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New lens December 26, 2006

Posted by a1291762 in : camera , 1 comment so far

I’ve ordered a Sigma 28-90mm lens.

Because the 18-50mm lens is so slow at 50mm, I’ve been using the 50mm prime (with the manual aperture hack, sooo much better than full manual mode even with the dimmer viewfinder) quite a bit lately. It seems to be quite an awesome lens. Despite the manual focus and lack of zoom, I’m really starting to like it (though it’s not so good for group shots due to the crop factor).

So I’ve got the 18-50mm for wide angle (it’s good for 18-28 just not all the way to 50). I’ll have the 28-90mm for “normal” to 2.5x zoom. I’ve got the 50mm for times when I want awesome shots. I’ve got the 70-300mm for big zooming (incidentally, it’s supposed to be the best lens in it’s category, score).

Of the other old lenses, the 28mm might be useful but it’s only got 1 stop more than the 28-90 and it’s not genuine Pentax so it’s not awesome like the 50mm lens is. The 35-105 is junk. The 80-210 is actually very soft (found out trying to take sample pics). I found that you can make it do manual aperture with a lever on it (instead of having to rotate it). For some reason I want to like this lens but it’s just too soft, even at smaller apertures. It looks like there’s dust inside and there was something on the rear element… perhaps I can clean it up.

I’m thinking about getting a tele-converter. There’s an old 2x Km one on ebay for cheap. For a bit more I could get a 500mm lens but it’s 30cm long so I don’t know how much I’d use it. The same company (Opteka) has a massive 650-1300mm lens. It’s incredibly slow (f8-f16) and around 2kg but damn that’s a lot of zoom for not a lot of money. So do I really need longer focal length? I don’t know. I thought of getting the 2x adapter because it was there. Certainly there’s been a few times when I would have liked something longer than 300mm. Of course, the combo will get slow (f11) after around 400mm so it’s not that huge an increase but it is cheap. If I can get the 80-210 lens clear I could just leave it attached to the extender as a dedicated 400mm lens.

I found out today that the focussing screen on the K100D is replaceable. There’s a place (Katz Eye) that makes screens for $100 USD. There’s cheaper alternatives too (people that convert old screens by hand). I have the Pentax ME body here doing nothing… perhaps I could trim it’s screen and put it in the K100D? Apart from the obvious concerns, the metering and AF might get screwed up if the older screen has a different brightness than the newer one. I might just bite the bullet and pay for the “real” one. I’m planning on using the 50mm lens quite a bit so a better focussing aid would be appreciated. There is the AF beep from the camera though and I haven’t had too many issues with it yet so I might wait and see.

Actually, the ME has a penta-prism (instead of the penta-mirrors found in the K100D) so I have been thinking about the possibility of getting it out and putting it into the K100D. I have no idea if this is a sane idea or not. There doesn’t seem to be a culture of hardware hacking in the [D]SLR world, perhaps because most people with a SLR use it for learning/work and not so much play. I’m sure most people would think me nuts to even consider major surgery like this…

Update 29 December 2006

It seems that most SLR people are really against hardware mods, even one that aren’t extremely difficult. However, one guy took the focussing screen from a Pentax ME, used a belt sander to get it to the right dimensions and put it into a *ist DS. His story is over here. I’m pretty sure the K100D has a bigger screen than the *ist DS. I’ll try to find the measurements online so I don’t have to take my screen out and measure it. This is the kind of project I’d want to take a day or two on (not to mention that I have to get the required tools together) so I’ll probably do this in late January when I have a week of holidays.

In the mean time, I think I’ll get myself a Pentax O-ME53. It fits on the viewfinder and gives 1.2x magnification. That more than offsets the smaller image (a result of the use of penta-mirrors instead of a penta-prism) and coupled with the ME’s focussing screen should make the camera much nicer for manual focussing.

From what I’ve read it seems that I can’t actually do much about the “brightness” without manually recalibrating the metering system (how the heck would you do that?). I think that means I’d have problems if I put in the penta-prism, assuming that it’s even possible. I’m having my doubts. My original logic was that the space with the mirrors must be the same size but then the light refracts on the inside of the prism so the space for the mirrors should be ever so slightly smaller than the size of the prism. Combined with the whole “if you stuff up, the viewfinder is dead forever” thing, it’s turning me off the idea. I suppose I could use the “digital preview” button instead of the viewfinder and the AF beep to let me know when it’s focussed (for manual lenses) but it wouldn’t really be the same, would it?

