hmm, i shoot exclusively vintage lenses but on digital cameras (ok, i have a few film cameras that i use for fun a bit, but film is too expensive). there's two big reasons for this: 1) i hate autofocus with a passion. it sucks all the joy out of photography and makes me change the way i compose. also, it sucks for taking pictures of kids. i know lots of people say they need AF to get their kiddy pics but i think they just don't know how to manual focus. even with a big pro camera and the latest 24-70/2.8 i get way more keepers if i just turn AF off. no fiddling with focus points or trusting the camera to choose them for you just focus while to track the kid and take the picture. anyway, enough of that rant – vintage lenses are better built for manual focus than modern ones (even the current zeiss manual focus lenses). 2) 30-50 year old (or beyond) lenses just have more character. modern lenses are mostly sharp everywhere (assuming you can get them to focus) and well corrected for most aberrations (seriously most people i see complaining about unsharp lenses on the internet just have AF problems... ok now i'm really done with the AF rant). back in the old days lens designers had to decide which imperfections they could leave and which they would correct since there was only so much they could do (before computers made calculations easier). i suspect this made them think about the type of "look" they wanted to a greater extent when they decided on the lens design. i have a bunch of lenses that produce amazing looking flawed images and i would never choose a modern perfect lens to replace them. my favs are the rokkors 58/1.2, 28/2, and 24/2.8, the c/y 35/1.4 and 85/1.4, leica m 35/1.4 pre-asph, 40/2 c-summicron, 75/1.4 lux. also the contax g 28/2.8, but that is an AF lens that i had to remove the optics from and stick in a manual focus helicoid to make it fully usable for myself. with regard to vintage audio, i have an old pioneer 727 receiver and an old marantz 6200 turntable. i like vinyl for the experience not the sound quality (digital is just better quality just like with cameras :) ), so there was no point spending more than $50 on a turntable for me. the receiver was inherited but turned out to be a much better pre-amp for the TT than cheap modern ones or the one in my HK 7300. despite doing a lot of elecronics testing and modification/repair for work, i've never bothered to do more than superficial maintenance on the pioneer receiver. i compared it to the HK 7300 and a cheap 7.1 channel kenwood receiver. the old pioneer is obviously warmer sounding than both and way more powerful than the the kenwood despite being rated at 40 watts per channel versus 100 watts per channel (i believe the method for rating amplifiers has changed). in blind tests of my friends most people prefer the old pioneer over either of the more modern ones, though choice of the pioneer versus the HK seemed less definite (none of my friends are audiofiles though).

Mike, not really sure what you're wishing me good luck with? trying to produce moire? i certainly agree that moire with the d800e will be a non-issue for most photographers (however your test does nothing to show this). moreover, the ones for whom it will be an issue will already know how to deal with it. what i don't understand is what you are trying to show with your test? none of your examples say anything about the importance of an AA filter or lack there of. what they do address is the importance of using proper downsizing methods to avoid aliasing (moire is a type of aliasing incidently). that doesn't really have anything to do with the d800e any more than any other modern digital camera though. if you wanted to show that moire isn't really an issue with the d800e a more useful thing to do would be to take a picture that actually had some sensor aliasing in it (instead of shots that had no chance of producing it) and downsized them to show at what print size the aliasing would be unnoticeable. in your addendum that you added after my original comment you said: "You're just not going to see sensor aliasing with a camera with this much resolution unless you're a nut about it—you'd have to work very smart and very hard to bring it out in a print (which is the only place it can matter, because when do you need to show an image at an exact resolution online, at a size that greatly exceeds the size of any monitor?)." as an inhabitant of some of the geekiest corners o' the tubes, i feel compelled to remind you that this statement is not really true. the most obvious type of sensor aliasing is color moire, which can produce large swaths of color where there was none in the original scene. this false color can easily remain quite visible in small prints and web sized images. such false color can often be produced in a typical cityscape, so it doesn't take much skill or thought to produce.

