Hi Team, I'm back from three weeks in the UK and Ireland, unfortunately I was unable to deviate from the schedule that I was set and consequently I sadly missed out catching up with a handful of PDMLers but there's always next time I guess :-(
I shot almost more images in three weeks than I had over the previous year however most were family oriented, not really subjects that I was able to explore purely as photographic studies. We only had a couple of days where we were sight seeing of sorts and then we were with others and rushed so seeing the photo ops just pass by was a little frustrating. In any case it's the first time that I've used the K10D on any trip longer than a weekend so I've come to appreciate it's strengths and weaknesses. Firstly no arguments it served me well, I love the speed of the thing and going back to the rear display size of the *ist D is a real shock however it wasn't all roses. The extra bulk wasn't too bad but then I was working out of a big pack, I have to find a new case for my three lens kit as it just doesn't fit the cases my *ist D does. I found that the battery became exhausted in the order of 350-400 shots with a little chimping (can't avoid it in low light work) and yes I did get caught once with flat battery (out on Lough Ree). I've mentioned it before but now know that I really don't like the operation of the WB system as flash as it is, I don't like not being able to just glance down at the top LCD to see what WB I have selected. I still wish that there was a dedicated WB button and more WB memories, I tended to use AWB as setting WB is such a hassle. I've been using Av with the auto exposure program set to normal and Aperture on the front wheel and ISO on the rear wheel with ISO in Auto (100-800) on start-up. This would be an ideal combination for me but for the fact that regardless of the exposure program mode and known lens FL/SR enabled the exposure system when set to auto ISO prefers to set a high ISO than lower the shutter speed. In many instances ie when using a 16mm lens I would find the system setting the shutter at 1/100th and the ISO at 800 when I could have been shooting at 1/8th without a problem. I wish there was some way to properly control this important aspect of auto exposure system operation. The other irritating peculiarity that I noticed was that all my shots are rotated by 1.5-2 degree CCW, I haven't investigated the issue fully but with SR off the camera has less rotational error than my *ist D had and I never experienced this phenomenon when shooting it. However the K10D screen (focus brackets) seems to be out by 0.65 degrees and the outside frame by 0.9 degrees so that's a start (refitting the screen didn't alter this). I am suspect of the SR system but I will test my theory properly when I have time. I'd love to hear from anyone else with similar observations, I've seen a few similar posts at dpreview since the K10Ds release but no mention here. I've pretty much moved over to Picasa to display my late images on the web, it's a great tool for organizing images, producing galleries and quick edits plus I can push the images to the web and produce a polished CD in very limited time. I've been shooting RAW+ 2MP jpg so using Picasa whilst I was traveling I could very quickly DL/process and update web pages for everyone concerned to view (I shot a two day wedding and had the images on the web the day after). It can even manage *ist D RAW files (for the benefit of Frank the new Digi-Boy). So what have I missed of the couple of months, anything interesting that I should know about? PS I have galleries from the trip but due to their nature I don't wish to bring them into the public domain however if any of you are interested drop me a private email and I'll send you some links. As my primary job is currently stay at home dad and house keeper I tend to have limited subjects to shoot so my little guy bears the brunt of this frustration in the way of being a captive subject, so if you are interested in see my kid pics check the following link: http://picasaweb.google.com/distudio/Thomas?authkey=pzmnlsD2ZJI Cheers, -- Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~distudio//publications/ Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998 -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
