I'm sure that the auto sensitivity setting on the *ist D would be really handy for some folk in some situations, but I just spent about an hour looking for the reboot button on my *ist D 'cause the damned thing would only shoot at 3200 ISO. What the hells going on here I think to myself...who has been sleeping in my bed (oops, wrong list).
Interesting. It stayed at 3200 no matter what? Were you always shooting in very low light? I've wondered what exactly the conditions are where it decides to change the ISO with that setting on.
My guess would be keep it at 200 until it gets to the point where it feels a flash may be necessary, then switch ISO up, but who knows. Be nice if the manual had a bit more description of these things.. or maybe they could provide a 'technical manual' PDF for those interested. Not that I expect them to. I'd really like to be able to set acceptable ranges on this as a user too; I wouldn't mind auto-iso adjusting, but perhaps only 200-800 too.
This, along with the MTF programme line (which is slightly broken in my view), also assume you are attempting to hand-hold. Almost need a 'tripod' mode. I suppose thats one of the uses for 3 sets of custom functions. It would be nice if these were more accessible, as previously mentioned with ISO setting / metering mode etc in another thread.
Actually, my Canon S45 digicam has this "Custom" mode (the G3/G5 etc have more than 1 I think), which is also on the mode-dial. "What a great feature" I thought to start, I set it up so that mode was flash-disabled, ISO 400 (high as it goes), etc thinking I'd use it for low-light where I don't want to be setting off a flash (like a gallery, or whatever). Unfortunately being on the mode dial meant I had to choose P/Tv/Av/M also, I could not switch this and still use the custom settings, rendering the feature useless to my mind.
What would be nice, I think, is a quickly accessible set of custom settings, including ISO, flash, all the custom functions, maybe meter-mode (spot/matrix/cw). Perhaps replacing the meter-mode switch, or whatever, but WITHOUT interfering with P/Tv/Av/M mode selection.
Pentax, feel like letting me improve the firmware? I'll do it for free :) - Hell, better still, I recomend that Pentax release the firmware open-source to this group, so that a few of us can improve it. :)
Love, Light and Peace, - Peter Loveday Director of Development, eyeon Software