aliasing artifacts occur when you sample a high frequency signal at a sampling rate lower than the frequency of the signal. in the photographic world this means when you take a picture of fine details that exceed the resolution of the camera sensor. AA filters act as low pass filters that prevent any details at spatial frequencies higher than what the sensor is capable of recording. the type of moire you are showing has absolutely nothing to do with what an AA filter is designed to prevent. what you are seeing is aliasing patterns due to downsizing. when you drastically reduce the resolution of an image you (obviously) reduce the maximum spatial frequency of that can be shown in the image. if you want to see the type of moire caused by the d800e's lack of AA filter you need to actually exceed the the sensors considerable resolution. that basically means backing away from the screen so far that the sensor cannot separate the lines of the screen. you can only see the aliasing artifacts for what they are at 100%. when you downsize you are resampling the data creating more confounding artifacts (one way to avoid this is actually including a blurring step prior to downsizing). the biggest problem found with sensors without AA filters is color moire where you get a colored aliasing pattern appearing over a repeated pattern (like fabric or a window screen that exceeds the sensors resolution). if you know what you are doing, such moire patterns are easy to provoke even with a lot of cameras that have AA filters (AA filters can't physically be perfect and the strength of AA filters seems to vary between manufacturers and models). people who have to deal with them regularly (eg fashion photographers) will, of course, know when they'll occur and how to deal with them.

looks to me like it's either a bright 6 sided hexagon or 6 close and evenly spaced point light sources (most likely cut glass on a liquor bottle as mentioned earlier). such objects will often produce such shapes in the parts of the frame where the lens produces circular bokeh rings. i see similar things often photographing flowers, where there often are some number of symmetrically spaced out of focus petals. for example: [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/28476552@N04/6947247545/]here[/url] (under the railing) and [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/28476552@N04/7937843280/]here[/url], though as you can see the bokeh ring borders are less clear than a point source would produce. i also have the tendency to bokeh peek more often than pixel peep, though for me spherical aberration and astigmatism are most interesting.

i can't believe you folks are seriously calling the d600 a compact anything. it's giant! if i set it next to any of my film slrs it makes them look like the rx1. speaking of which, that thing looks very nice. shame about the lack of flip up lcd and built in evf.

Mark comments: "Canon lovers (and, I assume Canon themselves) would counter with the fact that the adaptor will allow all EOS lenses to fit. Admittedly, that's a lot of big quality glass on one small body." Ah, but you can use all those lenses on a sony NEX-5N with the kipon adapter as well for the same price. On paper, at least to me, the NEX-5N seems to be a more capable camera: optional evf, tilt lcd, better sensor, focus peaking for video, etc. The kipon adapter even allows auto aperture and IS from eos lenses to work on the NEX. no autofocus, but it seems like the autofocus from eos lenses won't really be usable on the eos-m either. The only real reason to buy the eos-m over a NEX-5N that I can see is the 22mm lens. That lens is a huge advantage over any aps-c system or 4/3 system to date. Seriously, why has it taken a decade for any manufacturer to make 35mm equiv f/2 (every manufacturer had one in film days) lens for their crop lineup! µ4/3 has come close with the 20/1.7 and 17/2.8 at least. Mike comments: "adapted lenses (others' mileage may vary) [...] They're kludges, best for occasional needs, not for regular use." I'm another dissenter here. I use exclusively adapted (or mount converted) lenses because I find on camera control of focus and aperture to be kludgy. The aperture ring and focus ring on good ol' manual focus lenses work so much more smoothly and consistently for me than the electronic variety. I like that I get to keep using my favorite lenses too...

