Pentax K100D

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Mike
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Pentax K100D

Post by Mike »

I recently bought one of these for the really good £299 price tag at our friendly Jessops shop! I decided to go back to the SLR to get the depth of field control back - this is the feature I really missed on the Fuji as the apature priority was quite frankly poor.

On with the initial thoughts though. The K100 is a relatively light and compact device, the mirror flap does clunk quite solidly and the build quality seems to be of a high standard. The initial photographs taken and viewed on the back screen only seem to be very sharp and well exposed - the trials have been taken in doors at night which is a difficult time for any camera.

The AutoFocus in low light situations seems to have a slight lag which I did not expect, however, once active the camera is able to identify a good lock which is in focus.

The instruction book is a mammoth but there is relatively little information contained in the pages, it describes basic functions and descriptions only. I am looking forward to loading the software onto the computer and getting some daytime shots out of it. The quality seems high and I have high hopes for getting some good Cuba photographs.

The interesting thing has been battery life. I already owned some high powered rechargeables- these worked for days in the Fuji but only manage about 5 flash powered photographs in the new camera. I am hoping that the batteries are suffering from memory build up (being about 5 years olds) and the new ones (provided by a lovely mum) will be more satisfying.

All in all use and build quality 5S
Photograph output review pending!
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johnriley1uk
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Post by johnriley1uk »

A few suggestions for settings that may prove useful:

Meter to Matrix metering

Focusing point to centre spot only (letting the camera choose could send you to the looney bin)

Set exposure lock and focus lock to the same point

ISO 200

AWB

JPEG Best quality

And then take some great photos!
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Post by Mike »

johnriley1uk wrote:A few suggestions for settings that may prove useful:

Meter to Matrix metering
That was already done (set as standard acording to the manual!
johnriley1uk wrote:Focusing point to centre spot only (letting the camera choose could send you to the looney bin)
Will be doing that one, the random focus is odd - seems to be closest to the particular focus point at the time of pressing the button for some reason.
johnriley1uk wrote:Set exposure lock and focus lock to the same point
Will do!
johnriley1uk wrote:ISO 200
At the moment it is set to be between ISO 200 and 800 but will look at dedicating to ISO200.
johnriley1uk wrote:AWB
Read about it, not needed to use yet but will do.
johnriley1uk wrote:JPEG Best quality

And then take some great photos!
Already done. Would love to take in RAW format but that reduces my 688 photographs to about 30! :D
Mike
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Post by Mike »

Well after two events and two uses I have been able to publish the first photographs in the Gallery. Wii Party and Claire's BBQ. The battery life with the new batteries is much improved and very good. The depth of field is massively better than the Fuji (though this is not at all unexpected) and I can report I am very pleased with the quality. I think the next step is to get some fixed focus length F2.8 lenses to really maximise the depth of field options, I like the blurred images!

On another point I am very impressed with Photoshop CS3 which comes with a convert to Black and White control which allows you to individually control the colour channels during the convert. This enabled me to amend the Red channel to give the Red filter effect and dynamism to the images very easily.

They have also introduced an improved save to web and devises button which minimises the process too! Well done Adobe! :D
Mike
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Post by mr_e »

I was immediately thinking "wow, the colour quality's really good on those photos". It really is good on further inspection, although maybe slightly too warm in some shots, but I'm assuming you used the red filter thing on some of those.
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Post by Mike »

The red filter was only used on the Black and White images!
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Post by mr_e »

Yeah, I sort of read that out of context. My brain's not processing stuff it should do at the moment. I think the warm thing is simply down to difficult exposure/auto white-balance, or just my weird colour perception.
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Re: Pentax K100D

Post by stimpsonslostson »

I'm looking for a fisheye lens for my K100D, any suggestions? I've looked online, but don't really fancy coughing up £400 for a lens that I only really want in order to play around with an interesting effect.
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Re: Pentax K100D

Post by johnriley1uk »

Well there is the SMC Pentax-DA 10-17mm Fish-Eye zoom, but I think you're aware of that!

There are fish-eye converters that screw into the filter thread of the lens and these will give the effect for a fraction of the cost of a lens. Try eBay for "Fish-eye converters" and you might pick up a bargain.

The quality is what suffers, but they will be fine to play with. If you decide that the effect is your style then you can always buy the lens later...
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