Showing *istD to a Canon 1d Pro

[Paul Stenquist]

This morning I got together with one of the more successful part-time 
pros in my area. He shoots with the Canon 10 megapixel camera (is it 
called 1D), a pair of Leica M7s, and one of the 6x7 rangefinders. All 
his 35mm glass is top of the line Leitz and Canon. Aside from the fact 
that we're old buddies, he wanted to see the *ist D. I brought my 35mm 
kit along, and let him try the camera. He immediately fell in love with 
its size, layout and feel. He couldn't believe how compact it is. He 
asked me which lens in my box was the sharpest. I handed him the K 
85/1.8, and he shot a few frames wide open and one or two stopped down 
to 5.6 or so. He has the new PhotoShop CS plug in, so he converted the 
RAWs in PS (which blew me away -- great software), and showed me how to 
use some of the controls. He wanted to show me how nicely it corrects 
Chromatic Aberration -- but there was none. Zero, zip. He was very 
surprised to see that the lens had performed that well. He was also 
quite impressed with the bokeh. He resed one *ist D file up to 140 meg, 
16 bit, and it looked great on the monitor at 100%. He's thinking he 
might pick up an *ist D and a couple of lenses as a travel camera. 
Score a PR win for Pentax.
Paul