Mark, The images are great. I talked to Don, and he, in his gentle and persuasive manner, he made me feel really bad for not having been on the Mountain. I have been reading what I can find about the *istD and believe that Pentax has an excellent product that they intend to aggressively compete with. After talking with Don, I believe that we are going to be truly amazed at just how aggressive Pentax is prepared to be in the digital market.
I am glad that they choose the 2/3rds sensor. The 6 mega pixel cameras have proven themselves capable of producing finished images that can compete with film based 35mm images. Pentax, by taking their time in entering the Digital SLR market has delivered a much more compact and better designed camera. It is my personal opinion that because of the instant feedback digital cameras offer, the digital photographer has an opportunity to consistently capture images of higher quality. The 2/3rds sensor allows and encourages photographers to lighten their camera bags, 300mm lenses act like 450mm, 400mm lenses act like very expensive and very heavy 600mm lenses. Other gadgets, like tripods, ball heads, filters, and camera bags can get smaller and lighter with no loss of quality or function. The start up knowledge curve for digital cameras is deceptive. Many of the choices for camera settings are not intuitive even for an accomplished photographer. You make the point when you talk about white balance. Digital cameras have a habit of correcting that which does not need correcting. White in the golden light of morning does not need to be balanced to pure white. When the ability to handle "RAW" files arrives with production cameras you will be able to adjust white balance, saturation, contrast and other such items in post processing. This implies that the user invests the time to learn how to use one of the image processing software programs, such as Photoshop. > Just uploaded 6 shots taken with the *ist-D this past weekend at > Grandfather Mountain. They're medium resolution JPEGs of moderate > physical size (horizontally-oriented shots are only 1000 pixels wide). > No, I'm not going to upload the full 2000 x 3000 pixel images to my web > site or email them out. I have time/bandwidth limitations! > > Some notes: > Between the very hazy atmospheric conditions and my unfamiliarity with > the camera, I got the white balance screwed up. I corrected the shots > somewhat with FilterSim and Photoshop. I have done levels adjustment and > a little sharpening (which will have emphasized the noise somewhat). > > The camera was pre-production so final version firmware should be much > better. I suspect the Powers That Be at Pentax let the rep borrow the > camera they could most afford to spare - in other words, the earliest, > buggiest one! Still, I was pretty much blown away by how it well it > performed and the image quality. Ergonomics are superb for the most > part. It's really small by film camera standards; tiny by DSLR > standards. Powers up and comes on line really quickly! I didn't know how > much the batteries had been used and, having no extras myself, decided > to be very conservative with power, just to be safe. I turned the camera > off between shots and turned it on when I wanted to shoot. Came on > almost as quickly as a film camera. > > Viewfinder is great. Similar to MZ-S. Tom Van Veen said he liked the > viewfinder a little better than his Canon 10D, which is itself better > than the Nikon D100. AF is brilliant. Fast and accurate. Easy to choose > AF points. I didn't try out the FAJ 18-35 lens - I just used my own > Sigma 300/2.8, K15/3.5 and F100/2.8 macro, along with a borrowed 31mm > Limited. The camera only meters wide open on the K lens and doesn't stop > down the diaphragm when shooting. I loosened up the lens on the lens > mount (not letting it click into place when mounting). This let it > function as a stop-down diaphragm lens. I'm going to drill an additional > lock-divot in the lens mount of my 15mm to allow this easily when I get > my own *ist-D. > > I believe everyone who used the camera was very, very impressed with it. > Can't think of any complaints other than the metering with K lenses. > Pentax will probably find that sales are limited only by the rate at > which Sony can supply them with CCDs. This camera rocks.
