Cherie Nicholson
New member
I was originally going to purchase a Canon Eos 30D, But after seeing the difference in physical size between the Cannon and Pentax, I headed toward buying my second Pentax camera.
The decision maker was being able to use the Sigma lenses from my old MZ-50, which meant that I could get away with buying the body only.
Overall it’s a fantastic camera with excellent results – although I’m no professional, I can confidently navigate my way through the menus and options, and can rest assured that I would get better than average photos. I’ve taken easily over 500 photos and the battery is still going strong which is also very pleasing.
The main obstacles I’ve experienced so far seem to be mostly user related issues that are solved by trial and error and re-reading of the manual.
I do however continue to have two problems, which I can work around but would prefer not to have to. I think they may be to do with how my camera’s settings are but I haven’t gotten around to finding out what I’m doing wrong.
The first is with the Macro function. The camera simply won’t auto focus on the subject unless I move a considerable distance away and not use the zoom. Defeats the purpose of having a Macro setting I feel, but I can get around this by either setting it to Manual focus or by taking it off the Macro setting, and then zooming in.
The other issue I have is that all photos seem to have a washed out blue tinge to them. This can be easy by adjusting the exposure compensation or afterwards with adobe photoshop, but as I said before I would prefer not to have to do this with all photos.
As mentioned by other owners the Pentax ist DS would be the ideal pick for a first time user of a DSLR camera. BUT if this is the market that Pentax is aiming at, I think the instruction manual could do with some re-work. The manual makes it easy to understand how to do something, but it would be nice to know why you would want to do that along with some suggestions for particular scenarios.
The decision maker was being able to use the Sigma lenses from my old MZ-50, which meant that I could get away with buying the body only.
Overall it’s a fantastic camera with excellent results – although I’m no professional, I can confidently navigate my way through the menus and options, and can rest assured that I would get better than average photos. I’ve taken easily over 500 photos and the battery is still going strong which is also very pleasing.
The main obstacles I’ve experienced so far seem to be mostly user related issues that are solved by trial and error and re-reading of the manual.
I do however continue to have two problems, which I can work around but would prefer not to have to. I think they may be to do with how my camera’s settings are but I haven’t gotten around to finding out what I’m doing wrong.
The first is with the Macro function. The camera simply won’t auto focus on the subject unless I move a considerable distance away and not use the zoom. Defeats the purpose of having a Macro setting I feel, but I can get around this by either setting it to Manual focus or by taking it off the Macro setting, and then zooming in.
The other issue I have is that all photos seem to have a washed out blue tinge to them. This can be easy by adjusting the exposure compensation or afterwards with adobe photoshop, but as I said before I would prefer not to have to do this with all photos.
As mentioned by other owners the Pentax ist DS would be the ideal pick for a first time user of a DSLR camera. BUT if this is the market that Pentax is aiming at, I think the instruction manual could do with some re-work. The manual makes it easy to understand how to do something, but it would be nice to know why you would want to do that along with some suggestions for particular scenarios.