Decisions, Decisions

What to do? Lens or camera body? The opinions of the lovely folks at dpreview.com (forums) indicate the general consensus is that lens > body. I can see the sense in this but why does it still feel like a body upgrade is a better deal?

Enough questions! The choice has been made. I will be getting a new Pentax K5 to replace my (still excellent) K20D. My reasoning is this – with greater ISO performance I can essentially reap the speed benefits of the faster (2.8 etc) lenses by bumping up the ISO. Doing this on the K20 produces easily noticeable noise at ISO levels higher than 400. Obviously it wont be possible to get nice bokeh and that the image quality wont be as good, but for now the body is going to make me happier than a new lens. I hope.

This is not to say I ignored the excellent advice from the guys in the dpreview forums. No! They almost convinced me to change my mind and buy a lens. Originally I was 100% set on the body, but now I am at 40/60. Still, they made a strong argument. The outcome of this discussion basically lead me to look for a temporary second job so I can finance the camera purchase, and hopefully a decent lens too.

For those of you wondering which lens I was considering – I was stuck between two options, the SMC PENTAX DA STAR 200MM F2.8 ED (IF) SDM and the Sigma APO 70-200mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM.

Now the waiting game begins. With the recent takeover of Pentax by Ricoh (Today!) and news about a new camera on the horizon it would only make sense to wait for the price of the K5 to drop further. Here’s to hoping it will be sooner rather than later.

Which would you choose?