hi to all.
i went and splashed out on a new camera yesterday. My first ever digital SLR is a K10D. i've been tooing and froing for ages about whether to buy a DSLR, and if so, which one. But i finally decided when the runout deals on the K10 meant i could get a new body and two lenses ( the DA 18-55 Al, and the FA J 75-300) for AU$ 1295 ( US$ 1390).
initial impressions are fantastic in terms of features and ergonomics - it FEELS like a camera, if nothing else. In fact, i don't have a clue what half the features do, or how to use them, as yet. my background is a Canon Eos 50E slr, so i have some knowledge of exposure, aperture, DOF etc, but white balance, color correction etc is a work in progress.
however, i do have a few early issues. firstly, the shutter release feels very foreign. "depress shutter half way for autofocus". half way!?? rubbish, more like breath on the button to focus, barely touch it to shoot! but i'm getting used to it.
less solvable at this stage is the intricacies of the metering. the k10 review over on the review page suggests that the K10 slightly over exposes. so far, mine seems to be a long way in the other direction. i would say most shots have been light on for exposure - certainly anything shot in the auto modes are. the metering seems to be easily fooled into underexposing, even in partial metering. and it doesn't seem consistent yet - if i meter in full manual, the settings seem different to what the green mode will calculate. i'm sure its me, and not the camera, that needs to improve. i keep forgetting that iso can be auto set, so i'm not always comparing apples to apples.
the white balance catches m out a bit too. im now using the presets, but not confident to start manually adjusting. AWB is useless under tungsten lighting, so i change to the tungsten preset, which is ok. but i then forgot to change back when shooting outside and had lots of blueish landscapes for a while - took me some time to work out what was happening
.
but when i get thigs right, the results are great. very sharp, good colours. i just need to learn what the metering secrets are.