Update 30 December 2006

The Pentax O-ME53 is extremely hard to find. I did find to US stores that sell it but am having problems with my credit card (probably because my bank sucks and disabled international purchases). I have read that the Nikon DK-21M will fit on the viewfinder of Pentax cameras which would be really good since I can get a DK-21M locally for much less than the cost of importing a O-ME53. I’ll just take my camera into a shop to compare the viewfinder size against a Nikon D70s/D50 (both compatible with the DK-21M).

UniMotion is making stuff happen December 23, 2006

Posted by a1291762 in : programs , 1 comment so far

I never really thought it would amount to much but UniMotion seems to be doing things. The latest thing I’ve seen is a simple little game where the object is to roll a ball through some lines. Nothing complex but a nice little diversion. If you’ve got a Mac with an SMS, check it out at http://www.wxs.ca/tilt-mania/.

The sheer number of apps I’ve seen using UniMotion (ok, it’s probably still under 20 but that’s lot for my first library) makes me feel like I should really put some more effort into it. Things like documenting (or referencing documents on) the finer points of accelerometor data and how to do useful things with it. Looking again at that whole “floating point” API to see if I can’t make the code behind it better (especially that calibrating stuff). It’s definitely what I’d prefer to see going forwards because it’s the only API that is truly machine-independant. Who knows, I may even get the code uploaded to sourceforge so that it won’t go away if I change ISPs.

Best of all is knowing that I’ve single-handedly paved the way for drop-in SMS hardware support upgrades in a number of apps both open source and commercial. I get all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it :)

Manual aperture support on the K100D December 23, 2006

Posted by a1291762 in : camera , 3comments

This was added to the end of a previous post but I’ve figured it out a bit more so I’m posting it as an article on it’s own.

The K100D (actually all Pentax cameras produced since 1997) features a crippled KAF mount. Unlike previous mounts, this version is missing the mechanical mechanism that lets the lens tell the camera what the aperture is. If the lens has an A position on the aperture ring (or lacks an aperture ring, like the FAJ lenses), the camera can control the aperture programatically and everything is good.

The first cameras with this mount had major limitations when used with manual aperture lenses. They would work but only with the aperture wide open (which tends to produce over-exposed shots when there’s good lighting due to the maximum shutter speed being exceeded). Later cameras just disabled the lenses altogether to prevent over-exposed shots being taken. The K100D (and at least some of the *ist D models too) defaults to disabling the lenses but you can get them to work by changing some settings and performing an extra step while shooting.

Some history might be in order here…

Long ago when SLR cameras were new the aperture ring was a hardware feature and the camera didn’t know what it was set to. This meant stopping down the lens would also affect the brightness of the viewfinder. While this would have been ok most of the time there’s plenty of examples where this just falls apart. Using the flash is perhaps the most obvious because you need to stop down the lens to offset the harsh light the flash gives off but that means you need to focus with almost no visibility. To improve things, a mechanical link was put in that meant the camera could force the aperture wide open or let it drop back to the selected position. The link also let the camera know what aperture was selected so that when it did it’s metering and stuff, it could take that into account.

So, the part that lets the camera force the aperture open is still present on the K100D but the other bit is missing. This means that the camera cannot adjust for the aperture because it doesn’t know what it is. The extra step you have to take lets the camera drop the aperture down and do the metering. This doesn’t seem to be as good as metering wide open and compensating for the aperture but it’s certainly better than nothing.

You’ll need to change 2 custom settings before you can do this. The first one lets the camera work with manual aperture lenses. The second setting causes the AE-L button to select the shutter speed (Tv) instead of the default “program line” while in M mode.

So there’s 2 modes that work on the K100D. Av mode does the original behaviour of keeping the aperture wide open and if that’s what you want, it’ll work fine. Just keep in mind that you might end up with over-exposed shots and your DOF will always be small. The only other mode that works is M mode. Normally you’d have to manually select the shutter speed in this mode but the setting you changed above means that the AE-L button will make the camera meter with the aperture dropped down. The procedure is: half-press the shutter button (viewfinder text appears), press AE-L (aperture drops down, shutter speed changes, aperture jumps back up), press the shutter button (photo is taken). Of course you can manually adjust the shutter speed if you think the metering hasn’t done a good job (it always uses the center-weighted mode instead of the segmented mode). The other thing to keep in mind is that on M mode, the auto ISO setting doesn’t work so you should select a higher ISO manually if you are in low-light conditions. Finally, the flash ruins everything. If you’re going to use a flash, set the shutter speed to 180 and crank up the aperture. You’ll have to take some photos (or use the digital preview) to test the results. I think there’s a calculation you can use to determine the optimum aperture based on the distance of your subject but I don’t know what it is.

