has anybody tried a 4GB memory card in an *isds or other pentax digital camera
their are quite a few selling on ebay at silly money my questions are

1/do thay work with our kit

2/can our kit work with them

3/do thay drain the power quickley

4/ is their any point having 4GB i mean the obvious advantages are their more storage

has anybody bought these cards off the internet and if so was it happy ever after or a total horror story

your thoughts please guy and gals

unless pentax have changed polatics like the copy-cam company nikon and minolta i carnt see pentax screwing its users by changing lens mounts or selling da lenses only to change sensor size

pentax toyed with 35mm D chips when thay went in with contax about 5-6 years ago with the MZ-D but decided it was to unreliable and to costley for its users

i was gutted having bought the MZ-S to see them not produce the MZ-D but then the price would have made us all deffect to the oposition

i think we're all safe buying DA lenses

good point we have already seen the withdrawl of fuji iso 50 slide film due to a lack of chemistry availability

i have invested in digital and the 10 meg is on my to buy list when its launched

i also see the benifits no more messing in a cramped smelly darkroom now i sit nice and comfy with a brew and my laptop NOW THAT IS PROGRESS

also the storage`space benifits from large cabinets for slides to a pocket for your CD/DVDs

the picture taking aspect is a major plus point when shooting a wedding for instance you see the results streight away and can reshoot the shot having now noticed the tree sticking out of someones head

the other point is the processing costs digital is currently more expensive but you can shoot 100 images at a wedding and then reprint 40 appose to shoting 100 and having four rolls of film developed

but for now i will shot film and digital side by side until i have to give up one or the other after all black and white is having a revival at the minute

of course this is all very well but my one concern with switching to digital away from film is the fact that not all new softwear packages are compatable

you only have to look at the windows system to see what i mean 95 and 98 are not fully compatable with xp i have loads of old soft wear which is not compatable with my laptop which runs xp pro

windows 95 forget it most 98 stuff won t open

so will you be able to open files in the future or will we all have to constantly update (and rerecord for whant of a better word) archive files

the risk with digital is losing work that is stored on disc or cd i know if thay are stored correctly then the shelf life is quite long but even SONY admitted that the shelf life of the laquar on cds and dvds is only about TEN YEARS tops regardless of who its stored due to oxidisation

on the other hand film cellulode seems to last far longer when stored in the right conditions upto ONE HUNDRED YEARS plus so do you think that film will be replaced by digital or is digital just a passing phase

i have just sold a pentax SMC 135-600 f6.7


when i bought this lens four years ago i put it up against the sigma 170-500 f4-6

the pentax beat the sigma hands down

the sigma wieghed in it 250g where as the pentax was a hefty 2kg

kimbo wrote

As for AF lenses being deliberately designed to be less sharp than their earlier counterparts, I can't quite see that either and I don't think the MTF charts support that theory.

all of the photographic press i.e practical photography amater photography digital photography the list goes on and on have at some point said "that autofocus lenses dont focus as sharp as manual focus lenses due to the fact that thay use contrast

maybe pete could shed some light on this as he used to be with PP

just to though a bit of petrol on the fire

auto focus cameras regardless of make don't focus perfectly !!!

allow me to explain before you all jump up and down

because thay use contrast to focus the lenses arn't ground as fine as the old smc lenses which are manually focused

this is why i use old smc lenes and not auto focus lenses

yes the focus is (technically) perfect with auto focus cameras but if you look at trannys with a 10x lupi thay are not sharp

if auto focus lenes were as sharp as the old smc lenes the auto focus system in the modern camera would be unable to focus

Pentax in their wisdom use an auto focus chip that can use the older lenses and although the pentax chip may not be as fast as N C and M their cameras carnt use old lenses hence why thay all changed lens mounts

this is why PENTAX SMC lenses are the finest in the world and will never be bettered by the oposition

anyway off the soap box

tanya please dont be daunted by the technical jargon and if we can help in the future please ask and the welth of experiance on this site of your fellow users will help

cheers ali

yes i agree sorry tanva for getting all carried away with technical jargon


hope you try different methords enjoy photography and happy shooting

in answer to mannesty I DO KNOW but digital caneras are easily fooled as can be the user in low light situations when using depth of field preveiw just gives you a completely black veiwfinder

my *istds has a depth of feid preveiw on the back its called a screen which shows you the picture so the point i was making was why use a depth of field preveiw through the veiw finder when you can see it on the screen as a picture THE SCREEN IS BIGGER THAN THE VIEW FINDER IS IT NOT

okay I could say being a PRO I dont use depth of field preveiw at all

not because I dont know how but because I dont need to

their are two ways to bracket your shots

1/ let the camera do it

2/ do it manually using aprature and shuter speeds

using a digital camera (as i do) i sometimes bracket manually and take several shots using different aperature settings to alter contrast depth of field even filters

by doing this i am then able to sit with the laptop later on and peruse the days shooting then i dont miss that one shot and regret it

the point i was trying to make was if using a digital camera and in dought take as many shots with different settings as you like it does cost for processing just time in our light room

sorry for the little outburst photography is a learning curve and a digital camera can be a great help to get perfect shots so use all of its capabilities including veiwing your shots on screen

you should be ok and shouldnt damage the camera

: why do you want to to depth of feid preview with a digital camera ?

what you see is what you get buy a larger sd card bracket your shots and delete what you dont want