and bought istDs. :-) Crazy man am I not? The K10D is admirable camera but it's on the big side of comfortable for me (both size and weight). The K100D was also ruled out, because the viewfinder is not up to the quality of K10D/istDs viewfinders and build quality seemed to be lower as well.
The istDs fitted my hand like glove. Or my hand fitted istDs? Whatever... Cost was also a deciding factor - it's my first DSLR and I wasn't sure if I'll like the thing so I didn't want to spend too much (I was shooting mainly with M era cameras until lately). What I like so far: 1. size, weight, perfect fit, well thought interface - it's a joy to use this camera. I've set up various custom functions, then switched main display off and never looked back (the LCD screen on the back suck for any other purpose anyway). Quality of the viewfinder is excellent, topped by maybe just K10D or about every mechanical Pentax of yore (but these don't count :-). Even the size of the viewfinder information is right (not that I look at these numbers too often ;-)). 2. image quality - I started shooting RAW straight away and I like it very much. Just the ability to choose between different processors is IMHO worth it. So far I've tried Pixmantec Rawshooter Essentials (prefers sharpness over smoothness so it's probably better suited for printing), Silkypix Developer Studio (prefers smoothness over sharpness, which is coincidentally what I prefer as well), Pentax Photo Laboratory (output is similar to Silkypix and it should be, as version 3.0 is powered by Silkypix engine), Google Picasa 2 (nice for cataloging and casual use) and Zoner Photo Studio (good quality automatic conversion and some advanced tools, especially for those who don't have Adobe Photoshop). The only disappointing (well disappointing is probably too strong word in this circumstance) thing I've encountered so far is a "hot cluster" of pixels in the upper right corner. It looks like a cross made from about 5 pixels and is always lit. Overall not a big deal, usually one setting within a RAW conversion software will remedy this but I'm curious how common is this fault? That's all for now, folks. :-) Peter -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
