Placed my order

Finally did it, the family it turns out have been very kind for the 40th prezzie so SRS are sending me today:

K10D + kit lens + tamron 70-300 + 4gb card + case (just for camera) + 50mm 1.4 prime + lowepro 200AW.

phew what a bundle to start with, will post a first pic on here later in the week.

Thanks a lot to all the forum people who have replied to my posts so far.

Very nice order.....looks very good for a starter.

Make sure to get at least one more sd-card. Always good to have one to shift with.


Post results when you get some.

Congratulations - that's an excellent starting point. The kit lens and the Tamron nicely cover all the bases between wide and long telephoto, and the FA50 serves not only as a low-light lens but should also give you an appreciable boost in quality over the other two.

I recently introduced a friend to SLR photography and she ended up buying exactly the same set-up (2x 2GB cards and no bag yet though) from SRS and she's delighted with the results so far - I'm sure you will be too.

well its here and i am liking what i see so far. just been tinkering and learning the features a bit. for some reason the images straight out of the camera are less than 2mb jpg's. seems low even though i have the highest quality set. more tinkering to do I guess. the indoor shots of my kids i took as tests produced nice natural colours from plenty of daylight from the window. you could also clearly see the steam rising from their plate of mash! closer inspection shows the images to be a tad soft. other test was in a lower lit living room and the white balance was not so good but i expected that. tried it in raw, then in-camera adjustment, and was satisfied with the outcome. i've a lot to learn but finding my way is not too bad so far, and the manual is even not that bad.

Well done on getting the camera.

Sub 2mb JPEGs are normal if there's not a lot of fine detail in the image - which there can be if much of the scene is dark or out-of-focus, for example.

ah cheers iceb, most of my first tests were on the 50mm at 1.4-2.0 so plenty of out of focus background. i'll do more playing. shake reduction seems pretty good where you need it.

I'll try and get some first shots uploaded tonight, here's hoping for a good sunset in my village today.

well I've had the K10D for about 8 days and am starting to get some pictures I am really happy with. I have still not bothered with RAW and have adjusted the in camera sharpness, contrast and stayed with JPG for now. Main things I have done so far that I have really liked/noticed:

1. Indoor shots with non-daylight light source need custom white balance. I've used a white sheet of A4. The results then are brilliant. I took a shot of my daughter yesterday with the light from the window behind me and two other lights on in the room. Pushed the ISO to 800 so that the 50mm could handle the right balance of aperture and shutter speed (180/2.4), need a fast shutter for kids who wriggle! This is now up there as one of my favourite shots of the kids. Colours, skin tones all bang on.
2. Outdoor shots the camera's AWB and green mode most of the time is absolutely fine. Again pushing ISO to 800 allows me a faster shutter speed. With the APS-C on with the 50mm and continuous mode the refocus was very impressive, again some fantastic shots of the kids mid air jumping off things, in perfect focus.
3. AE-L very useful for panoramas. Used autostitch, and very happy with the results. see here: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3016/2565019951_a4305ece81_b.jpg
4. Pretty happy with the Tamron 70-300mm zoom, not used much yet. One thing though the back cap on it kept getting stuck on a few times, and when I got it free a few little stray shavings of plastic resulted, which had to be blown off the back of the lens. Here's a shot taken at 300mm as the donkeys were so far away: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3021/2569510621_d4a0d2cbfc_b.jpg
5. Battery. no warning at all! Have now bought a cheapie spare off ebay.

And a question. I wonder if anyone has good links to information on good rules of thumb when shooting. Like for example ensuring shutter speed is at least higher than focal range to avoid shake. I find with the 50mm lens as has been reported on the net that f1.4 is only going to be any good for an object thats not too deep if you know what i mean. pictures of the kids need f2.4 at least or their eyes might be in focus but not their hair for example.

This rule was thought up in the pre-digital and pre-Shake-Reduction age, so it may not be quite so appropriate now, but still it's helpful. At least it's easy to remember!

Regarding the rear cap being difficult to remove - if it's like my Tamron rear cap when fitting you have to line up a mark on the cap with the red spot on the lnes - the one you use to put the lens on the camaera. A PITA but the same with pentax caps I think.

Mike

Tamron and Sigma rear caps need more care to align properly. You can replace them with Pentax or thid-party caps.

Thanks Pete I hadn't realised the problem was only with Tamron and Sigma caps - the two non pentax lenses I have. Now I know it's no big deal, I'm too old to hurry now.

Mike

I think the Sigma caps are a 'pain in the neck' but the Pentax ones are really easy to use.

Promised I would post some pics on here. My panning technique so far sucks a touch but I managed to catch some shots of a Barn Owl today at Asham Bryan Agricultural Show in York. These two below on Flickr are cropped a little and not completely in focus but quite happy with these as first goes.