Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

When I was a youngster my family lived on the edge of a hill. The land dropped off sharply at our property line, made a quick descent of 30 or 40 feet, and then flattened out again. A small drain ran along the bottom, and on the other side of this drain was the back of a shopping center and a small railroad switchyard. The side of the hill was overgrown with trees and brush. It was also littered with old tires, a junk washing machine, rusting barrels, and other rubbish. My family called that little strip of semi-wild land “The Gully.”

Cricket Frogs were common in The Gully. As children we’d find them regularly in the summer – so regularly that they became a pretty common-place feature of our world. Once or twice I tried to keep a cricket frog in a terrarium – it never worked out. But they were more or less taken for granted back then.

I don’t know when I last saw one.

I thought I saw one last week, but was wrong. I was in the Allegan Forest, by the edge of the New Pond. The water has been receding and now a few feet of mud boarders the pond. A very cooperative green frog has taken to sunning itself in one particular spot. I saw it there and knelt down into the muck to get a snapshot.

A bit of movement caught my eye, and I saw what I thought was a Blanchard’s Cricket Frog. The tiny amphibian was less than an inch long, and I had to get close with my insect macro rig to get a shot of it. Here’s a photo with an SD Memory card for scale:

I was pretty excited about possibly finding one of these now uncommon creatures. But once home I looked at the photo and realized that it was really just a really small toad. I didn’t know smalls could be so small – I guess this one metamorphosed from a really small tadpole.

Here’s a shot of the samll toad toad without the memory card:

Well – the experience brought back some nice memories. The last toad I saw – a few weeks ago – was about the size of a baseball. It did not seem to like the attention that I paid it, and slowly but surely dug itself down into the sandy soil. It just sank in, as if the earth was just water and it could float a bit lower if it wished. It was many time’s the size of this little creature.

Here’sthe green frog (shot the week before) that I was originally going after:

Two years ago I put together a little comparison of image quality between a medium format film scan and a capture form a digital SLR. (You can see that original comparison here.)

Since then I’ve upgraded both my digital SLR and my film scanner, so it seems like it’s time to perform the comparison again. In 2006 I was shooting with a 6 megapixel DSLR (Pentax *ist-D), these days I’m shooting with a 10 megapixel K10D. Back then I scanned medium format film at 3200 dpi with and Epson 3200, these days I scan at 6400 dpi with an Epson V500.

To facilitate this comparison, I shot the same scene with both a digital SLR and medium format camera, and then processed the respective images.

The medium format camera was a venerable Pentax 6x7 with an SMC 67 55mm f4 wide angle lens. The film used was Kodak Portra VC, 160 ISO. The negative was scanned on an Epson V500 - a mid-range consumer flatbed scanner. Digital ICE was on while scanning, to take care of dust. (This may have some impact on sharpness and detail in the scan.)

The digital capture was taken with a ten megapixel Pentax K10d with a 16-45mm SMC-ED DA zoom lens. Both shots were taken at f16. The camera ISO was 400. There is a slight difference in the angle of view and framing between the two shots, which is the result of setting up to separate tripods and not lining things up perfectly. The images were taken last fall – I’m just now getting around to looking at this.

So let’s take a look at a scene taken with the two platforms, and see how they compare…

First, let’s consider the size of the image. Scanning a 6x7 cm negative at 6400 dpi produces a really huge digital file. Here’s an image that illustrates that:

This illustration shows the relative size of a 6400 dpi medium format scan, compared to a 10 megapixel digital capture (the smaller inset box) and the same digital capture opened to 25.3 megapixels in Adobe Camera Raw. Yes – these is a very substantial difference in size!

The film scan is roughly 17,500 x 13,700 pixels in size – just under 240 megapixels in total. At 300 dpi, the full sized film scan would print at 58 x 45 inches. By comparison, the larger of the digital captures – which, of course, has been up-sampled in Adobe Camera Raw – is 6,114 x 4,113 pixels. That’s just over 25 megapixels and at 300 dpi would print at 20 x 14 inches.

