[Matthew]

Yet Another Australian!
Hi Pentax People,
I'm a recent convert to Pentax. It is one of the few major camera brands I have never owned (until eight months ago).
Previously I have used Canon, Nikkormat, Mamiya, Minolta, Olympus, Nikonos (all film) and most recently Ricoh. The convenience of digital had me looking to start a new SLR system and the K10D was too good to ignore. I had no real attachment to my other SLRs as they were mostly too old to carry over my lens collection(s) to digital (with the qualified exception of a 1971 Nikkor 135mm).
I have had to start my lens collection from scratch. So far my favourite is a DA14. Other focal lengths I have currently filled with cheap stop gaps and lenses on loan as I am hanging out for affordable weatherproofed lenses to match the K10D. I shoot mostly nature and nature has got the better of some of my past cameras.
Looking forward to getting forum help in choosing the rest of my kit in the next couple of years

Matthew
Hawkesbury, NSW, Australia

[Mallee Boy]

Hi Mathew,
Welcome. Don't be shy, post some of your shots, you will find that everyone here is keen to help and there is a lot of knowledge available.
Cheers.

[kjao]

Welcome Matthew!

DA14 is a very nice lens. I just picked mine up recently.

Don't forget to check out the Buy/Sell forum here. I find the price is a little more sane and stable than eBay.

cheers
Kenny

[roentarre]

Da 14 is in deed nice. There has been some bashing on this lens from other fora which is rather unncessary. After all, Da 12-24 f4 is good. Da 14 is good as well.

Welcome to the forum too. We should have a countdown for the numbers of Aussie in this forum.

[pop4]

YAA!

Welcome to the forum mate. The Hawkesbury area's a nice place too

[Matthew]

DA14 is a very nice lens. I just picked mine up recently.

I guess this might belong in a different thread but since its my first post...

I have only found one limitation with this lens. The pinching (distortion) in at the corners means you have to take care when matching the outer 10% of the frame up with horizons or other straight edges. Most of the time this is not a major limitation as I like shooting this kind of thing.




A 20% scale and 1:1 crop of an image I made a month ago. EXIF should be intact but won't tell you that light was about 50/50 sun and a Nissin 6000AF on wide angle minimum power (you can see the two shadows).

The sharpness of the lens is a little compromised in the shot by the dual illumination. I had to drop back the SS to 1/30th and it was a windy day so the SR couldn't do the job. Shots at 1/180 had darker/black backgrounds which looked unnatural but they were nice and sharp.
The angle of the shot was predetermined by the angle of the flannel flower heads that I was trying to keep in focus otherwise I would have taken a lower angle and got some blue in the background.
CC welcome!