So here’s what I do when I’m using a manual lens (ie. the 50mm prime).

  1. select the ISO
  2. frame the shot
  3. focus
  4. half-press the shutter button to confirm focus (yes, AF works with a fully manual lens!)
  5. press AE-L to get a shutter speed
  6. If the shutter speed is too low, go back to step 1
  7. take a photo

If I’m taking several photos of something that’s not moving around I won’t bother to press AE-L each time.

The fact that AF works with the manual lens kind of surprised me but the way it works is all driven from the camera so it’s not that surprising I guess. Interestingly, if you have the camera on AF mode you can’t take a photo when it’s out of focus, even if you’ve got a manual focus lens on.

Update 23 December 2006

So there’s another option apparently. I found this on a page that has been removed from the internet (archive.org link).

If you need to use automatic-aperture SMC and SMC-M lenses on your *ist D, there are several tricks that you can employ. None is really nice, but here they are:
  • Stay in Av and shoot at open aperture.
  • Stay in M and use a separate light meter.
  • Calculate. Meter in Av, switch to M and extend the shutter-speed by so many stops as you closed down the aperture.
  • Before metering and shooting, unlock the lens and turn it counter-clockwise about 15 degrees. This allows the aperture to stay closed down to the value selected by the aperture ring, and the meter works properly.
  • Refine the previous method by drilling a second lock-hole into the lens mount of your SMC or SMC-M lens. The new one should be around 9 mm away from the original, and keeps SMC and SMC-M lenses to be locked in their “-15 degrees position,” while allowing SMC-A, SMC-F and SMC-FA lenses to be operate just like intended by Pentax. Be very, very careful when drilling! Lenses are precise optical and mechanical instruments, and even minor modifications require highest concentration and fitting tools. I will try to show an image of a modified lens-mount soon. (Anyone willing to send me an SMC 18/3.5 to experiment with?)

Note that it is not possible to modify an SMC or SMC-M lens to behave as if it were SMC-A. The reason is that the former ones have a logarithmic aperture coupling and the latter a linear one. The *ist D requires linear, so even if you modify the lens mount to simulate the presence of the SMC-A contacts, the aperture will not operate properly. Furthermore, such a modification would simulate an SMC-A lens set to a numeric aperture, and the *ist D requires as minimum and SMC-A lens set to “A”.

The significant one there is the option of mounting the lens at a 15 degree offset so prevent the aperture from being forced open. This restores the ancient behaviour of keeping the aperture separate from the camera which has it’s own pros and cons. On the one hand you can use manual aperture with Av (more automatic than M) mode. On the other hand, the viewfinder will get darker when you stop down the lens. For outdoors or well lit areas this seems like an acceptable compromise.

Lens choices December 20, 2006

Posted by a1291762 in : camera , add a comment

Damn, this is hard!

I’m basically looking at 3 options right now:

- Pentax/Sigma 28-80/90 ($30-$100). The lack of range would make this a sub-optimal “holiday” lens but at least it’s cheap. It would fill the gap between my 18-50 and 70-300 and 80/90 isn’t too bad. I’ve seen “adapters” that attach to the front of the lens and give it either wide angle (0.42x = 12mm) or telephoto (2.5x = 200mm) but reviews seem to indicate these adapters are mere toys that have crap optics.

- Sigma 18-125 ($269-$450). My cousin has one of these on a *ist DL. I had a quick look and I think I could see a difference in quality so I’d probably keep the 18-50 for close work and reserve this for “holiday” shooting. I haven’t seen any of these on eBay and I’m really confused by the massive difference in price from one store to another.

- Tamron 24-135 ($299-$800). This is not a cheap lens and by all accounts the quality (both build and optics) is above everything else I’ve got (except perhaps for the 50mm prime). The $299 price is for a Tamron-refurbished lens that comes with a warranty. The only problem is that it’s on eBay so it might not wait around for me to make up my mind (or it might get bid up, making it less of a deal).

