Larry,
I had a pleasure and a workout :-), to shoot with Nikon D700 for about
1.5 hours once... The owner of the camera was there, so whenever I had a
question - I got an answer. Since that time, Nikon UI poses no problem
for me at all... There were minor changes in newer cameras, but whatever
I do with the Nikon I can easily do with Pentax and vice versa. I don't
have any preference in that regard. Either UI is very convenient and
easy to use...
Apparently you mileage has varied.
Boris
On 1/25/2016 23:00, Larry Colen wrote:
Some friends were playing (actually running a pro-jam) at a local BBQ
last night. One of them asked me to take photos with his camera, a D810.
The first thing that I noticed was that the controls on it are not
intuitive. That's not to say that they are not logical, but they were
very difficult to figure out. I was able to muddle through and figure
a few things out. A couple things (like enabling the RGB histogram) I
was able to find enough hints on the web to do. And a couple things
(like exposure compensation on the flash) I asked him how to do when
he wasn't on stage.
IIRC, the lenses in his bag that I played with were:
50/1.8
35/1.8
85/1.8
28-200 (4-6.3?)
Some thoughts on the experience:
Familiarity with the equipment is far more important than actual
camera performance in any sort of challenging light. At first, I
couldn't even figure out how to put it in manual mode, change
composition, or find the RGB histogram so that I could see what
channels I was blowing out. It was kind of like trying to drive an
autocross in a Ferrari after four shots of whisky, while wearing
snowshoes.
I haven't seen anything except on the back of the camera, but the
autofocus seems to leave the Pentax in the dust.
Judging by the back of the camera previews, the fullframe sensor high
ISO performance is significantly better than the K-5 or K-3.
Once I got the flash under control, it may have had better exposure
control than on the Pentax. It's hard to tell, it was a challenging
room, and I was using the flash primarily for fill, once I was able to
turn it down.
Even once I learned how to use many of the basic controls, many of the
basic operations seem to be a lot better on the Pentax than the Nikon.
I suspect that that would hold true even once I was really familiar
and comfortable with the Nikon UI. Mind you, I'm not saying that
Pentax has a good UI, it just seems to suck a bit less than Nikon.
One nice thing about using someone else's camera is that I got all of
the fun of taking the photos, but I don't need to do the work of
sorting and processing them.
Although, it would be interesting to get the raw files of the ones
that did turn out to see what I could do with them in Lightroom.
This confirms something that I've been thinking about lately. When the
K-1 comes out, I will have to take a good hard look comparing its
performance (including ease of use) with that of equivalent Nikons.
Taking full advantage of the big sensor will require significant
investment in new glass over time, and that would be the time to fully
understand my options.
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