Originally posted by lesmore49 One of my photo regrets was not getting an LX. BTW I'm also from the wheatfields of Canada. Lived in both....Alberta and Manitoba.
Well, let's be serious, the sticker price of an LX was... not competetive with an F-1N nor an F3, if you could get.
They were.... Beautiful, but not necessarily mutated.
Still. Even in the mid-80s, the LX was apparently history, and no one was letting go of them, even if I wanted to work around such constraints. Also, I was really like, 'OK. What is Pentax's *problem* with focal lengths I like?" Best I could have sold you at the time was a Super Program, anyway, and they were only getting more plasticky from there.
Way I figure it is, Pentax should have *reallly* capitalized on the confusion of the times and *kept* making metal bodies and MF lenses. Waited till the tech matured till they even put their *name* on atofocus lenses that looked like they come out of Knight Rider.
Was not what they chose to do.
Now they are maybe back, but they *did* drop that LX thing before anyone even *imagined* Nikonians would be glowering 'Film Is Dead.'
If they'd stayed with some basic idea of, 'This is made of metal, Y ou can focus with your hand, ' they might have lasted through the 90's. And aughts. If no one's heard of Pentax *now* it's a legacy they squandered in the past, imitating others and painting the plastic silver.
There's a lot of detrctors who thin gthe name actually carries some non-1337nesse or some other damn geeky thing now that a pixel is involved, but the LX, if history is a lesson, is a camera which is revered becasue, no innovations, no bells and whistles, but because someone stopped to *perfect* everything available at the time.
Unfortunately, they weren't alone, as it turned out, but..... when makers do that, this is where we get classic cameras. When I was coming up, I fidn't konw how spoiled we were. You *could* have had the LX, if you were a prime lens shooter, and you had a problem, and no one else could help, , and could find one, (and I wasn't quite that crusty yet in exciting times,) Or, an F3HP, which *looked* beautiful to shoot through and handled like a dog,
Ha. That's a better Grace Jones. ' You give me this quare motor drive. What's this. I will tell you when your camere is not new Wave enough. Until then. Silence!'
(It *was* the 80's, btw, From what I see in 'News and Rumors' it seems people put as much effort into camera stuff as we *used* to put into reducing 'Wereallgonnadie' to like *one syllable.*
Perspective.
It's ...kind of like...the LX was this camera that, if you much liked prime lenses, ou could go out and shoot with *now.* Kinda like the Terminator movies, there was no Terminator 2 or Terminator 5: The Divine Redemption. There was just the one movie and it was about Reagan having the nuclear triggers and no one messing with it politically, it was just that one thing, where you faced the day thinking you might die with maybe a couple rols of Tri-X in your left pocket *now* and it wouldn't be about anything but.... Bombs. And humanity.
That was it.
Few stopped to 'perfect' film cameras, but the LX was a fine thing.
Kind of how classics are made, is that.