So without a doubt, the medium format scans are larger. But how much more information is in that larger image? After all, digital gets a real boost due to its superior ability to produce sharp edges (acutance) and much lower noise / grain levels.

Comparing detail, and showing it on the web, poses a bit of a challenge. I decided to take two approaches. In one case I up-sampled the digital image to make it equivalent to the film scan. This is a bit unfair to the digital image, since it pushes it to sizes never intended for it. In the other case I down-sampled the medium format scan to make it the same size as the digital capture. This is a bit unfair to the film scan, since it basically discards and ignores one of it’s main advantages – the huge image size that it supports.

Here are the two comparisons. In this case, I up-sampled the digital image to be the same size as the film scan. To do this, I first opened the image at the 25.3 megapixel size in Adobe Camera Raw version 5.3. I then up-sampled the image in Photoshop, using the Bicubic smoother option.

Here is an “actual pixel” sample from the medium format film scan:

Here’s the same portion of the image, at actual pixels of the up-sampled digital capture:

Here’s a second example – film first:

Now digital –

What can we conclude form this? Clearly, the medium format scans hold a lot more detail. In fact, disregarding comparisons, there is simply an impressive amount of detail in the medium format film scan. There’s no doubt that if you want to print large, going with medium format is a much better choice.

Now here is a comparison of a down-sampled film scan and a 25.3 megapixel digital capture. The digital capture has still been up-sampled within camera RAW, since comes from a 10 megapixel sensor. The film image was down-sampled using the Bicubic sharper method. First the film sample:

Now digital:

The differences here are less pronounced. There is clearly superior detail in the film scan, especially in the brambly branches and twigs towards the middle bottom of the frame, but the difference is not as marked. A bit of noise from the grain is evident in the film sample. To my eye, the leaves in the film capture have a much more realistic look to them, due to the better level of detail. But I’m not sure that much difference would be apparent in a print.

I think the images speak for themselves, and you can draw your own conclusions. One thing that I cannot demonstrate on the computer screen is the advantage that medium format gains by being able to print at a higher resolution. I’ve made a few 16 x 22 inch prints of this image from the medium format scan. The native scan is so large I print it at 720 dpi, and even then need to down-sample the image by 15% to get it to fit. The 720 dpi print really captures the great detail in this shot, and makes for a ver high quality print.

As I’ve noted in earlier essays - like Stuff Per Pixel and Film Vs. Digital Photography – digital has a long way to go before it can achieve the level of resolution and detail that film offers. As I’ve also noted before, a lot of subjects do not have a high level of visual detail in them. For things like close-ups, architectural shots, portraits, etc., the advantages of digital probably outweigh the superior detail and resolution that medium format can deliver.

But when detail is important, medium format really shines. Digital conitnually advances, and in time I’m sure someday I’ll give up on film. But for now, medium format film, even when scanned on a modest scanner, still outperforms digital for detail-rich shots of scrubby, brushy, woods.

Back in 1997, when I first got into photography, birds were one of my first passions. I first started shooting them with a 200mm zoom, then a 300mm zoom, then a fast 200mm and 2x teleconverter, and next a 400mm f4.6 prime lens. This progression ended with a Pentax A* 400mm f 2.8 EDIF lens, combined with 1.4x, 1.7x, and 2x teleconverters.

The 400mm f2.8 was probably a mistake. A 600mm f4 cost about the same, but I figured that the 400mm and teleconverter combo would give me more flexibility, be a little lighter, and focus a little closer. But the 400mm is a mnaul focus lens, and sometimes gets a downright ugly bokeh.

