Originally posted by *isteve Probably because Canons do NOT have AF assist lamps and yet they manage to focus pretty well in low light last time I checked.
In fact, nor do Oly and Sony AFAIK. The Sony A700 and Oly E3 have the fastest AF speeds of the lot.
Plus an AF assist beam is no more useful than the flash strobe because it has a very limited range and is a pain when you forget to turn it off at a concert.
Strobe works in a funny way, every time I am trying to take a picture of people who are a few feet away from me, and the strobe is firing, my subjects end up in pictures with facial expressions like they were hit by a truck, or they just turn away because they are annoyed by the strobe. This is one neat feature indeed.
>>So before you have a go at Pentax, why not check your facts.
This is not true, NEW generations of Canon cameras are using flash to AF assist. Dedicated AF assist lamp disappeared with introduction of Canon 10D, it was present, for example in Canon D60, it was reintroduced in Canon Digital Rebel 300D, and then was dropped again.
A few of my friends who use Canon didn't like the fact that the dedicated lamp was dropped from the design. Guess they are not different from us.
And lastly, this is not an issue for concerts because stage is usually lit more then enough for even my prehistoric *istD to focus just fine.