Critique and advice is always welcome

Well I couldn't hold on for the K200D so I purchased the K100D Super late December and haven't looked back!

First SLR/DSLR point and shoots before this, so I'm a bit of a newbie (read: complete newb) and have the typical man to manual phobia. I'll pick it up soon enough I hope (either the manual, or technique haha) . Learnt some tips from browsing here already!

Ahem, anyhow Christmas day:

Godley head in my city of Christchurch, taken on Christmas day.


A horribly exposed shot, but the only one I had without zoom of the ship using kit lens (I was curious about my 200mm lens, which I got in the mail 2 days after the K100DS)



Taken without a tripod (don't own one .. yet) at 200mm I was pretty stoked at the results from a cheap ($50) Pentax-M 80-200mm slide zoom lens. haha coolness, thats why I got a pentax


A seagull still at the same spot, manual zoom provided quite a challenge! I have another three shots out of focus and that one still isn't really quite 100% IMO.


Strawberries for Christmas dessert, yum!


A tower that is part of the old university buildings that are now a cultural/arts center.


Same place as above, some pillars and a b/w test.

Ok well i've got quite a few more, but i'll leave this for now. It's 2.30am here No work tomorrow luckily

[scott-devon]

Looks like you are having lots of fun Fruitloops. Those last shots of the building are really very good. I'll look forward to seeing more, keep on shooting!

[Mike Cash]

Yes, the buildings and the bird are really nice photos. Glad to see you enjoying the camera so much and happy to have you here with us.

Some of your photos indicate a bit of dust on your sensor. You might want to look into an old-fashioned blower or one of the modern products developed especially for cleaning DSLR sensors.

For images over 800 pixels wide, please consider using the "imgwide" and "/imgwide" tags instead of the normal "img" and "/img" tags. They help to prevent forcing people into horizontal browsing. The tags reduce the display size of the photo and give a clickable link for displaying the wide photos in a larger size. It's a very handy tool to use.

[little laker]

Nice work Fruitloops,

Mike is right, your pictures show your sensor has dust on it. And it's probably a little more than just a blower can handle.

I'd recommend also getting a full cleaning kit. Plus a speck grabber.
It'll put you back less than $50.00, and it's good for years.

[NaClH2O]

Some nice shots FL, I especially like the slightly overexposed one of the ship in that huge wide ocean, the concept came across real clear. I've found that if I meter for the brighter areas I can get a more useable shot as it's easier to bring out detail from the shadow than it is to fix over exposure. There used to be an old saying "when shooting slides, expose for the highlights" works the same in digital. And as others have said, your sensor needs cleaning. Not a big deal. Check out this link
Cleaning Digital Cameras - Introduction

NaCl(thanks for posting and welcome to the forums)H2O

[FruitLooPs]

Cheers for all the advice guys, I quickly learned the benefits of metering for highlights when it came to trying post processing for the first time ha-ha.

So what makes you guys say the sensors dusty out of interest, I would like to be able to recognize these things myself. Is it like the black line on the first shot and faint blotches in a few others? Also take into account i'm using an M series lens thats getting on and i'm not 100% on its optical quality.

The camera is only a few weeks old, but it has had lens changes quite frequently as I've been playing around. I have a basic cleaning kit and the super model has sensor cleaning built in, might have to try it out.