Digital BW, The Print

I have an Olympus C-8080 (an 8MP high-end "prosumer" digicam from 
several years back), which possesses a lot of the stuff bandied about 
as "ideal" for future pro dSLRs: EVF (which on this camera is actually 
quite decent, but not a direct sub for an optical VF, "outside-the-box" 
form factor (which I like a *lot*), and, yes, the dreaded video 
function (which I generally ignore, but works nicely enough, similar to 
my little Casio EX-850). Video functionality has been part-and-parcel 
for consumer digicams almost from the get-go, but since dSLRs have 
always been the El Serioso machines of the market, the inclusion of 
video capture–albeit high-def–seems like a cheap gimmick, though that 
might seem a slap in the face of the engineers who managed to build 
this "extra" into the cameras.

My creative Main Axe these days is a pair of Konica Hexar RF 
rangefinders and lots of film, and that's not likely to change 
radically anytime soon, so all this stuff is mostly academic to me. 
Video stuff generally pores me to tears, but it never got (much) in the 
way of my shooting with digital cameras. I think video is largely a 
distraction (I haven't watched TV on a regular basis for over 20 
years), but it's obviously a marketing "feature" even for high-end 
dSLRs.


- Barrett