So here it is, spring 2007, birds are out and it’s time to see how the K10D and teleconverter combination works with the new digital body. My standard birding setup is the A* 400 f2.8, combined with the AF adapter 1.7x. This is an unusual teleconverter – 1.7x magnification of the image, plus the elements in the converter couple with the camera’s autofocus system, allowing for some very limited autofocus capability – just enough to snap a pre-focused image into sharpness. (In all fairness to it – the 1.7x AF adpater works quite well on fast normal to short telephoto lenses.)

So yesterday I set up the birding rig and tried for a few test shots of the robins and sparrows in the backyard. Since small little jpegs, like the one above, don’t tell a thing about image quality. So here is an actual pixels crop of the Robin’s head:

And here is an actual pixel crop of the bird’s shoulder:

This shot was taken at an effective aperture of f8 (lens set to f 4.6, with the teleconverter multiplying the aperture to f 8). This shot was taken as a RAW DNG file, opened with Adobe Camera Raw. Aside from tweaking the color temperature a bit, the detail (sharpness) was dialed up to 60. ISO for both shots was 400. The image was opened without any up-sampling.

Overall, the A* 400 f2.8, AF 1.7x converter, and K10D produces excellent sharpness and detail. AN AF360 FGZ, set to –5 flash compensation, was used for fill. The camera was, of course, mounted on a tripod. The heavy duty ball head was left to rotate and swivel freely, allowing the camera to be quickly positioned. This was my standard setup for birds with film in the past, and works well with the digital setup.

One disappointment with the K10D was that the slow flash synch setting does not work with older, manual focus lenses. I don’t know why that design feature is there – but it’s documented in the manual. Since fill flash is essential for many birding situations, a slow synch setting on the camera is a real boon. My older Pentax film SLR’s didn’t provide for this – so I would shoot birds in manual mode, manually selecting the shutter speed. I found that I had to resort to that again shooting with the A* 400 setup on the K10D.

(I’ll be testing the slow synch setting on some autofocus lenses, where it should work.)

I was also hoping to test the K10D anti-shake function while birding – but here human error crept in. With a manual focus lens you have to input the focal length when using the anti-shake feature. I don’t know what I was thinking, but for some reason I kept inputting 550mm, instead of the 700mm I should of put in. (The 1.7x teleconverter and 400mm lens are and effective 680 mm.) So – I can confirm that anti-shake really does need accurate focal length input. Whether or not it would work well with a lens loosely mounted on a tripod has yet to be seen.

I plan to continue birding tests, and hope to report more in the future.

The sun is finally shining here in west Michigan - something that is pretty rare in the winter months. And yesterday the bight sun was an invitation to test out the infrared capabilities of the Pentax K10D.

I’m a big fan on infrared photography, both in film and digital form. But with dwindling options for infrared film, I’ve been increasingly shooting digital infrared using a Hoya RM90 filter. (For specifics, click here for my digital IR tutorial.) So with the arrival of the Pentax K10D, I've been eager to see how it will perform with the IR filter.

The blood red images on the LCD were pretty cool, but aside from that first impression the camera does not seem to be a good candidate for digital IR.

Here's a summary of my impressions:

- The K10D has much better IR blocking than the *ist-D. Using the *ist-D my normal exposure with the RM90 filter was 4-15 seconds at f 16. With the K10D it took more like 20-30 seconds at f8 or f5.6. ISO 1600 was used in both cases.

- Sensor flare is a much bigger issue with the K10D than the *ist-D. About half the shots I tried were ruined by sensor flare.

- The snowy landscape without any foliage was not a good test of IR capabilities. But my initial impressions are that the IR effect is pretty weak. Where are the black skies and plaster white trees? Maybe things will be different in the summer.

For the time being, it looks like I'll be sticking with the *ist-D for digital infrared work, and maybe ultimately moving up to a modified / dedicated IR DSLR. (which will probably mean opting for a Canon or Nikon of some sort;)

Winter is upon us, and the means less time just hanging out in the warm outdoors, and more time inside – “nesting,” “hibernating.” Or just plain going stir crazy.

