Ken Rockwells "best cameras"

[Solarflare]

Wasnt there at some point a complaint that Ken Rockwell has so many "best camera" ?

Well he explained it recently:

Where we stand

Loads of new cameras came out in the past weeks, and have changed the pecking order.

Let me clarify where everything stands today, since It takes a while to go back and rewrite all the old reviews. You need to understand how I use weasel words to carve-out smaller classes in which one camera or another can be "best."

The world's best camera, period, is the Mamiya 7 or Mamiya 6, depending on your preference for format and/or collapsing lenses. They are small, light, and are real medium-format cameras with all that that brings to the party.

The world's best 35mm camera is the LEICA M3. Nothing handles better or faster, and LEICA's lenses are better than any SLR lenses.

The LEICA M9 has been the world's best digital camera. Even if its color rendition is poor, people don't buy LEICAs to take pictures, so it doesn't matter. Its biggest drawback has been the lack of TTL viewing, and the newest LEICA M claims to add this in, so the LEICA M may be the new best. We'll see, and see if its color rendition has been upgraded to at least as good as a Canon point and shoot. We'll see.

The world's best SLR (note how the weasel word "SLR" now excludes all rangefinder LEICA) is the Nikon F6. What no one can figure out is how did Nikon get everything so right with the in-hand feel of the F6, and then lose it on other cameras introduced since?

The world's best DSLR is the Canon 5D Mark III, hands down. In this case, I'm weasel-wording by restricting the category to digital SLR. The F6 is better than the 5D Mark III, but if you're only considering digital, the 5D Mark III is the world's best DSLR. It has unbeaten image quality with none of Nikon's color-shift problems, along with far better ergonomics than anything from Nikon' DSLRs.

The Nikon D800E can be the top camera if you want the technically highest-resolution images in something reasonably portable that costs less than a new Mercedes, however people with the level or artistic vision and technical expertise to be able to take full advantage of the D800E usually aren't coming to me looking for camera suggestions. Heck, even I don't want 36MP; for me, 20-24MP is way more than enough and much easier to work with the volume I shoot, but if you're an NEF shooter, sure, go D800E.

Nikon's best DSLR is the newest Nikon D600. It's got the same guts as the older, heavier and more expensive D4 and D800, with far superior ergonomics at a much lower price. The D600 is a much better camera, and the fact that it costs much less makes it a no-brainer that the D600 is Nikon's best DSLR ever.

The world's best professional DSLR is the Canon 1D X. It's the world's fastest, and it's smart and very, very good.

Nikon's top professional DSLR is still the discontinued Nikon D3S, which is the same as the D3, with a sensor cleaner. The D4 has color shift problems just like the D800 and D600, and has no AF controls on the back of the camera, so my pals all bought the D3S on closeout when the D4 was announced.

The Nikon D3X was Nikon's top pro camera for nature and portrait and landscape work for years, but it was predatorily priced so no one bought it. Today we get the same 24MP FX images from the D600, so as of this week, the D3X can safely be forgotten. If you're rich and don't care about the price and the weight, the D3X is still a marvelous camera.

The Canon 6D won't exist for months. When it does come out, it may replace the 5D Mark III for most uses. I really do use both cards at the same time for backup, so for me the 6D, with only one card slot, won't cut it, but for most very serious amateurs, the 6D may become the ticket since as the world's lightest full-frame DSLR you'll be able to get farther with it to bring back more and better pictures.

 

[panblue]

...That clears THAT up then!...

 

[fjrabon]

why do we care? And this is coming from somebody who actually doesn't mind Ken Rockwell. But really, why the heck does it matter which cameras Ken Rockwell thinks are best?

 

[Solarflare]

Same reason why one would care any forum member thinks a camera ist best ?

Or Ming Thein, Steve Huff, Thom Hogan (also here) and a lot of photographers who dont have a blog or other kind of website.

