Originally posted by Ash That's quite pessimistic.
Prior to the K-7, Pentaxians have been doing weddings just fine... including me, with a *ist D, K100D, K10D and K20D - all working fine for me each time.
Ash I have to agree. I mean really are we looking for point and shoot cameras? Do we want a monkey to hit the shutter button while we stay home watching football?
I'm going to begin my rant now. You've been far more diplomatic than I.
I really think many of these comments are a commentary on experience and skill of the photographer, much more than the camera in both AF and P-TTL or whatever these "issues" are. I've been shooting weddings on and off since the mid 1980's. Much of that time as my primary income. Trust me the AF system with the LX or 6x7 sucked. You had to keep turning the lens barrel to get the stupid thing to focus. Same for the Canon and Nikons of that era.
Is the AF perfect? Nope but you need to know how to work with it. Same for the P-TTL. Yesterday I was sorting a wedding that was shot indoors completely. Rained like crazy all day. But we had several cool indoor locations for the entire shoot. 85% flash shots and crappy light. 893 images fired in total between a K10 and a K20D. No kidding I missed focus on 6-7 shots and knew it at the time so they were duplicated. The flash shots all look good and I use a large diffuser on both flashes so I'm shooting manual most of the time. But P-TTL can do the job if you want to work with it.
So I'm going to pi$$ some people off here but sorry I don't care.
I read this stuff all the time about the poor equipment and how it sucks blah blah. Guess what? Same crap is posted on other brand forums about the other gear from people who "think" they know what they are doing.
So:
1) why are you here if that is the case? Too cheap to buy a "real" camera?
2) shooting weddings with a Kit lens or doing a few here and there for family. Doesn't count.
3) If you are a real "Pro" then why don't you shoot Canikon? Don't you know they are the only real cameras?
If you want to shoot weddings and have the camera do all the work for you, then fine. Join all the others that shoot 6 weddings a season, all in Jpeg, pass the bride a CD and wait till the next gig.
But if you have practiced and learned the skills (and there are a lot of them) to shoot weddings at a professional level, then these minor complaints are not an issue. You know how to manually focus and manually operate a camera with out the manual in your left hand. You can do just about anything with the gear because you have practiced and prepared for just about any situation. You don't break a sweat when something does not work automatically and perfectly on it's own.
Frankly I wish the stuff was worse, it would seperate the Pros from the Wanna be's