Something about the Tamron lens is calling to me and at just a little more than the sigma one it’s soooo tempting. Of course, I’m not at all convinced that I’ll make anywhere near that selling my old lenses on eBay so it’ll mean getting approval from Bree. Factored with the potentially short time limit means there’s a low likely hood of me ending up with this lens.

The Sigma lens is the only “digital” one and thus the only one that goes down to 18mm. I’m not so sure that the wide angle will be critical for holiday shooting and if I’m going to get into wide angle stuff, a wider lens (eg. 12-24, 14, 10-17) would be good to have anyway.

I played around with the old lenses some more and noticed that they have really long minimum object distances. The 35-105 is 1.7m while the 85-210 is 2m. After playing with the old lenses for a while they’re not actually that bad to use except for one thing, anti-shake. Every time you twist the zoom you need to go into the menu and select the new focal length. Since the whole point of a zoom is not treat it like a series of primes that just sucks. If there’s enough light you can just turn off anti-shake but when you’re fighting the camera to give you decent shutter speeds it’s so nice to have it.

Playing around has also got me feeling much better about MF. I used it with one of the new (ie. not designed for it) lenses when taking photos of the kids and got good results. If the light had been better the AF would probably have done ok but it’s constant hunting meant that I was missing shots. Given my recent reading about pentaprism vs pentamirrors I wasn’t expecting to be able to do good MF and it was nice to have good shots come out. Mind you I was using the flash which means the aperture was low giving me good DOF. I guess that helps to cover any slight mis-focussing errors.

Isaac drinks from a staw December 18, 2006

Posted by a1291762 in : emily, isaac , add a comment

We’ve been thinking that Isaac would be ready for a straw by now but we threw out all the cups we used on Emily. The reason we used them is because they had 2 holes in the lid so we could blow on one to get water to go up the straw. Without this first burst of water Isaac, just like Emily, didn’t seem to understand the point of the straw.

Last night I remembered that some of Emily’s drink bottles are quite soft and you can squeeze them to get the water out. I tried Isaac and he started drinking. Strangely, he didn’t take a regular straw so I guess we need to let him get used to the drink bottle’s straw for a few days first.

Emily sings twinkle, twinkle little star, only it sounds more like creakle, creakle :)

Update 20 December 2006

Emily has been driving Bree nuts with that song. The most she can string together is “crinkle star, how I bu bu bu bu” (how she hears “up above the”?).

Recent events December 15, 2006

Posted by a1291762 in : emily, isaac, work , add a comment

Ugh. It’s so hard to keep this blog up to date when there’s things happening all the time.

Recently we went to Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort. We’re not really into that sort of thing but it was ok for free :) Emily and Isaac fed the dolphins with us but not really. It rained so they were both cold and tired. Isaac probably faired better with the actual feeding because he couldn’t tell there was a big, scary animal just there. Emily was excited until we hit the water, when she held on to me like crazy. Once we were out of the water she was excited again.

Emily and I went and saw the Wiggles on Monday. We had crap seats so next time we’ll be ready (they’re coming back twice next year apparently). Despite being far away, it was still ok and the atmosphere was better than you get from a TV. I was a bit disappointed because the show was called “Racing to the Rainbow” yet it had only 2 songs from the DVD in it. We went and bought the DVD so Emily would know all the songs! Sam, the new yellow wiggle was fine. I was worried that he’d sound heaps different from Greg but it’s not very noticeable. It was interesting to see the strange things that happened as a result of being live. Whoever was in the henry suit was being silly, making up words that Anthony had trouble repeating. Emily asked for a balloon and I told her she could have one afterwards. They were $10! I can’t imagine what the rest of the merchandise cost.

Trolltech is moving two buildings down the road tomorrow. Today was mostly spent packing things into boxes. The plan is to be back up and running by 10am on Monday so some of us are meeting for breakfast at the cafe around the corner.

My SL-A300 has died. The battery got flat and just stopped holding a charge. I’ve spent the last few days trying to get my other Zaurus (SL-5000D) running. I always thought it used RAM for storage but it’s got 10MB user flash. I think the problem is the same that I discovered one day on the A300, where a flat battery causes the device to think you’ve done a hard reset. I came up with a solution for that on the A300 that should transfer to the 5000D just fine. I’m not quite there yet but it shouldn’t be too much longer before I can have my calendar back. I thought about trying to get my data on to a Greenphone but I don’t have a reliable backup for that yet and my phone is being used by someone else (their phone had an old modem firmware that can’t handle Qtopia 4.2).

