[Haakan]

Hi,
I recently bought my first D-SLR. It did take me some time to decide what to buy, but I did some initial research on the web and narrowed it down to be a decision (based on my budget) between K10D, the K20D, the Nikon D80 and the Canon 40D. While all are nice cameras and all capable of excellent results there were a few things that made the swing to Pentax for me.

First, the feel of the camera. I did went to the local store (a number of times...) and tested all of the above, and the K10D/K20D just felt so much better in the hands, and the menu layout did suit me well. On top of that they are weatherproof !

User satisfaction: On dpreview the K10D and K20D gets the highest overall user rating, 4.78 and 4.71 respectivley vs. 4.57 for the D80 and 4.49 for the 40D. To me the feedback of actual users do tell a lot about the cameras.

Image quality: I have been blown away of the results the K10D/K20D produce, often demonstrated by pictures on this forum. When shooting at RAW the quality on both K10D and K20D seem to outperform the others.

As for the decision between K10D and K20D, of course the K20D is better, but with a limited budget, I decided to go with the K10D. It costed me only $700 (including kit lens). For the criteras I looked at it performs at least of par with Nikon D80 and Canon 40D, and I saved some money for buying lenses.

I have just started to use it, but so far it has really performed very well. One of my first attempts was to take a picture of my daughter. The result was so nice that my wife immediately got it enlarged and framed it for the living room wall.

I am looking forward to take many more shots, and hopefully get some good enough to share in the forum.

Best regards,

Haakan

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Last edited by Haakan; 08-02-2008 at 05:38 PM.

[Peter Zack]

Any shots are 'good enough' for the forum. It's a freindly bunch here and we'd enjoy seeing your shots. If you're open to suggestions, you might even get some pointers to help along the way.

Welcome to the forums and congrats on a great purchase.

[Ash]

Another one who's seen the light!
Yes, be sure to share your results, good or bad - we're all learning here, just a different stages...

[Haakan]

Thank you for the kind replies

Best regards,
Haakan

[Haakan]

Encouraged by the replies that even newcomers to the game can post some results, here is a result from an attempt to shoot some wildlife with my Tamron 70-300. It handheld (with support from the window frame) at 300mm with F5.6 and 1/20. This is a crop from the central part of the image. It did look sharper before I resampled it to 800x536 as limited by the forum, after the resamplig it got some pixellation. Sorry for any flaws in composition, the "wild" animal was running around fairly quickly so I did not have time to think on that.

Best regards,
Haakan

[Ash]

Well, for the stats given on this shot I'll say its quite remarkable that it's only slightly blurry.
1/20s at 300mm shooting wide open?!?
You have one steady hand there...

[Haakan]

and also leaning towards the window frame did give some stability. Also, I have to admit there was a couple of blurry ones trying to chase him around.

Best regards,
Haakan

[aleonx3]

LOL, that is a damn good steady hand! if you go by the book, you need to at least get the speed setting to 1/300 or higher for hand held shots.

Haakan, congratulation on your purchase decision. I went through the same thing before I plunged in to get my first dlsr - which was K100D and now K10D. Hope to see more of your great pictures.

[Haakan]

Another of the wild animals on my back yard. This one seems to admire the sunset. Again handheld with my Tamron, supported by the window frame. At 220mm, 1/60 and F4.5. ISO 400. On this one I did get some shaking blur, but I did kind of like the image anyhow.

Best regards,
Haakan

[reeftool]

Thats a nice shot. Critters are not known for being cooperative.

[Peter Zack]

That's an excellent shot. As the others have said, you have a steady hand and at those settings, I'd suggest no one else could have done any better. Love the pose with one front paw up. I think you could crop it a little less to get the resolution back some and still have a fine image. Very good image!

Also many of us post from a host site. I use imageshack and then post as a direct link. The image is larger and less loss. You can do the same thing from this forum's gallery section. Just post it there and attach it to your thread posts.

I hope you don't mind.
I did a little with your shot. A white balance adjustment (there was a bluish cast to the image) and a slight amount of USM. Hopefully the colour is accurate to what you saw.

[Haakan]

Thanks all for both viewing and encouraging feedback.

Peter, I think you improved it quite a lot. I will have to learn how to use PP a lot better.

Best regards,
Haakan

[Peter Zack]

Are these both Jpegs straight out of the camera? If so, you are getting fine results. What software do you have and what operating system do you have on the computer?

[Haakan]

Hi Peter,

Yes, these are JPEGs and default settings, but I did open them in an old version of photoshop that I got for a good price from a friend (release 7 from about 2002). There I did the resamplig to lower resolution, as well as I increased the contrast somewhat, and also tried the unsharp filter (150% and 0.6 radius).

I will try to learn how to convert from RAW and start using that going forward.

Best regards,
Haakan

[Peter Zack]

I'd suggest you switch to RAW and if you want to also have Jpegs, you can do the RAW + Jpeg setting. But RAW's are much more fogiving to changes. Open them in the Pentax software and save them as TIFF's for adjustments in PS. Version 7 is fine and does plenty. CS2 or 3 is very powerful but has a lot more than most of us use.
Try a slightly different setting on USM. Radius between 1.2 and 2, Threshold at about 3-5 and somewhere between 75-110%. These may not be what others use but I find them fairly good guidelines for most shots.

I find WB adjustments are quite fast and accurate in the Pentax Photo lab and I will often use that first before saving the shot as a TIFF. If I owned Elements or Lightroom v2 then I'd use them for that.

For in camera Jpegs, set the camera to "bright" mode and increase the sharpness and contrast one notch.