From a technical point of view I agree with you completely - CCD's
and film have different requirements from the way the lense
delivers the light to it for optimun results. The D7, D5, and S304
using the new GT lenses are great proof of the results you can
acheive from a properly designed lens for the digital application.
On the other hand, it would be nice to have a DSLR from Minolta to
take advantage of all my Minolta AF lenses i've aquired for my film
SLR's. Minolta COULD design a new series of lenses just for a DSLR
and while the end result would probably be a better design it
wouldn't help all the other existing Minolta lens owners utilize
their existing lenses.
Minolta had a VERY popular DSLR a number of years ago called the
RD-175 based on the than current Maxxum 500si camera and it
accepted the Maxxum AF lenses. At the time it was the top selling
Pro-level DSLR on the market. Their next model was the RD-3000 that
was a good performer (for it's time) but never caught on well
because it was designed based on the Vectis S1 SLR (APS) body and
accepted the Vectis lenses only. The reasoning at the time was very
sound technically. APS format, and therefore the Vectis APS lenses,
were closer in size to a digital CCD chip compared to lenses such
as the Maxxum series lenses. Using the Vectis lenses allowed the
lense magnifacation factor to be only 1.5x instead of the normal 2x
WITHOUT using a seperate relay optic and therefore causing an
unnecessary light loss at the CCD. Unfortunatly, APS SLR's were
never popular and not a lot of customers already had the Vectis
lenses to use them and they were reluctant to purchase a whole
other series of lenses to use. Most people that have lenses already
want to buy a DSLR that allows them to utilize their existing
lenses. Most people who own Nikon film SLR's are going to be more
interested in the D1 cameras over the Canon digital SLR and vice
versa so they don't have to invest in an additional number of new
lenses. It would be nice for Minolta to introduce a DSLR that does
accept the existing Maxxum lenses for this reason.
Using existing lenses may involve SOME compromise compared to
designing an entirely new series of lenses to work with a DSLR but
Minolta would sell a lot more if they designed it to work with
current lenses. The ability to sell more units is really going to
be the deciding factore soley because of sound business practices.
of course, whether or not Minolta decides to offer a new DSLR at
all is going to be based on their predictions of how many units
they feel they would be able to sell overall. If they feel they can
sell enough units in a relatively small market (the market being
the total number of customers willing and able to purchase a
several thousand dollar Pro-level camera body) currently dominated
by established competitors in that market (Nikon and Canon) than
I'm sure they will release the camera. If they decide the market
can't support Minolta's introduction into it and not enough units
would be sold to justify their considerable expense in devoloping
and manufacturing this model than they won't.
I can be pretty sure that because of their past success with the
RD-175 Minolta has at the very least considered a new DSLR. The
only question remains what their decision on a new model is......
Would anyone happen to know when or even if Minolta will come out
with a big brother to the D-7 that accepts standard lenses?
I hope they won't. "Normal" lenses are just not good enough. They
were designed to produce a large focal plane and a lot of
compromises have been made to keep an equall quality image all over
the focal plane.
One CCD pixel is much smaller than the errors those "old" lenses
produce. This means the CCD chip is perfectly suited to capture
these errors. Is this what you want? an error meassuring device??
;-))) Do not get me wrong, these lenses are perfect and ideal for
film.
That's why they designed a superior lens for the D7.
regards,
Ronny
