Re: Which wide angle zoom for the *ist D?

[Joseph Tainter]

"Strange, I remember finding pictures from the 16-45 rather dark, and in 
a german user forum there had been lots of lengthy discussions and 
pictures about the 16-45 making too dark pictures."

On the dpreview Pentax DSLR discussion forum, one occasionally sees 
complaints that the *ist D underexposes.

It is hard to evaluate these complaints. Has the person done Auto Levels 
in Photoshop? If not, the image will appear dull, which might be 
confused with dark.

But I also wonder if people who have this problem are using program 
metering. In Pentax's film SLRs, program metering was designed to expose 
for shadow areas -- so it would often blow out highlights or generally 
overexpose. Since blown-out highlights make a digital image useless, I 
wonder if program metering on the *ist D is biased toward toning down 
highlights, thus making images darker.

I use center-weighted averaging for nearly all shots (a few are done 
with spot metering), and find that my *ist D exposures are fine -- with 
the DA 16-45 and all other lenses.

Joe