Update 15 December 2006

I found not one but two spiders at my dad’s house last night. Luckily people were there to kill them for me :)

In defence of the K100D's AWB December 12, 2006

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So practically every review I read on the K100D complained about the auto white balance performance indoors. I wonder if any of the reviewers read the manual? It says quite clearly that AWB handles down to 4000K. Tungsten lights are around 2600K, below the range of AWB.

Note that I’m not defending the camera’s inability to handle lower temps because I wish it would handle indoors shooting better without resorting to a flash or doing manual WB. It’s just that none of the review sites bothered to check the manual, which would have told them not to expect AWB to work indoors.

I found the Sigma 18-125mm lens (Pentax mount) online for $269. Reverse engineering of camera+lens pricing put it at $200 when purchased in a kit so that’s a pretty reasonable price. I doubt I’ll find it any cheaper unless Ted’s is nice enough to let me exchange the 18-50mm one (and I doubt that’ll happen).

Update 15 December 2006

The non-bundle markup is crazy. Ted’s won’t sell me the 18-125mm lens for less than $450. The only consolation they would give is to offer it for $250 if I exchange the 18-50mm lens. Talk about a crap deal!

If I raise enough money, I’ll get the 18-125mm for $269 and if I don’t then I’ll settle for a 28-80mm now (around $30 on ebay) and aim for the 18-125mm sometime later.

Lens musings December 9, 2006

Posted by a1291762 in : camera , add a comment

So when I purchased my new camera, I did plenty of research on the body but not a lot on the lenses.

The “standard” lens for the K100D is a Sigma 18-55mm f3.5/5.6. In English that means you get nice wide angle shots at a reasonably small aperture and you can zoom all the way to 55 (which isn’t that far at all, barely 2x magnification) but you kill your aperture in the process. Most significantly, this is NOT a good lens for low-light situations unless you’re using a flash or keeping the zoom at 18mm (but that means you have to stand virtually on top of people to take their photo).

There were 2 advertised “dual zoom” kits (both with Sigma lenses). “Wide zoom” had a 18-55mm and a 55-200mm while “mega zoom” had a 24-70mm and a 70-300mm. Now lack of a good zoom is one of the things I hated most about my digicam so I really wanted the extra length on the 70-300mm lens. I asked and they offered me a combo of the 18-55mm and the 70-300mm so I got it.

Perhaps I should have thought about it some more…

You see, I’ve now got a lens that’s good for group shots and other wide-angle stuff but not so good for zooming or low-light. My other lens is poor at portrait work (70mm on a DSLR is like a 110mm lens on a Film SLR) but gets excellent zoom. It seems that I’m missing something in the middle. Something I do remember reading about, the “holiday zoom”. This isn’t a specific size, it’s just a guideline. The ideal lens for holidays can do close ups (at least down to 28mm, “normal” on a DSLR) and reasonable zoom, say 3x (around 85mm on a DSLR). Does that seem familiar? The low-range lens in the “mega zoom” bundle at 24-70 seems awfully close to that.

Of course, even better would have been the Sigma 18-125mm lens that you can get with the K100D (for only $100 more than the 18-55mm). I didn’t see it until after I’d purchased my camera already and I can’t seem to find it for sale by itself. Bummer. Sure the 18-125mm would overlap with the 70-300mm but I’m starting to suspect that’s a good thing. Without overlap, you are forced to change lenses more often. I was at Sea World today and I chose the order to visit exhibits based on which lens I’d need (to try and minimise lens changing). I still changed lenses half a dozen times, definitely something I’d rather avoid at a theme park. A 18-125mm lens would have handled the ferris wheel (just squeezed into 18mm) as well as most of the stuff I did with the 70-300mm lens (I purposely stood back in many places and pointed the zoom over people’s heads).

One of the things that I’d considered was that my dad had an old Pentax ME. I didn’t really expect to get any good lenses from it though. I was there today and my dad gave everything to me (it’s been sitting in the cupboard for years). Not only do all the lenses fit without an adaptor (the ME used a K mount too), there’s some nice lenses in the bundle.

There’s the standard Pentax 50mm f1.7 lens (marked SMC-M, I saw these cheap on eBay but thought I’d need the a screw mount adaptor to use them!). This type of lens is advocated as a perfect portrait lens for a DSLR because it’s cheap (due to being the “standard” lens for Film SLRs) and fast. This particular one is manual focus and aperture. One thing that seemed strange is that when I changed the aperture, it didn’t seem to affect the camera. I guess I need to play with it some more.

