hi everyone
i'm new here, :o
i just bought a KX after hankering after a DSLR for a while
i would call myself fairly experienced, having a few years ago used a Minolta Dynax 35mm SLR, and then moving to a canon powershot superzoom. I've also had a friends old Canon 10D for the past month.
anyway, i was debating between this and a Nikon D5000, and after exhaustive research, i plumped for this one, mainly because of its superior high-ISO performance, and being on a budget mean that lenses would be cheaper as they would not have to have AF motors and IS/SR built-in.
also in its favour, was that it was a little smaller, yet more comfortable to hold, and more direct-access buttons.
So, after a few days and around a thousand photos later, here are my thoughts;
first of all; build quality. its pretty good, but i've been playing with that 10D, and you just cant compare...this feels like a toy. but i guess thats what comes with the budget price tag. I've got pretty big hands, but the KX handles pretty well, and is certainly light enought for one-handed shooting.
(I got a fancy KATA strap, which is a joy, its comfortable to sling over your shoulder, and is slightly elasticated so the camera doesnt feel heavy at all. its even got tiny zipped pockets at each end of the strap with room for 4 AA batteries...)
the screen is very good too, with a wide angle of view - you can put it in live view and hold it above you head at a very slight angle and still see the screen enough to be able to frame your shot. speaking of live-view, it is very slow - easily 3 seconds even in good light, and it makes a strange hollow whirring sound the whole time it running - almost like there's something broken in it. (anyone else go that too?)
the autofocus is very fast at wider angles, but at the long end of my 300mm lens, slows down a little and tends to cycle through the whole focusing range - which is quite long- till it finds focus. the upside of this long focus travel isthat when focusing manully, you can get it quite excact. a solution to the above problem i found is to zoom halfway, focus (which it does uite quickly) then zoom in the whole way, so that its much nearer to the correct focus, and then refocus and take the picture. one thing i noticed about the autofocus is that its NOISY - it sounds like a small drill! and the shutter noise is a little coarse, a bit like a knife being sharpened.
another point about the AF is the famous lack of AF point markers - you have no idea (beside peeping through the viewfinder to see what "looks" sharp, or by assuming it is focusing on the nearest object - but that's just it - you can never be sure what its focused on. this makes the "great" 11-point autofocus with all 11 cross-type sensors, a little useless. but i dont really care because i always just use the central point. i guess when tracking birds across the sky i could rely on the 11 point autofocus, since there's nothing else for the AF to get confused with.
metering is generally good, but i did find that with brightly backlit subject it did underexpose a little - even with spot-metering - that neccesitated a 2/3 stop exposure adjustment.
picture quality seems very good, with excellent noise control, at normal printing sizes/viewing on-screen without pixel-peeping, you can almost tell no difference between ISO 200 and 1600, and even 3200 is pretty good - which is outstanding performance for a budget SLR. (the aforementioned 10D started getting unacceptably noisy at ISO800).this capability is extremely useful in almost any situation you dont use a flash/low light/fast moving subjects etc...
i havent really used video, i imagine i will just use it very rarely, but that one time that i do use it, i will be very glad its there.
battery life is good, i have gotten around 600 pics from some Energizer 2450mAH slow discharge batteries - and thats real - life use, meaning reviewing shots, autofocusing and re-autofocusing, live-view, mucking about in menus (i just got it) etc. i will keep the lithium batteries it came with for emergencies.
all in all i'm pretty happy with it, main gripes being noisy AF motor, painfully slow live-view (although i expected it).