In the end, it helps choosing your own camera, doesnt it ?

 

[fjrabon]

Same reason why one would care any forum member thinks a camera ist best ?

Or Ming Thein, Steve Huff, Thom Hogan (also here) and a lot of photographers who dont have a blog or other kind of website.

In the end, it helps choosing your own camera, doesnt it ?

well, I mean most people read those sites for IN DEPTH reviews. Not just "I think this is the best of this type". Knowing Ken Rockwell thinks something is the best is completely unhelpful to me. I use teles a lot for sports, Ken doesn't shoot any sports and hates teles. Ken's best cameras are sorta kinda, maybe useful if you shoot exactly like Ken. The problem with Ken is he doesn't do a whole lot of explaining about what's good and bad with cameras. It's just a bunch of attention grabbing headlines, that ultimately just point to what his opinions for the way he shoots are.

For instance, I trust Sw1tchfx and Derrel's opinions on gear, but I'd never really pay attention if they made a list of 'best gear'. But they don't. They tend to list out the pros and the cons, which allows you to figure out how well the given piece of gear will fulfill your needs. This 'best' list ken has doesn't do that at all.

He lists the 5DIII as the best digital there is. I don't know any sports shooters who think that. They're either shooting the 1DX or the 7D canon side or the D4 or D300S Nikon side.

Another issue is that it's impossible to decipher if he thinks that the 5DIII is better than the 1DX. He calls the 5DIII the world's best digital camera, and the 1DX the world's best professional digital camera?

 

[panblue]

I read KR's general articles on photography (Ken's philosophy, so to speak). Other than that, I would Google "item X + Rockwell" for reviews of what I see around, second-hand (lenses). For cameras, I'd look instead at DPReview or DXO etc.

On the whole, I think Ken's an asset to photography on the net and so is Hogan. His tendency to be erratic or contradictory is maybe a quirk of being both passionate and experienced, technician and artist. IMO, you'll get gems from Ken's website that you won't get anywhere else..and then there's also info that you'll want to get anywhere else, other than Ken's site

The irony is..by the time you know enough to vet what KR has to say.. you probably don't need to listen to him anymore lol.!!

 

[Buckster]

The irony is..by the time you know enough to vet what KR has to say.. you probably don't need to listen to him anymore lol.!!

Which is exactly what makes him and his site useless.

 

[Mully]

His lighting sucks... Sort of flamethrower style.

 

[fmw]

The best camera is the camera that is in the hands of the best photographer. A good photographer can make good images with any camera. A poor photographer can't make good images with any camera. I think the issue of a best camera is fairly nonsensical.

 

[panblue]

Except the lens reviews.

The irony is..by the time you know enough to vet what KR has to say.. you probably don't need to listen to him anymore lol.!!

Which is exactly what makes him and his site useless.

 

[panblue]

The best camera is .. the one Kenneth has just bought (with his own money), just before he sells it on ebay.

 

[Buckster]

Except the lens reviews.

The irony is..by the time you know enough to vet what KR has to say.. you probably don't need to listen to him anymore lol.!!

Which is exactly what makes him and his site useless.

Plenty of reputable lens review sites render him and his site useless.

 

[panblue]

What makes you regard his lens reviews as useless?

Except the lens reviews.

Which is exactly what makes him and his site useless.

Plenty of reputable lens review sites render him and his site useless.

 

[unpopular]

^^ i think the only part of his website that isn't useless is the aliens and supernatural stuff.

at least that's entertaining.

 

[Buckster]

What makes you regard his lens reviews as useless?

Except the lens reviews.

Plenty of reputable lens review sites render him and his site useless.

I just spelled it out once, but here it is again, in different words: Other sites that are well respected and not full of crap information and self-aggrandizing egomaniacal crotch-grabbing have lens reviews well-covered already, so his site and views are superfluous, unnecessary, not needed, irrelevant, pointless.

IMHO, of course.