Hi Larry: I totally agree with your comments about the Nikon controls and UI. I have played with the Nikons in camera stores, and boy did I experience frustration with figuring out UI.
As to your other observations, I don’t find them surprising. Cheers, Christine > On Jan 25, 2016, at 3:00 PM, Larry Colen <l...@red4est.com> wrote: > > Some friends were playing (actually running a pro-jam) at a local BBQ last > night. One of them asked me to take photos with his camera, a D810. > > The first thing that I noticed was that the controls on it are not intuitive. > That's not to say that they are not logical, but they were very difficult to > figure out. I was able to muddle through and figure a few things out. A > couple things (like enabling the RGB histogram) I was able to find enough > hints on the web to do. And a couple things (like exposure compensation on > the flash) I asked him how to do when he wasn't on stage. > > IIRC, the lenses in his bag that I played with were: > > 50/1.8 > 35/1.8 > 85/1.8 > 28-200 (4-6.3?) > > Some thoughts on the experience: > > Familiarity with the equipment is far more important than actual camera > performance in any sort of challenging light. At first, I couldn't even > figure out how to put it in manual mode, change composition, or find the RGB > histogram so that I could see what channels I was blowing out. It was kind > of like trying to drive an autocross in a Ferrari after four shots of whisky, > while wearing snowshoes. > > I haven't seen anything except on the back of the camera, but the autofocus > seems to leave the Pentax in the dust. > > Judging by the back of the camera previews, the fullframe sensor high ISO > performance is significantly better than the K-5 or K-3. > > Once I got the flash under control, it may have had better exposure control > than on the Pentax. It's hard to tell, it was a challenging room, and I was > using the flash primarily for fill, once I was able to turn it down. > > Even once I learned how to use many of the basic controls, many of the basic > operations seem to be a lot better on the Pentax than the Nikon. I suspect > that that would hold true even once I was really familiar and comfortable > with the Nikon UI. Mind you, I'm not saying that Pentax has a good UI, it > just seems to suck a bit less than Nikon. > > One nice thing about using someone else's camera is that I got all of the fun > of taking the photos, but I don't need to do the work of sorting and > processing them. > > Although, it would be interesting to get the raw files of the ones that did > turn out to see what I could do with them in Lightroom. > > This confirms something that I've been thinking about lately. When the K-1 > comes out, I will have to take a good hard look comparing its performance > (including ease of use) with that of equivalent Nikons. Taking full advantage > of the big sensor will require significant investment in new glass over time, > and that would be the time to fully understand my options. > > > > -- > Larry Colen l...@red4est.com (postbox on min4est) > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