Next up is a “wide angle” Pentax 28mm f2.8 lens. Well, it’s not wide angle in a DSLR, it’s “normal” (like the 50mm was in the ME). It’s faster than my 18-55mm lens at 28mm and would also make a good portrait lens. It’s also manual focus and aperture.

There’s a Film SLR’s version of a “holiday lens”, 35-105mm (the same as a 24-70mm lens on the K100D). It’s got some kind of filter on it that seems to have acted like a lens cap (keeping the actual lens clean). It also has a macro mode and is fully manual. Since it has a zoom and a focus ring (and you have to use both), it seems a bit too involved for me. Worse, the anti-shake in the K100D needs to know what the focal length of the lens is and old zoom lenses like this one aren’t able to tell it. Not only would I need to worry about zoom and focus, I’d also need to forego anti-shake or manually set the focal length every time I touched the zoom.

Last, but certainly not least is a Tamron 80-210mm lens, the heaviest lens I’ve seen to date (these old lenses had more metal and less plastic). It’s amazingly compact compared to my Sigma 70-300mm, barely changing length when zooming or using macro (the 70-300mm can get more than twice it’s original length in macro mode). It’s even got a lens hood built-in (it’s a collar that slides up). Even though it’s not as powerful and manual, I could see myself using it instead of the 70-300mm lens. I was unimpressed with the auto-focus several times today (it would slide right past “focussed”, delaying while my subject moved away) and the Sigma lenses (which are designed for AF) don’t have “nice” manual focus sliders. The sliders on these old lenses are nicer to grip and have more travel so they’re easier to manage. There’s the whole “anti-shake” problem but if I use this lens properly (not like today where I was using the 70-300mm lens most of the time) then I shouldn’t need to change the zoom factor as much.

The macro mode on the 35-105mm and the 80-210mm is different to the 70-300mm. When the older lenses use this mode, it means the subject is really close to the lens (around 5cm) and the zoom is short. When the newer lens uses this mode it means the zoom is long (100-300) and the focus gets to extend further to bring the minimum distance from around 50cm to around 20cm. The end result is that you can do bigger zooms in macro mode on the 70-300mm lens but you can’t get the lens as close. I’m guessing that the older lenses are higher quality than my newer ones (since they were after-market purchases, not “stock” models) and that this is why there’s this difference in implementation.

There was also the camera body, quite beaten up but still working. It’s about half the depth of the K100D and quite a bit lighter. The big zoom lenses don’t unbalance the K100D but they must play havoc with a smaller, lighter body. There was also 2 flashes. A crap looking 1-battery flash and a 4-battery Soltron 133c flash. I got myself 2 new sets of rechargeables today for $40 so my current set could power that. I’m not sure how much difference it’ll make over the built-in flash as it’s not adjustable and seems to sit about the same height above the camera. It may even be worse since it’s missing various contacts the camera expects, hindering it’s integration with the camera’s functioning.

All the lenses except for the 50mm one have leather pouches. Only the 50mm has a lens cap (each pouch has foam on the bottom). There’s only 2 end caps. Everything was stuffed into a metal case with foam padding (that I’ll probably keep using). The camera’s leather bag had deteriorated too much and was thrown away at some point. There was even an unused roll of film in there.

So here’s where it could get interesting…

What I’d really like now is a “holiday lens”. The 35-105mm lens is a surprisingly strong candidate but it fails a crucial test, convenience (ie. Bree can’t use it). That leads me back to the 24-70mm or the 18-125mm lens. With the bigger zoom, I think I’d prefer the 18-125mm and it would be able to completely replace my 18-55mm lens. However, such a beast doesn’t seem to appear on ebay but I have seen a 28-80mm, which would be acceptable.

I’ll probably sell one of the prime (non-zoom) lenses (not sure which yet) and the 35-105mm lens. The 80-210mm is a tougher decision. With a holiday lens for regular use, I’d be able to reserve this for times when I specifically wanted a big zoom. That means working on a particular shot so it would be less of a hassle to setup all the camera’s settings for it. Then again, the 70-3
00mm goes further (how useful that is on a regular basis remains to be seen) and the anti-shake support is automatic. The camera body and the flash (if it proves not to be useful) probably won’t fetch much by themselves. It might be better to package up the camera body with a lens and the flash into a “starter kit” (assuming people still get into SLR photography by buying old Pentax cameras).

