picture time

[spatch]

I finally entered the world of the Digital SLR this week. (I couldn't get a regular digital camera; I hate the small ones and they way they feel in my hand and the fact that you can do stuff with them but not all that much.) So I got a Pentax K-x inexpensive entry level DSLR and immediately remembered how one of the most satisfying sounds in the world is that SLR shutter clunk. I bet there would have been better cameras to get, but this one had the stuff I liked and none of the stuff I was remotely interested in, and I have a serious Pentax brand loyalty since my first "real" camera was a K-1000, that marvelous manually-set camera which gave me so many wonderful shots over the years. (I learned to shoot B&W on it, then I learned to develop and print my own stuff, and while I'd probably be as rust as hell taking off a film cap in pitch black and threading a spiral tank, the smell of fixer and stop bath brings back so many fond memories and is another reason why Ferranti-Dege leaving Harvard Square was such a depressing loss.) The K-1000 may or may not have survived this spring's basement floods and if it did, I will be absolutely psyched to grab the 20-500mm lens from it, get it fixed/cleaned/ungunked, and stick it on the new one. Hooray for the K mount!

The first thing I did when I took it out of the box was take pictures of the cat. Today I went to the Stone Zoo with Carolyn and we had a marvelous time and I took some pics. I still haven't read the manual, but I've found some extra features on my own through trial and error. The neat thing I noticed was that the camera has a tilt sensor so it will helpfully rotate vertical pics you took. Thanks, camera. Thamera.

I'm still experimenting with it a lot and trying not to start getting snooty about things. For me, the camera will be a wonderful step up from the Crummy Cameraphone and give me more reasons to take more pictures as well as record video when I need to. And even though I don't know all it can do or what some of the buttons on the side do, I had an absolute blast today taking pictures of a zoo. Just to see what I could do.

One of my photo rules, which I started when I was taking single-use box cameras to Coney Island and then using the fixed aperture cameraphone, was that post-processing may be nice but I like it better when I present things as I saw it. I stay away from it when possible, though I do admit sometimes a little color saturation boost is very nice. Of the zoo pics all I took only one had a hell of an incongrous crop because my zoom couldn't handle a pic from a longer distance than usual, but thankfully it was saved at 4000xsomethingbig so I could crop nicely.

I will not listen very much to any constructive criticism involvin retouching to make a "perfect" shot. I'm not interested in perfection; I'm interested in what my eyes see and what I make the camera see with my eyes. If the colors or light levels turn out to be sub optimal, I'll fool around with them a little, but definitely not for the cause of Making It Perfect. These may not all be classic shots but I'm very happy with what I have.

I know I ain't no professional but what I am is me, and what I like to do is take pictures, and that is all that counts. Anyway. This is gonna help keep me busy and provoke me to take more wonderful fun walks.

went zoo saw animuls Photo Set



I really look forward to taking lots of great roller coaster pictures this summer. (So remember in 2006 when I got that cameraphone and took pictures of everything? Yeah, well, that's gonna start happening again.) But so far I love my new DSLR and can't wait to see what other goodies I can get out of it.

Comments

[dskasak.livejournal.com]

Good camera choice! That's what I've been using since last Christmas. I had never heard of a 20-500mm lens before, so I hope that it survived the flood, as I'd not only love to see what pictures can come from it, but I'm curious about that lens itself.

One of the major flaws with the K-x, and this is coming from spending a couple years with a Nikon D50, is that I miss the focal point indicators in the Pentax's viewfinder. I can certainly remember where I have set them on the display panel, but it's nice to have that friendly reminder when looking through the viewfinder. From what I've read, and I'm a bit too tired to look this information up right now, Pentax claimed that redesigning the viewfinder to accommodate the focal points would have added not only to the cost of the camera, but also more bulk to its relatively slim profile. I'm getting used to working without those focal points being visible, but there are times I wouldn't have minded if Pentax were to have spent the extra cash to fix this design flaw.

On the other hand, I really love how old lenses play well on the K-x. I bought a used 50mm f/1.7 for $60 a while back, and in spite of that lens only working in Manual Focus mode, I have enjoyed the hell out of it. The K-x allows you to program the focal length of the lens in the camera, allowing for an audio BEEP and a flash of the solid hexagon in the viewfinder to notify you when your subject is in focus; in effect, these aids transform the MF lens into a slow-moving Auto-Focus lens where your fingers provide the "motor." I don't know how the programming would work with that zoom lens you mentioned; perhaps you have to input both ends of its focal length into the camera and let it do the rest?

I haven't done much with video on the K-x, as I've been concentrating on learning more about its photo tricks, like its built-in filters, its in-camera HDR, and so forth. Compared to the D50 I had at last year's model shoot, I think that the results turned out much better for this year's. The 50mm f/1.7 worked flawlessly here, and I preferred its output to the 55-300mm I had used earlier in the set (the pictures from IMGP2689-1X onward were taken with the 50mm). Next up: learning how to pose the models.