Since I love macro photography so much, spring through summer days are always productive. Want to take a photo? Just step outside and snap the nearest ant, or fly, or seedling or flower… I often think that in terms of macro shots, the smallest natural area offers thousands of possibilities.

Man made environment offer fewer options. Having an old house helps, but ultimately everything crafted by humans is ridiculously simple compared to nature’s handiwork.

But still, on a cold winter day, with dull light and sloppy weather out of doors, the occasional image flickers up in the house, and something mundane and taken for granted can suddenly seem interesting and engaging.

So it is with a couple of “Around the House” shots shown here.

The first is the multiple shadows of an iron tassel that hangs from a light fixture in the front hall. My house is about 80 years old, and retains most of its original fixtures – as well as the original knob and tube wiring. When I say “iron tassel” I mean a bit of iron, molded to look like a tassel made or cords. It hangs from the bottom of a a light fixture, which is more or less a rhombicuboctahedron in shape (the top and bottom are pointed so it is not quite a true rhombicuboctahedron.)

Well, big words aside, I liked the way the iron molding of a tassel reflected on the plaster wall. A multi-light fixture in the dining room was casting multiple shadows of the tassel, and while they were quite faint on the wall, they were engaging. I wound up scavenging a wooden flagpole (the kind you use to hang a flag next to your front door) to push the light fixture out a bit – in part to get the shadows onto a patch of wall with even lighting, but also to play with the placement of the various shadows created by the individual light bulbs.

Finally, I had to get a small step ladder, since my poking and prodding of the light fixture resulted in the shadows being case about 8 feet above the floor. But with a step or two up, I was able to snap the shot, using the Pentax K10D, ISO 400, shake reduction on.

Like I said, the shadows were quite faint, so I pulled the shot into PhotoShop, boosted the contrast and deepened the shadows. I then converted it to a tritone, and custom toned it using the individual curves tools that are available in this mode. Convert back to RGB color, and the final image is ready.

I'm tempted to name this shot after a line from an Eno and Byrne track in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. "We will appear to you, from time to time..." Hmmmm - I've used that line before, but from time to time, it seems to apply...

 

The ice crystals was a much simpler shot to take. These formed on the storm window on one of the windows in the living room. Unlike the beautiful and dense florets that window ice usually forms, the ice on this window chose to become a haphazard dashing of random vectors.

The direct sunlight was making the ice lines pop, so photographing them was a simple matter of standing on a chair to get even with the ice. The background of the shot largely determined the framing, since I had to frame the ice in a way to not show my neighbors’ window. (Their house is only about 20 feet away.)

Shooting through window glass – a quarter inch thick and 80 years old – took a bit out of the sharpness, but there is something about the random and chaotic lines that is compelling. I found myself thinking of Jad Fair’s “Headless Horseman” song for the first time in years.

Note: This is an update to my original post on the K10D, which can be found HERE. 

It’s been a couple months since the Pentax K10D first arrived, and I’ve managed to squeeze out just over 2500 images – granted most of the cats and holiday decorations. But it’s given me plenty of time to play around with the camera and get familiar with it.  

So here are few more thoughts an observations about this camera:

• 10 megapixels makes a difference:  Intuitively, I didn't think that going from 6 to 10.1 megapixels would make much of a difference. But then, intuitively, I initially didn't expect a 6 mexapixel camera to rival 35mm film as well as it did. Looking at the results I have to say that there's a noticeable difference in detail between 6 and 10 megapixels. I'm not quite ready to abandon medium format for some particularly demanding uses, but my initial reaction is that 10 megapixels delivers an image quality as good or better than 35mm film.

• Chromatic Aberrations on older lenses: Maybe it's because of the increased pixel count, maybe its due to the how the RAW images are processed, but I'm noticing more chromatic aberration on the Pentax K10 D than I noticed on the *ist-D. My Kiron 105mm f 2.8 macro, for example, had a minor degree of CA on the *ist, but a significant amount on the K10D. While it's largely correctable in the RAW converter, I suspect that a few more older lens will be falling by the wayside as this becomes my primary camera.

