Today's major question: Will autofocus SLRs completely replace non-AF SLRs? Answer: As surely as autoexposure SLRs replaced meterless SLRs. When? Give the process five years or so. From a dollar-and-cents point of view, the camera makers don't have any alternative. Since the AF Minolta Maxxum first appeared, AF SLR sales have beaten non-AF SLR sales silly. Camera makers aren't going to cater the whims of a manual-focus-audience if it doesn't exist. If you were a camera maker, you wouldn't either.
What Mr. Keppler couldn't foresee is that a few decades later a niche would open for traditionally-styled (sometimes even traditionally calculated) manual focus prime lenses for DSLRs. Case in point: Cosinas "Zeiss ZF" line, Nikon's and Pentaxes pancake lenses.
Posted by: Christoph Hammann | April 04, 2007 at 11:54 PM
I'd rather have the choice myself. AF that I can call on when I want it, manual when I don't. Some of my favourite lenses (of the very few I own) are manual and I love them. Love to use them ... I feel like more of the picture is of me. Probably sounds completely daft, but there it is.
Posted by: Michelle Knight | June 17, 2007 at 04:09 PM