they published their 120th anniversary edition a few months ago - and when it was founded an 'amateur photographer' would simply have been an enthusiast. I don't think there would have been any boundaries between the equipment used by such an amateur as compared with that used by a professional of the time. The magazine has just retained the title. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew_kendall Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 The D70 is a worthy winner. A feature of the D70 that continues to be under-valued is its ability to flash-sync at 1/500th (and beyond if you use an old dumb non-TTL flash). For those who use flash a lot this is so liberating since it makes it far easier to balance daylight and flash. Wedding photographers in particular have benefitted. Traditionally they have relied on MF equipment to achieve this, but they now have a viable compact alternative. This feature alone would get my vote above anything Canon currently have to offer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
._._z Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Ooh, the Amateur Photography awards! I'm so excited! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShunCheung Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 In these days the majority of pros are using digital. Therefore, the F6 is primarily for the rich amateurs. :-) Seriously, in areas where pros used the F series cameras until the mid to late 1990's such as news, sports, etc., virtually nobody shoots film any more. They are simply way too slow for the news cycle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
constance_cook Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Shun: Amateur? Yes, I am and I will always be an amateur. Wealthy? No way nor will I ever be. Have an F6? Yes, because I decided that I wanted one. People make choices about what to do with their hard-earned cash. You decide that if I have more of this then I have less of that. You make the tradeoff and then go on with real life. BTW, those I saw buying the F6 were others like me. But I also saw some pros looking at them and buying them. All pros are not shooting news and speed isn't always first. I got mine in Japan but I was in the store 7 - 10 times and saw what people were looking at and trying out. I do think the choices made by Japanese photographers are different from the US market. Conni Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vivek iyer Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 So, it is the (rich) Amateur Photography magazine that is being pointed to? Circulation is in the thousands, I suppose? Connie, Would you care to share your impressions of your F6? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShunCheung Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Conni, the F6 is a fine camera. I played around with one a couple of times at my local store. My impression is that besides the 11 AF points, it is not all that different from the F5. That store also has a large rental department with all sorts of F5, F100, 600mm/f4 lenses for rent. Since people such as you and Ellis have a lot of good things to say about the F6, I tried to rent one just to get some hands on experience with it, but they told me that have no plan to have the F6 for rent simply because there is insufficient demand. They also told me that their body rental is now mainly DSLRs. That is where the problem lies. I have an F4 and an F5, but since I shoot primarily digital now, I have no interest in buying an F6. A number of people have indicated in this forum that they are getting the very expensive D2X, but I can only think of 2, 3 people here who have the F6 and I have heard from multiple pro stores in the US that they have yet to sell one and some don't even bother to stock it, at least as of a few weeks ago. That is very different from the D2X where there are long waiting lists. However, there are reports that the F6 sells well in Japan where a lot of people still prefer film and that may be the justification for producing the F6 to begin with. Therefore, I am not sure it is true that Japanese photographers have the same preference. Again, the F6 is a fine camera produced in the wrong era. That is why there is no competition again it for the film SLR award and that is also why I question about Nikon's priorities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luis triguez Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Amateurs: Lot of time to think how to do a picture, so: better picture. Professionals: Almost no time to think about, so: Usually, worse picture :-)<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
constance_cook Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Shun: We all know by now that for you, if it isn't digital it isn't happening. Fine. The F6 is a very different camera from the F5, which I've used since it came out so I do know the difference between the two. "Playing around with it in the store" only shows the obvious. The "internal" features are very different. Also, the camera is more repsonsive and quieter. The internal features are more a relative to the high end digital cameras than to the F5. If you started with an F6, you could make the move to a high end digital camera with little extra learning effort. It comes close, in many ways to paving the way to a hybrid. Ellis Vener has written a couple of times about the F6 and his impressions (which mirror mine) for an article/review he was writing. I don't know if it still exists but if it does, read it. I suppose I will continue to say to Shun, et al., that this is a very different camera and they will keep posting that they "played around with it in the store and it's not that different." It's that different. Conni Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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