• Shake reduction:  Still works great! It's amazing how quickly I've gotten used to shooting hand held 1/15th of a second shots.

• Dust Removal:  The K10 has a dust removal setting, where it knocks the sensor around to shake off any dust specs. This works extremely well! After several trips to the woods and the beach, I still have yet to even blow off the sensor with a hand blower. I've actually got shots with notable dust specs on the sensor, that disappear after running the dust removal process.

• Banding Noise: This seems to have created a big hub-bub in several user discussions of this camera. on line. It's a bit of a mixed bag in my opinion. To begin with, this camera is extremely low in noise, and I have yet to see any noise problem (banding or otherwise) in any shots that were well exposed (over even a stop or so off the mark.) However - a significantly under exposed shot that is  'pushed' several stops in the RAW converter will begin to display noise (go figure) and that noise does seem to have a banding pattern to it. It's particularly noticeable if the image is converted to a monochrome shot using the channel mixer, as the noise can be more prominent in one channel than another. (In my experience the problem can appear in either the red or blue channel.) Of course, ISO 1600 is more subject to noise than lower ISO levels, so the problem can be more noticeable at this setting. Personally, I don't see an issue with it since any shot that's even close to properly exposed avoids this problem.

• Battery Life:  I was somewhat concerned with switching to rechargeable batteries with the K10D. After all, the *ist-D would run off any old set of 4 AA batteries, and a set of AA lithiums could last 1500 exposures or more. Thankfully, the rechargeable batteries in the K10D seem to last well beyond the 750 exposure Pentax estimates (since I don't use the flash, that is probably a main reason why they last longer.) I still bought 3 backup batteries just to be sure I'm never caught without.

For now that seems to sum it up. Overall, this is an excellent camera and I've been having a great time getting to know it.

Since this is a review I should comment that I have no relationship with Pentax at all, other than purchasing and using their gear.

Two weeks ago I received a Pentax K10D digital SLR. I had put in my order for this camera with B&H Photo, based on the specifications and trust that Pentax would deliver. After a week of testing and tying the camera, I can only say that I’m more than satisfied. This is not so much of a review of the K10D, as a recording of my subject reactions to it. But then, I guess that’s what most reviews ultimately are!

I bought the camera plus lens kit, which included the Pentax DA 18-55mm lens. Along with the camera and lens, B&H offered a bundle including a SanDisk Extreme III 2-gigabyte SD card.

Here’s a rundown of what I like – and don’t like – about this camera. (The first list is a lot longer than the second.)

On the like list –

1. Image quality: As with the *ist series, this camera offers first rate color, detail, and sharpness. I shoot RAW so I take responsibility for the overall image quality, but I haven’t seen any significant limitations on what this camera is capable of. Noise is low, color accuracy is high, and detail and clarity are first rate.

2. Build in Anti-Shake: The K10D sports a sensor based anti-shake system. For the last few years I’ve envied the availability of Image Stabilized or Vibration Reduction lenses available for Canon and Nikon systems. With the arrival of the K10D I now have almost two dozen anti-shake enable lenses, ranging from 14mm to 800mm (400 + 2x teleconverter.)

So how well does the anti-shake work? Here are a couple of test shots of a venerable Argoflex TLR. They were taken hand held at 1/8th of a second using the 18-55mm at 55mm, f8. These are both 'actual pixel' shots of the camera, the top one taken with shake reduction enabled, the bottom one without. As you can see – the anti shake function adds a lot of sharpness!

(A full image of this venerable camera can be found later in this post.)

I’m looking forward to seeing how the Pentax anti-shake feature works with macro photography – with a little luck, next summer will result in a bevy or more / better dragonflies!

3. Speed: This camera is fast! With the Extreme III card you are never more than a few seconds from the next shot, even shooting large RAW DNG files. For JPG shooting the speed is outstanding.

