yep - you heard me right - Digital Camera mag this month have complimented a Pentax camera for having sharp JPEGS - comparing them to the Canon 400Ds which it describes as being "Mushy"

Sounds good huh? It also got 90% overall in the review.

However the review is still a bit half arsed - they mention the dust/water seals as a very passing reference in the tiniest print - no mention of the 22 bit ADC (although they do say that all Pentax DSLRs have depth and colour that is almost film like - they just don't explain why it should be so good on the K10D!)

They spend most the the review comparing it to the 400D and D80 - brief mention of the 30D.

They talk about the 3fps, and suggest that a sports tog might want nearer to 5fps (which is fair) but fail to mention that the camera will do that rate until the card is full.


But the worst bit, the real let-down. The price

They list it as £750! and then say that street price is around £680.

Now I know mags have a lead time - but two months ago you could get a K10D for less than either of those prices, and since the RRP is only £650 it's hardly a reasonable reflection of the true price...

Put it this way - you can buy mine off me - but you'd need to give me enough money for me to afford another - because that's the only lens I could find to want to replace it with.

I love the thing.

Well my *flame* shot is not really the usual thing....




ISO 400, F3.5 1/10th sec.

As the car was producing intermittent flames I had pre-focused, then used manual to work from - the light was changing way too quickly for the camera to keep up, by the time it had metered and taken the shot the light had changed. So I used manual, went as slow as I felt I could hand hold, then played with the aperture to get the effect i wanted.

i was exposing to try and get the best balance between the flame and still showing the car a bit. White Balance was set for Tungsten to try and stop it being too yellow.

Ultimately it's not a great shot of flames, but it captured the effect well enough.


i think that flames are similar to moving water - you can freeze them for a sharp image with spray etc, or slow it down to get some blur and show the fluid movement.

Cheers George - but I couldn't find the Pentax 24-70 f2.8 for £200 and 70-200 f2.8 for under £600....

I'm confident that it *shouldn't* be a lens issue - in my mind with autofocus the camera doesn't know what lens is on it - all it does is move the lens until it's sensors say that the image is sharp - so I would think it's an issue of the CCD and focus sensors not being properly aligned (I won't pretend the camera hasn't had some rough handling at some points in it's life)

I'll have to give Pentax at Slough a shout and see what they say - although it might then be an issue of having to wait until I've bought my K10D before it goes off

Hi folks

Ok for a while now I've noticed that my *ist D has focusing issues in some situations - the camera appears to lock on fine, then when looking at the images afterwards I seem to have lost a bit of sharpness at the point of focus (but have sharpness in other places)

I found the Focus test sheet on another forum, printed it out and ran a quick test - and saw that with either of my Sigma EX lenses it seems to be consistently front focusing.

Although I'm looking to upgrade to a K10D very soon I will still want to keep the D as my spare body so it's worth me spending a few quid to make sure it's in tip top condition.

Can anyone recommend some places I can get the camera checked over (it was new a few years back - £1200 body only...) since it's not been checked since new and has shot 50,000 or more images. I'd want to have the camera given a *looking over* to see that it's all well, as well as having the focusing checked and tuned if necessary


Any suggestions?

IIRC daylight film is designed for noon sun - approx 5600k. I think flash is also designed to be approx the same colour temp.

For a 3200k lamp on digital you'd be wanting a Tungsten WB setting - for daylight I would think that there's a filter required

wow - hadn't appreciated just how small the Ist D screen looks in comparison! (oh dear, this isn't helping me resist temptation)

I think the K10D must be a lot better to handle without the grip. But for the 70-200 f2.8 and converter hand held i'm probably going to need the grip too...

Oh dear - I wonder where the best price for body and grip is lol

Thanks for the links to the K10D and Ist D shots

Those pics are showing for me McBrian - but big thanks for doing the comparison - any chance of seeing if it's something obvious not letting them work?

anyone got a comparison pic of an Ist D with grip and a K10D with grip?

I'm using the *Ist D with grip (cheers Mannesty) and find it made a serious improvement to the feel and handling of the camera - especially when shooting portrait.

I use a couple of sigma EX lenses mainly (24-70 2.8 and 70-200 2. and without the grip the *Ist D was seriously front heavy