"'It's beautifully and pleasingly well made.' Come on, it's made from plastic. A Nikkor Ais lens is beautifully made. This Oly is ok for the money, let's describe it that way. No bad things? What about the not included lens hood? I think this lens is very nice but let's be a bit more critical please." a nikkor AIS lens is a cheaply made (mostly) metal lens. leica R, rokkor MC, takumars, or even many of the pre AIS nikkors would be better examples of beautifully made lenses. i agree with your point though - i know expectations are low these days, but just because a lens doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart in your hand doesn't qualify it as "beautifully made". "The second weakness was a truly strange and sporadic bokeh behind the point of focus when the lens was focused at near to middle distances: out-of-focus areas would contain double images of objects that were well displaced from each other to an extent that I have never seen in another lens." if these oof objects were lights i'd say that sounds like a flare issue. otherwise, no idea. i'm curious to see an example now...

bah, this camera pisses me off more than any other because it is almost perfect for me. i like simple cameras. i've never read a camera manual and never will. i can count all the things i want a camera to do on my fingers and i don't care if it can do more or not. i don't understand why you want it to not do things though, just don't use those features. the first thing i always do when i get a new digital camera is turn off autofocus. i never turn it back on. the viewfinder on the a900 is fantastic for manual focus, almost makes me forget that some of that light is going to the useless (to me) autofocus sensor. i don't care about the lens system i'm buying into – i use my favorite lenses no matter what brand of camera i shoot. if i can't use an adapter to mount them i take them to the machine shop and make new mounts for them. BUT, i'm still not trusting the viewfinder for focusing lenses near infinity for landscape shots (still better than anybodies autofocus at infinity though). liveview is so much more accurate for that. the difference between being kinda close to perfect focus and having perfect focus is huge. i'm never shooting film (or a rangefinder) for anything other social snaps anymore for this reason too. this killed the a900 for me, what good are all those pixels if you can't count on perfect focus when it counts most. maybe i'll buy a used one for portraits when it drops to the price of the original canon 5D.

mike johnston wrote: "The OED is a descriptive dictionary (the granddaddy of them, in fact), like Merriam-Webster's. A descriptive dictionary means that its standard is how people tend to use a word, regardless of etymology or propriety." ah, this is the kind of dictionary that appeals to me. i have no use for a dictionary that tells me what words used to mean. languages continue to evolve and fighting that evolution is a losing and pointless battle. i'm sure marketers are much more interested in how words will be understood than in the "etymology or propriety" of the words.

i'm a weird one who bought the a55 specificly because it had an evf (also IBIS). i exclusively shoot manual focus so i was attracted by the ability to zoom for focusing as well as getting a real wysiwyg experience of dof and not having to deal with focus screen calibration issues. anyway since i'm only shooting manual focus i removed the mirror as it served no purpose for me. from the few shots i took prior to removing it there was no difference in image quality with or without. my canon FL 55mm f/1.2 lens outresolved the sensor at the same apertures with and without the mirror (for those keeping track diffraction becomes visible somewhere between f/5.6 and f/8). the light loss due to the mirror was about 1/3 of a stop - this is the reason i removed the mirror, i need all the light i can get. anyway, image quality is the best i've seen from an aps-c camera and focusing and composing with the evf is fantastic except (obviously) on fast moving subjects. hopefully the newer high res high refresh rate a77 will be a substantial improvement in those situations.

hooray! finally (after what? like 10 years), people are starting to realize liveview might have some uses for "serious" photography. i have long since decided i will never buy another dslr that doesn't have liveview (and probably not one that doesn't have a tilt screen). there are just so many things you can't do or can't do near as well with only a viewfinder.

i take pictures of my feet all the time on digital, very rarely my keyboard. maybe this is because i exclusively use old manual focus lenses on digital though. on film i never took pictures of my feet except to start out a roll, film is too expensive and one can always just shoot an empty camera if they are just fooling about.

