I spent the month of January in India. I'm pleased to report the following experiences with the K10D.
The K10D performed without a hitch other than those related to my learning curve. I did not anticipate that the 28/2.8 F would be my most used lens. The 43 Ltd. spent a lot of time in my bag because it was a bit too long for use in the narrow warrens typical of the most interesting old indian cities. The 50-200 DA is superb. I used it a lot at the camel fair/races and on the Ganges at Varanasi for four days. I put a 52mm "normal" hood on it permanantly and left the factory hood at home. The 18-55 kit lens got some use at the wide end and I only used the 16mm Zenitar for a few shots on the Ganges. I should have saved the weight and left it at home. I had a 50/1.7 M on the ZX-5 back up which my partner ended up using. He used the Zenitar more than I did. Of course I had my faithfull GR1 in pocket at all times. I shot 8 rolls of Astia with the GR1 and got some nice shots due to the convenience of that sweet camera. I left the K10D ISO at 100-400 except one night we went out into the streets during a wild Shiva festival when I used ISO1600 and the 28 on manual focus. I like the results. The back-up PD70X and Wolverine 40 drives worked fine. The PD70X copied a 2Gb card in 3 or 4 minutes. The wolverine was much slower. Every nite I would back up the day's shots and format the cards for the next day. I got 121 RAW DNG images per card. I lost two fast 2Gb cards somewhere but the remaining two covered all my daily needs. Recharging the three camera batteries and the hard drives took place about every three days. I got a bunch of plug converters to match Indian to USA plugs for about 25 cents each. Bob had a video camera to charge so we usually had all the plugs in a hotel room busy at times. I never missed a shot because of low batteries. All the chargers were different but they all worked from 100 to 250 volts so we didn't have to use heavy transformers with the 220 volts at 50 cycles in India. Bill Lawlor www.wvlphotography.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