4. 10.2 effective megapixels. This is a noticeable step up from the 6.1 mexapixel *ist-D. At the end of the day, I don’t think this camera will make my medium format gear obsolete for landscape shooting. But as digital specs march forward it’s only a matter of time…

5. Viewfinder: the K10D viewfinder is bright, with a decent level of magnification. The
*ist-D finder was good – better than many other digital SLR’s that I’ve played with – but the 10D takes it another step forward.

6. Large LCD: Wow! I can read the menus without my glasses. And the detailed zoom really lets me know what’s sharp (or not). Great!

7. DNG RAW files: If you shoot RAW, and you want to make sure that you can access those RAW files in the future, a open standard for RAW shooting makes sense. The Adobe DNG standard isn’t as universal as TIFF or JPG, but it certainly is a step in the right direction away from proprietary RAW formats that may or may not be supported by future software. If you don’t care about this – the proprietary Pentax PEF format is also an option.

8. On demand RAW shooting: I seldom shoot JPG’s, but when I do there is always that shot or two where I wish I could quickly flip over to RAW mode just for a shot or two. The K10D has a nifty RAW button – if you are shooting in Jpeg mode just hit this button and you get an on-off RAW shot (and a JPG to boot.) Nice.

9. Fast AF: Back in the film camera days, Pentax always took a lot of heat over their pokey and low-tech AF systems. The AF on the K10D is exceptionally fast, and works great in low light. The *ist-D was good, this camera is excellent. Pentax has also opened the door to future hypersonic lenses – we’ll see what the future holds.

10. User programmable settings memory: Well, that’s a mouthful. What it amounts to is that this camera lets you decide what gets reset when you turn off the camera, and what settings are retained in memory. The *ist-D used to drive me crazy when shooting macros, because the 2 second mirror pre-fire mode was always reset after the camera powered off. So I’d inevitably take a shot with it off, and then have to reset it. Now I decided whether that – and a slow of other functions like exposure compensation, auto bracketing, white balance, sensitivity, etc go back to default after power on, or stay were they were last set.

11. Show shutter flash synch in aperture priority: Prior Pentax Cameras could only handle slow shutter synch in manual mode – which added an unnecessary step to shooting birds with slow shutters speeds and fill flash. At last – slow shutter synch is selectable for aperture priority. I may just dust off my birding lenses…

12. Full backwards compatibility with K Mount lenses. As with the *ist series, you can use any K mount lens, no matter how old, with the K10D. For Pre-A lenses – really old lenses with no program mode capabilities – you are limited to stop down metering. Pentax has made this fairly painless – just hit a button and the lens stops down and takes a reading. For A and later lenses virtually all functions work, though you do have to input the focal length to get Anti-Shake to work with an older lens.

13. Post Exposure Histogram Display: The K10D offers a host of post exposure information displays. Aside from the standard histogram, you can see the red, green, and blue channel histograms separately. The camera can be set to enable blown out highlights to flash or under exposed shadows to flash.

14. Build Quality / User ergonomics: This is one solid camera. Feels good in the hand, offers a vertical batter grip as well. It continues the Pz-1p and *ist-D dual control wheel design ethic. With hyper-manual and program shift modes, you can set the camera to offer suggested exposure options, and quickly and easily adjust those on the fly. Since most features are selected via switches, buttons, and dials, there is less of the annoying (and time consuming) drilling down into menus.

15. The User setting: One of my favorite settings from the Pz-1p camera, that I’m glad to see back on the K10D. This setting lets you set a favorite user profile, and quickly switch to it with just the twist of the mode dial.

16. The usual Pentax features: In addition to the above, the usual Pentax features are available in this camera. By that I mean the 2 second mirror pre-fire for macro shooting, the DOF preview incorporated in the collar around the shutter button, and the general build quality and ergonomics.

