Introducing a new forum member

Hello everyone,

Glad to have found these very helpful Pentax User Forums.

I've been a user of Pentax lenses since the early 1980s (albeit on Ricoh XR-7 bodies!) and was finally tempted to go digital when I recently found a reconditioned *istD at a very good price, and realised I would wait forever for a full-frame DSLR that will take my existing lenses (or a 35mm digital back for a Ricoh XR-7)!

So far I have been very impressed with the camera - mainly because it handles like a camera, not like a silly gadget & it lets me switch nearly all the "auto" features off - so I end up with an almost manual digital camera!

Maybe I'm odd or just old-fashioned, but I prefer using manual focus lenses, with aperture rings (and the viewfinder of the *istD is nice & bright for focusing) and I'm used to a mostly-manual SLR film body (I miss the shutter speed dial).

I did get a Pentax DA 18-55mm zoom with the *istD. It's smaller & weighs less my old K-mount Tamron 35-70mm & probably has better optics, but I hardly ever use auto-focus, and find the manual focus ring on the lens rather light and not as precise as focusing my old manual lenses.

So I'll just continue to add to my collection of Pentax SMC-M prime manual lenses - so far I have a 300mm f4, 135mm f3.5, 50mm f1.7, 28mm f2.8, 20mm f4, 17mm f4 fish-eye, plus a 70-210 Tokina zoom & a Sigma 600mm mirror. I'd like to add the Pentax 35mm, 85mm and maybe 100mm Macro lenses to my collection if I ever find examples of these within my budget!

I was pleased to note that my manual ring-flash works fine with the istD* as well (using the PC flash-sync socket on the camera.) My other manual flashguns all work too - I slave these using Firefly flash slave units left over from my days of cave photography.

The ability to check focus and histogram after each shot that digital photography gives you is absolutely brilliant, as is the RAW format (although it would be nice if the camera saved the files faster!)

Regards
tekno.mage

Welcome.

You made a good choice. The *ist D is an excellent camera, and more compatible with older equipment than any other Pentax DSLR.

Pity it's a bit slow, but you can't have everything.

G

Welcome to the forums, hope to see lots of posts!

Hi and welcome to the forum. I still use my D quite a lot because of it's compatibility with some of the older flashes etc.

Kim