the thing i find most attractive about the x1 is also the thing i find least attractive about it (other than the ridiculous price): the lens. i love the idea of a high quality 35mm equivalent, especially one that can retract into the body when not in use to save space. unfortunately, i can not live with f/2.8 or without decent manual focus (i don't care if has autofocus). if it were f/2 and that bit of lens that is always sticking out of the body functioned as a real (mechanical) focus ring i would be quite tempted. as it is i have no interest in the camera. i bought a sony NEX instead and am very impressed with it (especially with a quality manual focus/aperture lens). my only real complaints are that there is no good compact 35mm equiv lens option (i'm stuck with 60mm equiv right now). as far as the comment about f/2.8 being plenty goes, it really depends on what you plan to shoot. that's fine if all your shooting is during the daylight hours and you don't want a particularly narrow dof. i shoot at night and indoors a lot and am continually surprised how much difference a single stop makes. i normally use an f/1.2 lens but every once in a while try out my f/1.8 to make the camera that much smaller. every time i do i end up very frustrated at the number of shots i can't get at iso 3200 or lower.

i know it's heresy around here to say this, but i have no interest in a digital rangefinder. rangefinders have to be bigger than a gf1 for accurate focusing of large aperture lenses. i also often like to focus lenses closer than .7m. finally, i like to see my dof when i compose. i want a modernization of the rangefinder not a replica of an 85 year old design with a digital sensor made with less mechanical precision than the actual 85 year old camera (to keep costs down). i want a gf1 sized body (or smaller) with a high resolution built in evf where a rangefinder viewfinder would be. it can have autofocus to attract more people (but i probably won't use it). it should have a 100% patch as Chez Wimpy suggests and you should be able to move that patch around to any place on the frame you deem fit. finally there should be a focus distance and dof readout at the bottom of the evf along with aperture, shutter speed, iso, exposure compensation, and what have you. image stabilization would be great too. if there's room for an lcd great, if not whatever. same goes for controls beyond what is on a leica m.

"I bought an adapter so I could use my M lenses on m4/3, and I used it a few times and found that manual operation on my Panasonics just wasn't worth the effort." different strokes for different folks i guess. i tried my old manual focus lenses on my dslr and i stopped using the autofocus ones (or turned off the autofocus when i needed the focal length). autofocus is certainly faster in certain situations but mostly i find it gets in the way (you have to focus and compose separately) and is less precise. i ended up getting a sony NEX rather than gf1 or olympus pen because i found it to be better (ergonomics) for using old manual focus glass. i am currently having a great time with old pen f glass on it (every once in a while i'll use the 16mm but i turn off the autofocus). anyway, this lens looks very exciting and i hope the image circle is big enough for me to convert it to a NEX mount (or cosina releases it in all mirrorless mounts).

the new mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras have actually made it possible to eliminate most of the sources of problems in old film cameras - as long as you're willing to shoot fully manually. you can see actual exposure on the lcd/evf and histogram overlay. you can see actual focus at ~100% crop level as you take the picture. mirrorless cameras also get rid of the lens lock in to a large degree. you can put pretty much any lens on them (just don't expect to get autofocus or auto aperture). Mike - while you're saving for that Sony a850 you can probably get ~$20 adapter to use your lens on the camera you do have. it will be a bit bulky but it'll keep the lens from just sitting around unused and give you a nice 70mm f/2 to go with your 40mm f/1.7. anyway, cameras are still very important because of ergonomics and the differences in sensors between them. most of their mechanical deficiencies are becoming less important though, at least to someone like me who prefers to move slow and take manual control.

"No, somewhat strangely, the manual-focus Zeiss Z[x] lenses are not available in Sony ZA mount." -Mike You can however get the the ZS Zeiss 35mm f/2 in m42 mount and an m42 to alpha adapter. You would have to stop down manually though (never bothers me but some people hate it). "I've never understood this whole Sony/Minolta thing. It's like some sad cult based on the Yugo... I find it hard to scrape up any sympathy for Sony users; they should simply behave like adults, swallow their pride and move to Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Leica, etc." - John Camp I don't actually have any FF dslr but have been planning to get one for some time. From my perspective Sony has two big advantages in this area: in body image stabilization and the fact that Sony's 24mp camera costs $6000! less than Nikons. These made Sony seem more attractive to me than Canon of Nikon prior to hearing that they might be abandoning their FF line of cameras.