17. Weather sealing: I’m pretty unabashed about using my cameras out in bad weather, and so far I’ve not had any problems. But now at least I have a camera that is actually sealed against the elements. Well – a second camera that’s weather sealed. The Pentax LX had similar sealing.

So those are things I really like. Here are a few things that may or may not be important:

1. The 22 bit color conversion factor: the sensor in this camera records 22 bit per channel data, which is then translated down to 12 bit per channel for final saves (in RAW mode.) This may just be a bit of specmanship – a technical bragging point – but the overall image quality is excellent, so who cares how its achieved.

2. Extended bracketing mode: This feature lets you choose to bracket white balances, sharpness, and contrast levels. Cool – but as a RAW shooter I can’t say I need it.

3. Digital Preview: Basically, with this enabled you compose the shot and press the DOF preview button. The shutter snaps and you see a digital preview of the shot – complete with histograms and flashing high lights / low lights (if selected). Neat – but unless you are really short on memory cards, why not just take the shot and re-shoot if it’s not what you want? The camera is so fast, you won’t need to spend a lot of time waiting for it to write to the card or something.

4. Rechargeable battery: Some review sites have voiced some rather idiotic comments on this subject, suggestion that prior Pentax DSLR’s weren’t serious contenders without rechargeable batteries. I’ve also seen some absurd numbers about battery life using AA batteries (like 80 shos per set of batteries.)

I for one liked using AA batteries in my older Pentax DSLR’s. In the *ist-D a standard set of AA Lithium batteries could produce upwards of 1200 exposures (I routinely logged 1400 –1500 when I tracked it.) They are cheap, they are everywhere, and I’d rather be able to run off to a drugstore and buy new batteries than have to wait to recharge a semi-proprietary battery. So I’m ambivalent to the new rechargeable batteries in the K10D.

That said – I picked up a generic spare battery and will add a couple more to be sure to be able to meet extended shooting needs. (They are supposed to be good for ~700 shots – we’ll see.) I don’t anticipate any problems here – I do think I’d prefer the old AA approach.

5. APS-C Sensor Size: I’ll confess to some ambivalence to this format. I don’t see anything magical (or even very logical) about the 135 format (the 24x35mm film format a.k.a. know as 35mm film). I like how the APS sized sensor adds reach to my telephoto and macro lenses. I also like how the smaller format sensor works with the ‘sweet spot’ in most 35mm lenses – the center portion where sharpness is at it’s peak and distortion is at it’s minimum. But I still love shooting at a wide angle. The 18-55mm kit lens that came with the camera is a step in the right direction, and I may just need to break down and purchase some DA lenses, made to work with the APS sized sensor.

And now the even shorter list – the one thing I don’t like about the K10D:

1. P-TTL Flash (only): As I count it, Pentax has gone through 3 generations of TTL flashes. There were analog TTL flashes, digital flashes, and the newest P-TTL flashes. P-TTL is by far the best for exposure accuracy, and offers extended synch speeds (it will synch at any shutter speed, not matter how fast) but it’s not perfect. At least not for the specialized purposes I use flash for. For one thing – it must be used with a lens that can exchange information with the body. That excludes many older lenses, and also reverse mounted lenses for extreme macro use. The older TTL modes did not have this restriction.

As a result – if I want to take snow crystal shots with this great new camera, I either have to use manual flash or go back to stacking lenses or some other means of gaining extreme magnification.

Oh well – the worse case scenario is that the *ist-D has a permanent job as the official snow crystal camera, and I’ll look at upgrading my current P-TTL flash (the AF360FGZ) to something with more power for general shooting.

Aside from this one nit, I can’t find much to fault in this camera. It’s great to see a small, individualistic company like Pentax come out swinging, and actually hold their own against much larger competitors. It’s particularly heartening to see that they seemed to have listened to feedback from users, and have worked hard to build a camera that is truly responsive to the wants and needs many people have expressed. It’s no wonder that the K10D is wining awards and accolades, and let’s hope it’s a sign of even better things to come from Pentax.