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Ten years ago, Pop reader Fred Scheuerman of Deerfield, Illinois, was burgled out of his entire Pentax SLR system. It was a vast loss that he wasn’t inclined to replace. He subsequently bought and used a 35mm Pentax IQZoom, “a good point-and-shoot for family and vacation pictures.”
But recently, Fred’s dormant SLR bug struck again when he spied an ad for what seemed like an impossible bargain. His local Ritz Camera store advertised a Sigma SA-7 SLR outfit with 28–80mm f/3.5–5.6 and 70–300mm f/4–5.6 Sigma zooms complete with batteries, lenshoods, strap, and camera bag for $289.95. An adjacent ad offered the same two lenses with camera bag for $229.95 in Nikon, Canon, Minolta, and Pentax mounts. In effect, the Sigma SA-7 AF SLR body cost only $60 more, although the body was (and still is) being sold at other stores for about $180.
Fred bought the Sigma outfit for $289.95 and said, “I remember back in the mid-’70s paying almost as much for a manual-focus SLR with a 50mm lens.”
His memory was right. And if some wag insists that Fred should have instead joined the digital camera stampede, I’d like to know just what digital camera Fred could have purchased for $290 that would have been nearly as versatile as his new 35mm Sigma outfit?
To make certain that Fred wasn’t just dazzled by the modernity of the Sigma kit, we ordered one and were equally dazzled. The entire outfit arrived, not as separate items, but in a neat, fitted, cardboard box with a nifty nylon-type carrying bag neatly stashed inside. Naturally, the Pop staff couldn’t be prevented from playing with the camera and lenses. We noticed that both the 28–80- and 70–300mm zooms close-focused to 1:2. Wow!
“I hope Sigma will stay in the camera and lens business while I build up my SA-mount lens collection,” says Fred. Oh, I think they will. And, by the way, should you want to travel down the digital road later, Fred (and I’m not saying you must), you could buy a Sigma digital camera body, and you’ll have a digital SLR system.
If Fred bought a Pentax SLR in the mid-’70s for $250, it probably would have been a center-the-meter-needle, nonautomatic Spotmatic, or similar camera; a far cry from Sigma’s automation.
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| Burglars made off with Fred Scheuerman’s trusty $280 Pentax SLR in the 1970s. He mourned until 2003 when he saw... |
...a Ritz miracle! For $289.95, he bought a Sigma SA-7 SLR, 28–80- and 70–300mm Sigma lenses, lenshoods, strap, batteries, and camera bag! His SLR fast was over! |
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