An actual (fairly minor) K10D gripe.

Just discovered my first actual gripe with the K10D.

The 'rotate' feature available in playback mode, by clicking the 4-way controller 'down', is great.

The digital zoom feature is also great.

But if you've rotated a shot, digital zooming flips it back up the original way.

Also, it seems that rotating a shot at all on the LCD is only possible if the camera is in 'auto image rotation=1' mode on the Custom menu.

Grr. Seems a pointless restriction to me.

PS Sorry, meant to post this on K10D wish list thread. Mods feel free to move it if you like.

I don't quite get your second point.

Pentax has given you the option to do rotation, or not. If you set the camera NOT to allow rotation, and it doesn't, what have you got to complain about?

Waiter: "Would you like soup, Sir?".
Customer: "No, thank you.".

Interval

Customer: "Oi, garcon, where's my soup?".

But perhaps I am missing something.

Incidentally, this is surely something you set and forget, and for most users, rotation would be the option of choice.

G

hit "ok" after you rotate the shot

Well, Ok. Not quite as annoying as I thought then. I hadn't noticed that way of doing it.

It needs to write to its memory somehow first, before it'll let you zoom rotated. And sure, you can rotate it again, hit Ok and zoom it again the original way up.

But as a UI it is a bit clunky.

As I see it, having the camera know which way up it is, and automatically display the picture accordingly is a great option. It means that you can take a shot in portrait, and have it come up in portrait in playback mode. You may not want it to do this, so having it as an option is excellent.

None of which has anything at all, AFAICS, to do with wanting to rotate the image manually on the LCD for viewing convenience after the fact.

I still utterly fail to get your point. My camera is set to allow image rotation. If I take the picture in portrait mode, the camera will display it in portrait mode. If I want to rotate it, I press the bottom arrow on the 4-way controller and the picture rotates.

What more do you want? Or don't you know that you can do this? Or am I thick? (Which is just as likely as the other options!)

G

you have missunderstood the meaning of the rotation custom functions (easily done, so did I to start with)

Automatically rotate images refers to Playback mode. When it is turned off there is no rotation in playback mode, but rotation info is still saved (so the shots come up in the camera detected orientation on your PC)

Save rotation info is the one you are looking for. When it is turned off the camera does not save rotation info on shooting but you can still put it in manually (provided Automatically rotate images is switched on).

Really I am begining to think someone at Pentax has a special relationship with God, and borrowed his camera for a weekend before designing the 10D.

Agreed.

But once you've rotated it, you can't digitally zoom in on the shot in its newly rotated state - without, as Mongoose pointed out, pressing Ok first. If you don't press Ok first, it flips it back to its original orientation before zooming.

I did say this in my original post.

You're quite right. I had misunderstood these two functions. Thanks for that clarification.

At least what I want to do is possible - thanks for drawing my attention to the need to hit Ok to save the orientation manually. But I still think the UI would be slicker if you could quickly rotate and zoom without having to save first.

But I hereby downgrade 'minor gripe' to 'very minor gripe'

My guess is on hitting the bottom button the camera does a very quick and dirty rotate on the JPG preview image to show you what it will look like, then when you hit OK it does it properly. Also saves it doing the rotate multiple times (since every rotate will degrade the image a bit if its a JPG).

George said:
Did you ever hear the one about the old man that recieved a hooker for his birthday?

She knocks at the door and when he answers, she anounces that she's there to give him "Super sex!!!"

"what?" he says...

"Super sex!!!"

"Oh, I'll just have the soup...."

Don,

That's one of the better jokes that have appeared in this forum!

I agree.. and as a poster of two of the last jokes myself...

Cheers

Liam

I understand you now.

But how often do you really want to view an image on its side? I misunderstood what you were getting at because I couldn't imagine why you would want to correct the orientation of the picture (by switching rotation ON), and then decide to view it the "wrong" way after all.

For what sort of pictures is this ability to look at them on their side useful?

And is it really a fault, however minor, that the camera doesn't permit this without pressing the OK button?

G

it could be argued that it is better to turn the camera sideways and make full use of that lovely 2.5" screen rather than have the image rotated and only use about 1.5".

After all, with save rotation switched on but display rotated switched off the image will still come up the right way round on your PC.