Hmmm.
The *ist-D took an absolute age to write RAW to the card so updating while writing may have been useful. However, the K10D with a decent 133x card (I use a Lexar) writes amazingly fast. In fact, I'm not sure I'd even have the time to do anything while it was busy

As for green button - having used the K10D since December I find it much more intuitive and the *ist-D more awkward. Some things you've just got to get used to.

Haven't had a big problem with WB on the K10D - I'd say it was better under more situations. Tungsten with AWB is always yuck. And in any case, I shoot RAW and sort it out on the PC with Silkypix. My only niggle was that the *ist-D had great WB memories and worked really quickly with the Expodisc. The K10D is still a bit too fiddly to use the Expodisc quickly

The speed and massive LCD I miss when switching back to the *ist-D
...and when it comes to image quality there's no contest

But I'll check...
Matt

Will,
Looks a great action shot!
BTW, I tried panning with the K10D SR enabled - my boys were cycling by and the SR handled it extremely well, exactly as I'd expect. Rotational panning movement doesn't seem to phase the SR at all

So it'll be interesting to see your K10D shots
Matt

Just to add a little more - the OP was using a 0-360.com attachment to grab a 360 degree shot of a room. Spot metering was pointless because it's difficult to work out what the centre actually is in a polar-coordinate world

I gave the suggestion of using Evaluative Multi Zone metering, of course, but also of checking the histogram and even considering using fully manual for such setup shots

Hopefully it's all resolved now!

Matt

Have been communicating via email on this issue...

Part of the problem was the K10D was in spot metering mode
There may be more... but that's the start.

Matt

Well.... it's your choice... but I would consider the fact that the K10D does have a huge dynamic range and far less noise in the shadows than the 6Mp, and having used the Pentax DSLRs since they were released, I have to say the K10D is leagues ahead in image quality.

There must be a sensible reason for this.
What lens are you using? (Maybe I can try and reproduce this - I have: *ist-D, *ist-DS, and K10D.)

Matt

Not sure... but with that exposure you are probably pushing the limit of the metering system on any camera.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the K10D has a much larger dynamic range compared to the K100D/*ist-Dx series. In fact, the images will have a slightly different look (more film like actually).

Additionally, the K10D assumes that you will probably be doing some post-production on the computer, so it tries to ensure that the highlights are not blown out. Once highlights are blown out there's nothing much that can be done. If the shot is slightly underexposed then that's an easy thing to correct. It's one of the differences between a "pro" spec camera and a "consumer" one...

If you shoot RAW, then it's absolutely not a problem - especially as the K10D has an enormous amount of detail in the shadows that the earlier 6Mp bodies couldn't match.

Matt

ialex,
It is lossless Huffman encoding. In other words - there is NO image difference between the DNG and PEF.

FWIW, Canon use a two pass Huffman encoding and so their RAW files are even smaller. The pro Nikons and Pentax use single pass. Note that some of the consumer Nikons use lossy compression in their RAW (by converting to a logarithmic 8-bit from the linear 12-bit). You can see the Huffman tree in the dcraw source code

Matt

Because PEF files are about 9Mb, while the DNG are around 16Mb. So you'll get more on a card
Matt

Windows version here

Macintosh version here

(Thanks for the heads up Dent Arthur Dent )
Matt

The *ist-D will take IR images already - AFAIK it's quite sensitive in the IR region. You just need an appropriate filter.

Think the K10D is a bit more aggressive on its IR filter.
Matt