Update 10 December 2006

Oops. I’ve been using 1.6 as my digital conversion factor but it seems that Pentax uses a sensor that has a factor of 1.5. I must have picked up 1.6 from reading about Canon cameras (that’s what they use). I don’t think it’ll make a huge difference. It does mean that the 24-70mm and 28-80mm lenses I’ve seen will only be getting just over 2x magnification instead of the 3x I was hoping for (and puts the 18-125mm lens at 3.75x magnification).

How to buy a new camera December 4, 2006

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Bree recently decided that I’m good enough to take nice photos of the kids but our camera isn’t up to scratch. About a week ago, I started researching DSLR cameras. It’s a fascinating world where all the things you thought you knew about cameras is wrong. Film SLRs were quite close to their “conventional” counterparts yet DSLRs and digicams have been moving in almost opposite directions. There are many advances that make digicams awesome until you start trying to do serious work with them. If it wasn’t for the high (at the time) cost of DSLRs, I don’t think there’d be a high end digicam market. Unfortunately, cheap DSLRs are a recent phenomenon so the digicams moved up creating the “prosumer” market, leading to the current strange overlap. For around $1000 AUD, I can get a low-end DSLR or a fairly high-end digicam. The digicam probably has more megapixels, more zoom, tons more features, it almost seems silly to get a DSLR. The hidden secret though is that the DSLR gives you much better photos, better battery life, much more versatility (through replaceable lenses and flashes) and much more control.

So after days researching the web and some hands-on testing with various models, I got a DSLR. It’s a Pentax K100D, purchased with 18-55mm and 70-300mm “stock” (ie. slow but cheap) lenses for $1,099 AUD from Ted’s at Westfield Garden City.

I did consider some alternatives.

Canon is the leader in the DSLR world. Their EOS range doesn’t go as “low-end” as their competitors and is more expensive for it. However, they have a very nice system to go with it. I was very much tempted by the 400D or the older 350D but ultimately, this would have meant spending more money on tech that I don’t really need since I’m a “prosumer”, not a professional and my budget is tight.

Nikon is number 2. They have more of a presence in the low end and seem to have more models around my price range, possibly due to recent model introductions. I tried the D40 in a shop and while it’s the smallest and lightest DSLR around, it felt like junk, aimed at people that had used high-end digicams and wanted to get their feet wet on a cheap DSLR. It’s stock lens was as slow as a digicam’s and unlike all the other Nikons, it supports very few lenses due to its crippled mount. It’s predecessor, the D50 was definitely better but harder to find. The older D70s was nicer still, though it had the hard sell of being more expensive, older tech (great for a second-hand purchase but annoying at full retail price). The Nikon cameras were the only ones I looked at that had a light for auto-focus. The other models all used the flash bulb, which can be annoying since that generally means you have to take extra steps to avoid actually using the flash for the photo. The Nikons also had the fastest flash sync times. I kind of get the feeling that, at least in the low end, Nikon gives you more of the serious tech with less frills than what Canon gives you.

Olympus has the E-500 which was also tempting (and quite cheap). It uses a new system called four-thirds that was designed from the ground up for DSLRs (unlike traditional lenses which are designed to focus light onto a “big” sensor). To be fair though, other manufacturers are making lenses that focus to a smaller area (digital only). The other potential problem for the four-thirds system is that “full-frame” sensors might start to come down in price (and appear in more cameras, making the digital-only lenses useless. The Olympus lenses didn’t have direct zoom control either, the knob moved but this made a motor move the lens rather than mechanically moving it. In reality this might not be a big deal but I wanted a DSLR for the control it gives and this felt wrong to me. This was the only camera I looked at with crippled USB. Who in their right mind wants to transfer big images over a USB 1.1 cable? I mean, the SD card I got plugs directly into USB ports so I’ll probably never use my USB cable but still, how much would it have cost to put in a USB 2.0 port (the REAL 2.0, not that “full speed” marketing crap)? In it’s favour, the E-500 matches up to the Canon models a little better than the other cheap DSLRs, with 8MP and anti-dust tech but for me, this camera had a bad vibe and I abandoned this camera as a possibility.

So this leads me back to the Pentax K100D. Not only is it the cheapest camera on the market, it’s got a killer feature. With anti-shake built into the camera, the $200 x-300mm lens can capture images that the more expensive Canon 400D can only get with a $1000 lens! Well, that’s the theory. A work colleague has a 300D with a stabilised x-300mm lens so I might have to organise some kind of shoot out to confirm this.