"The chilling part is a storm like could hit hit Austin, Dallas, Oklahoma City or Kansas City and the devastation will be beyond comprehension." according to the first random website i looked for tornados have hit major city centers: Miami, FL, Nashville, TN, Wichita, KS, Fort Worth, TX and Oklahoma City have all been hit by F3 or stronger tornados. http://addins.wrex.com/blogs/weather/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/tornado.jpg if only there were more photographers on the scene.

"Once humans started doing that, they just never quit. So why is it that the few other animals that do invent and make tools seem to come up with one or two useful things and then just stop? THAT'S a tough one for me!" actually once humans started using tools they didn't advance much either. it took a couple million years or more to advance out of the stone age (i'm not aware of tool use being prevalent enough in any animals for it to be tracked in the fossil record). if memory serves, rapid advancements in tool making did not occur until humans began forming permanent settlements (nomads still don't really advance when they are not disturbed). it only took 8000 years to go from permanent settlements to the computer age. things seem to have accelerated a bit, and to be honest things didn't move very fast during that first ~7500 years compared to the way they have moved since the scientific method caught on. so perhaps all the tool making animals need to advance more quickly is have the free time that doesn't need to be devoted to survival that comes from permanent settlements (and agriculture). anyway, perhaps this has diverged far enough from photography and i should stop.

i feel i should comment on this since i work in a lab that studies the grammatical abilities of animals (though it's not my specialty). many songbirds (not sure about parrots) most definitely have their own grammar/syntax - different elements of bird song are always arranged following specific rules even though the birds are physically capable of arranging the song in a different way. it may be that this innate grammar gives them an increased capacity to learn other grammars. there have been a number of studies into grammatical abilities of a variety of animals as of late and it seems that monkeys agree with Chomsky: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/303/5656/377 while birds (starlings not parrots) do not: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7088/full/nature04675.html it seems likely that any shared grammatical abilities between humans and birds (if that is really what is shown in the starling paper) most likely evolved independently rather than from a common reptilian ancestor. this brings up the very interesting evolutionary question of what circumstances drove such evolution (were they the same)? Is vocal learning a necessary prerequisite. Do other animals that exhibit vocal learning also have grammatical abilities (there are only a few others)?

i'm afraid i must start by begging the pardon all earlier commenters not included in the featured comments - i haven't read your comments yet. i will, just wanted to get my own comment in before the comments close. also, an apology to Ctein - i am not actually going to answer your question. i'm just going to talk about what is art and what isn't and perception. art is like the old question about a tree falling in the forest. for an object to be art it must be both produced by God or man and perceived. if an object is never perceived as art it is not art. by perceived as art i do not mean that somebody thinks it is art. i mean a definition i just made up as i type this: something is perceived as art if the observation of it by a person causes that person to think about life and/or the universe in way they never would have on their own without the outside force exerted by what has just officially become art. for the purposes of my definition the observer can be the same person as the creator. for an object to be fine art it must cause at least one observer (not the creator) to think about life/universe in a novel way (as described before), but exactly as the creator of the art intended. obviously this is just my opinion and it is a subjective definition anyway. i am happy with the definition nevertheless (i am constantly amazed that nevertheless is a real word). it is quite clear that perception of art is highly variable depending on context and whether we are looking for it. this is illustrated wonderfully in the washington post article i link below. the article describes how a virtuoso musician played what are certainly examples of fine art (by my definition as well as by the definition of those with actual credentials to make such judgements) to commuters passing through a Washington DC subway station. essentially no one noticed - they were not paying attention for such things. in order to see and appreciate art one must be open to it and it helps a lot if they are looking for it. stop and pay attention as you go about your day and you will see art, even fine art, much more often (possibly even photographic form). your life will be improved. here is the link to the article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html it won a pulitzer prize so perhaps it qualifies as art. p.s. i will now actually read the other comments, perhaps i find i have not said anything new.