Originally posted by monochrome You just stated one of the problems we have in our society creating an ordered meritocracy (deciding what is "the best").
There must be a logical progression to the order, such that there is a
- Standard, then a
- Comparative, then THE
- Superlative
In common parlance we refer to this progression as
- Good leads to
- Better leads to
- Best
Unfortunately unless all participants agree on the Standard we can never rank the members of the Class against each other fairly. We can't create an ordered meritocracy.
Until we agree on what is Good we can never agree on what is Best.
This problem exists in virtually every argument in our modern society - and the problem all stems from a Logic Innovation that swept Law Schools in the sixties - Critical Thinking.
The central tenet of Critical Thinking is that your preconceived assumptions are incorrect. You must examine them, question them, identify their faults and replace your assumptions with the correct assumptions (which we will teach you). Then , using these new, correct assumptions, using this new notion of what is Good, you will create a proper ordering of things. You will find a new Best.
So we can't agree on whether FF or APSc or m4/3 or 1/2" or Medium Format is the Standard against which everything else shall be measured.
There is no "Best" camera. There is no "Best" anything.
Because there is no Good.
Bloody hell, all I said is that i'm prejudiced against 4/3rds. All I did was express my opinion, I didn't expect to derail the discussion over a full flung argument over quantifying what is "best".
Don't confuse me for an expert, an expert is someone who has found one thing that is more interesting than sex, and as far as I can see i'm a
long way off from being an expert.
okay: now back to full frame cameras. It should be possible for pentax to keep the form factor of the K5, with only a few adjustments to the mirror box and pentaprism housing. However there are some limitations how big they can make it before it makes the whole camera unwieldy, I consider the viewfinder on the ME super to be excellent for students - it has one of the highest magnification viewfinders* in 35mm photography however the coverage isn't stellar (92%). I don't really consider a high eyepoint to be all that critical to my work, though there are many that aren't as lucky as I am with their eyesight.
For my work I won't accept anything lower than .8X unless the frame coverage is 95% or greater, if a camera has .7X it is critical that it has 100% coverage.
The D800E: .7X at 100% coverage (Nikon D4 is identical), Canon 1Ds MK III: .75X with 100% coverage, Sony A900: .74X with 100% coverage - just for reference the K5II has a Viewfinder with .92X magnification at 100% coverage
*and for this reason it is excellent for accurately focusing faster lenses.