[Phenix jc]

Make good use of the quick dial on teh front of the camera. Set it to your most used camera settings. That's make it very quick to change settings without having to go into the menu. This make excellent for casual shots since you can quickly adapt to almost any situation.

An underestimated feature of the Q is the 1/2000 sync speed of the built in flash. Set the flash to "forced" but only when out, with a -1 or -2 exposure flash compensation. You then have a fill flash on demand just by popping it out. This 1/2000 sync speed make it useful in almost any situation since you won't have to really worry about the sync speed. This makes it quite convenient to use compared to the slow built in flash of DSLR. It's quite useful outside on sunny days when you can harsh shadows on portraits.

With the tips above, you can switch to shooting a landscape to a quick casual portait in a matter a seconds. Just turn the quick dial to portrait mode, pop up the flash, and you're good to go. And it's just as fast to go back to landcape mode after that...

This is what I like the most about the Q line (apart the small size). Their ability to quickly get ready for drastically different shooting conditions makes them highly effective camera in dynamic situations (family gathering, kid's birthday, vacations...).

I'd forgotten that ! Thks for the reminder. Only with original Pentax Q lenses isn't it ?

[CarlJF]

I'd forgotten that ! Thks for the reminder. Only with original Pentax Q lenses isn't it ?

Yes, with the 01,02,06 and 08. All others have the more common 1/250.

[jva59]

Here is a previously posted image of yours truly at iso 3200, (Q-S1 + 01 lens at f:2) Not for pixel peeping but otherwise not a bad image. In film days one would have been hard pressed to do that at iso 800.

Heinrich, as always getting the best out of the Q (what a distinguished looking gent!).

Thank you ever so much for all the helpful tips and tricks. I had high hopes I would get to try out most of them this weekend but as usual when ordering things online, thing never arrive as quickly as you want them.

Again, thanks for the very warm welcome to this community.

[tabjohnson]

An affordable way to obtain the 01 prime lens is to watch eBay for an original Q with the 01 lens as a set. The original Q Was sold that way. you'll get an extra battery, charger and a back up body around $150.00. The original Q body is a work of art, and if you ever adapt lenses, you can get tremendous telephoto reach. Most important, have fun with your new camera.

[BigMackCam]

The original Q body is a work of art

... and a tremendously capable camera in its own right. Very complementary to the larger-sensor Q7 and Q-S1, especially with that narrower field of view (although I still find cropping on the larger sensor yields slightly better images, especially at higher ISO settings).

An affordable way to obtain the 01 prime lens is to watch eBay for an original Q with the 01 lens as a set. The original Q Was sold that way. you'll get an extra battery, charger and a back up body around $150.00. The original Q body is a work of art, and if you ever adapt lenses, you can get tremendous telephoto reach. Most important, have fun with your new camera.

Thanks for that tip! I actually followed your advice and bought a new in box original Pentax Q with the 01 lens for 1300 SEK, which is equivalent to 151 USD so you weren't far off. I've also returned the Q-S1 since I didn't really care for the champagne/gold color scheme.

[Tony Belding]

Here are some observations. . .

My favorite lenses are the 01, 06 and 08. The 02 is also perfectly OK, and the 03 Fisheye is cheap, tiny and fun.

The Pentax AF201FG flash unit works well with these cameras.

To squeeze the maximum out of my Q7, I settled on mostly shooting DNG format and processing in Lightroom. Learning my way around LR was time well spent. I've found some film emulation presets (Replichrome) that appeal to me more than LR's bland default setting.

I find my Q7 works decently in dim light. Most of the difficulty I've encountered has been related to shooting outdoors on bright, sunny days. The LCD is rather weak in these situations. I found I could make it usable by dressing to reduce glare: black shirt, wide brimmed hat. It's often difficult to shoot from low or high angles, or anywhere that requires the LCD to be viewed from greater distance or at an angle.

The harsh lighting and intense shadow contrasts that occur on a sunny day can really test my Q7's dynamic range. Shooting DNG instead of JPEG helps to avoid blown and unrecoverable highlights or color-distorted skies. Setting Highlight Correction to ON or AUTO helps too. You might even want to set the EV comp to -1.0 just to be on the safe side. LR can save a lot of images where exposure was tricky. I've also set the Quick Dial to control the ND filter. I do use the ND filter when I'm out in the sun.

[Ishpuini]

My experience to date is from using the original Q, though I have a Q-S1 coming as I write.

I have a few tips I didn't see in this thread yet (I think):

I've only used the 01 prime (with hood) on my Q and love the size of this setup for casual street photography. I rarely use the rear LCD, but instead got an old external viewfinder (a Ernst Leitz Wetzlar 5cm made for Leica rangefinders) that fits on the hotshoe. This lends the Q a very classic look, I'm sure the same will go for the Q-S1 with its Leica inspired looks. The FoV doesn't match 100%, but you learn to take this into account. The rear LCD can be deactivated while shooting, and that's the way I use it mostly.

With the 02 standard zoom a standard FoV hotshoe viewfinder is not very practical though, although there are those that have a wider FoV and markings showing various 35mm equiv FoV's. I used such a VF before I got the classic one. Thing is, these VF's are somewhat larger than the ones for a standard FoV, which makes them slightly oversize on a Q-sized camera IMHO. Perhaps they may look better with the 02 mounted?

To cope with the limited DR of the small sensor, I've purchased a polarizer which sits on my 01 permanently. Whereas this does take away some light, it helps a lot to keep the highlights down in bright sunlit situations. Images look much less compact camera like since I use this!

hth, Wim