[ausmoose]

Thanks for the input everyone.

I bought my Pentax K-30 with WR 18-135mm lens today, along with a carry bag for cameras, memory stick and UV filter for protection. Managed to bargain and get this all for $1208. Pretty good by Australian standards.

Look forward to taking some photos soon.

[ramseybuckeye]

Any accessories I should be considering?

Definitely a sturdy tripod and good head if you are doing landscapes. If you don't want to get it yet just get a beanbag to set it on. Get a wireless remote to use when it's on the tripod, you can also use a two second delay but the remote is more flexible, and you can get a good cheap off brand for peanuts. A lens cloth to keep dust and finger prints off the lens. Some type of bag is nice to keep the camera in when not in use. For landscapes a circular polarizer can be nice. There is a huge range of prices for them, you may not need the best, but avoid the worst. There are thousand of accessories that you could get, most you don't need.

[ramseybuckeye]

Thanks for the input everyone.

I bought my Pentax K-30 with WR 18-135mm lens today, along with a carry bag for cameras, memory stick and UV filter for protection. Managed to bargain and get this all for $1208. Pretty good by Australian standards.

Look forward to taking some photos soon.

Congratulations! But unless you're shooting in sandstorms, I wopuld take the uv filter back and trade it for a polarizer.

[ausmoose]

Congratulations! But unless you're shooting in sandstorms, I wopuld take the uv filter back and trade it for a polarizer.

Definitely a sturdy tripod and good head if you are doing landscapes. If you don't want to get it yet just get a beanbag to set it on. Get a wireless remote to use when it's on the tripod, you can also use a two second delay but the remote is more flexible, and you can get a good cheap off brand for peanuts. A lens cloth to keep dust and finger prints off the lens. Some type of bag is nice to keep the camera in when not in use. For landscapes a circular polarizer can be nice. There is a huge range of prices for them, you may not need the best, but avoid the worst. There are thousand of accessories that you could get, most you don't need.

Thanks ramseybuckeye, but unfortunately I had already used the filter when you wrote the post! I had read some stuff on the internet about the UV filter not being very useful (as in for protection too), but being new, when the guy at the camera shop assured me it was necessary, I believed him

A good tripod is definitely on the wish list, as well as the wireless remote and the polariser. Would a glasses cloth and liquid do the trick for cleaning the lens?

Took the camera out on a 4km hike today and was very pleased with the results. The camera wasn't too heavy and was very quick to turn on and off. The bag I bought works well. At the moment I'm only using the manual focus and zoom, and a couple other things I found while exploring the settings, but I will soon be reading the instruction manual and tips from online so I can really make that change from point and shoot to DSLR! Any really important things in the settings I should be thinking of for starting off as a DSLR user, before getting into trickier stuff soon?

[ramseybuckeye]

T

A good tripod is definitely on the wish list, as well as the wireless remote and the polariser. Would a glasses cloth and liquid do the trick for cleaning the lens?

The glasses cloth and a warm breath will do fine, and only clean when necessary I get dust on the lens more often than anything else, I flick it off with the cloth (no breath) or a soft brush of a lenspen.

As far as settings if you are using MF lenses, you've probably already found the one for use of the aperture ring, (which for some inexplicable reason is default set to off). I think you learn mostly by trying different settings, looking at the results, and figuring out how to make it better.

[tibbitts]

Although some camera shop uv filters are somewhat overpriced and/or not the best quality, I disagree that you shouldn't use one, at least in the rain (or salt spray, or any number of other adverse conditions.) One of the main purposes of your kit, as you stated it, was using it in the rain, and even with lens hoods, when I use my camera in the rain I'm constantly wiping the front element. Do that 50 or 100 times a day and you're going to take a toll on most traditional coatings. I don't have a lens with the newer, tougher coatings, so I'm speaking about my '70s through '00-era smc lenses, but I'd probably still go with a filter for the new lenses. Admittedly the filter sticks out a bit farther than the front lens element, so you'll get more rain on it, but usually when I wipe the lens it's got maybe 5 or 10 drops, and probably half of those would have hit even just the bare front element, so I'd still have to wipe it.

Now, if Pentax decides to market easily consumer-replaceable front lens elements for, say, the same price as a UV filter... well, that would be a differentiation from Canikon (not to mention 3rd party lenses for Pentax) that might be attractive.

As for using eyeglass cloths to clean your lenses, just beware that quality varies. I wouldn't hesitate to use pretty much anything (free of chemicals) to clean a uv filter, but I usually use a sensor wipe pad to clean my lens surfaces (not very often, since I use a uv filter pretty frequently.) Obviously if I had some gigantic, snobby-brand, super-expensive uv filter, I'd probably be a little more cautious with that, but my regular ones get the kleenex treatment pretty often (the kleenex without the nose-soothing goo chemical, of course.)