Unlike the single Li-Ion cell that most DSLRs have, the K100D takes 4xAA batteries or 2xCR-V3 lithium cells. My current digicam takes 2xAA batteries or a CR-V3 cell but I reckon that 2 Energizer e2 cells give a better bang for the buck than the Duracel CR-V3 cells I can buy. Of course, my preferred route will be rechargeables. I’ve got 4×2100mah batteries (purchased for my digicam) but I’ll probably end up with another set because charging all four cells takes 15 hours on my charger and that’s a long time to be without a camera. Of course, that’ll depend on just how good battery life is. It’s one area where the reviews seemed a bit vague. They all mentioned how convenient AA batteries can be but if the capacity of the camera is greatly reduced as a result… that could be dissapointing. My digicam is on litium cells now because they last better when you use the flash but the whole point of a DSLR was to avoid the flash. I took some test shots indoors and the better lens plus the anti-shake seemed to me to indicate that I’ll be able to avoid the flash for many cases where my digicam required it.

One thing that could prove useful is that the K100D is compatible with ALL Pentax lenses. From the look of it, most need an adaptor and obviously some functions don’t work but Pentax was a big name in Film SLRs (due to the legendary K1000) so it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s plenty of bargains to be had on good lenses for older models. Then again, this compatibility might be useful for owners of Pentax lenses and totally useless to me. I’m not actually that interested in amassing a collection of lenses, all I’m really interested in is a 50mm prime (something faster than the kit lens but still cheap). It looks like an older 50mm with a converter will be less than a new 50mm lens but the trick is ensuring I end up with a combo that will work.

This camera is also heavier than the other leading contenders. Compared to the puny D40 it’s a monster but it’s not that big a jump from the 400D. Some sites listed it as a whopping 85g (25%) heavier but others said that was the “loaded” weight. On a subjective test, it felt heavier to me, even though the one in the store had no batteries and the D400 did. For me, it’s not a problem but for people with smaller arms, it could tip the balance.

The continuous shooting mode on the K100D isn’t as good as some of the other models (due to a smaller RAM buffer) but it’s a feature I’ve never even had before so I’m not that sure I’ll miss it. I’ve read that 6MP gives you A3 size prints. Only Canon’s cameras had more than this but again, I’m not sure I’ll actually need this. We normally print 4×6 or 5×7 (centimetres, not inches) from my 3MP digicam.

There were other cameras I looked at but for the most part they were too expensive or didn’t interest me. Had I had a bigger budget, the 400D would have been the front-runner but would have faced competition from the feature-compatible Nikon D80 and Pentax K10D or the previous-generation Canon 350D or Nikon D70s.

Update 4 December 2006

Since making that observation about how Canon’s lens costs $1000, it’s come to my attention that a cash-back promotion from Canon and some competitive prices on stabilised lenses means you could end up with that ni
ce lens for around $500, if you are purchasing a 400D at the same time. Well, that’s nice but my budget definitely didn’t allow for a $2000 purchase and I’ve already found a use for anti-shake on my regular lens (low-light shots with a slow lens, no flash and no tripod).

Update 5 December 2006

I’m not sure if it comes out but I suppose I should disclose my bias towards Pentax. My dad (still) has an old Pentax (turns out it’s a ME) and it was the first “real” camera I ever used. It’s annoying knowing exactly why none of your photos come out but being unable to tweak your camera to take care of that. My digicam is also a Pentax. However, I don’t consider this something that unfairly swayed my decision. In the end, the K100D is cheaper than it’s rivals without being junk.

I also wanted to mention how important it is to have working product demos. The first time I went in the guy couldn’t find batteries for the K100D so I looked at the 400D and the D40. If it hadn’t been a little more than I’d wanted to spend, that would have cost Pentax a sale. When I went back, a different person showed me the K100D and got the sale. I don’t know (I don’t work in retail) but I’m pretty sure the person that makes the sale gets a commission. The first guy showed me several cameras and then lost a sale simply because he couldn’t find batteries (standard AA batteries too!). All I needed was a 2 minute look to make sure it wasn’t annoying (like the D40 was) and came close to what the 400D could do. I’m annoyed too because I got the camera just after a 3-day trip to Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort, where I had to make do with my digicam.