Some old photos taken with a *istD

I like to keep up to date with high quality Pentax equipment; cameras and lenses .

But my introduction to digital cameras was with the *istD in 2004. A 6MP sensor that would be totally outclassed by modern cameras, and some (mostly) rubbish lenses. I just thought "a lens is a lens". I carried some poor lenses across from my film photography, and bought (mostly) cheap new ones.

I've been tidying my Lightroom system. (Having more than 140,000 images in it is just plain silly!) I've been permanently deleting lots of old stuff. So I had a look at my *istD photos, from 2004, 2005, and 2006. I suspect there are probably some that I never had a proper look at! In those days, I was using the Photoshop File Browser, then Bridge. Lightroom, which is a far better image viewing product, didn't come until 2007.

I'm amazed at what I've found! Some of these photos may stand up to scrutiny here and now. They have all been processed in Lightroom for uploading here. Some have been processed in Photoshop. All photos are at their original resolution. 6MP or less.

I'll reply to this post 4 times:
2004 photos
2005 photos of birds and animals
2005 photos of people and other things
2006 photos

The one below is from 2005:

I found 230 left from the *istD taken in 2004. Most are rubbish by modern standards! You may think these are too, but I had only just joined a photographic society, and I had little appreciation of what good photography was about.

No birds in flight! I actually tried it, but without success. The *istD wasn't the ideal camera for that!

Until I saw saw these from 2005, I would have guessed they were taken with a later camera. Some of the studio work I did in 2005 (typically for entering into competitions) isn't bad at all.

Having joined a photographic society, I got too influenced by "creative" stuff that I have no talent for. (I'm better just taking "sharp snapshots").

As with all my images, I have processed all of these in Lightroom. That applies even to those that I had previously processed in Photoshop, where I have now added non-destructive Lightroom editing to PSD images.

In each case, Lightroom was at Process Version 1 when these photos were imported into it. So in each case I updated to Process Version 4, the latest, to give me capability that simply wasn't available until recently.

Especially, when these images were first imported into Lightroom, noise reduction and sharpening wasn't nearly as good as it is now. This means I can now achieve image quality from that sensor and those lenses that was pretty-well impossible to anyone at the time.

I assert that the *istD had a very competent sensor, and I sometimes wonder if we are going a bit OTT with sensor updates. Put crudely, I may often prefer a software upgrade to a hardware upgrade.

Lots of people don't like the Adobe CC subscription model. I see it as a good way of making my equipment appear better, year by year, than it was when I bought it. And, by extension, perhaps making me appear to be a better photographer than I know I am. I can sometimes cover up my faults without people noticing them. (I hope!)

Some great old images.  That old *istD was a great camera.  I started with the *Ds.  I also pull up some of my older shots and reprocess them and to my amazement they look really decent.  Always loved the colors it produced.  140,000 shots.  I imagine that took you a while to go through them.  I don't know if I have it in me to do that even if I know I should.

Steve

Barry,

Thanks for posting great photos from your Pentax *istD camera. Very sharp and only 6 mp when you think of all the mps now available.  I once read that the human eye is about 26 mps, but what a strange camera model designation name. When I first became a DPReview member I saw another photo posting using an *istD, curious, I asked the guy to post a photo of his camera because I wanted to see what an *istD looked like. I was expecting to see some weird camera creation to match the name *istD.

You must have over a ton of photos if they were all prints, and maybe you've had the same thought as me. Photos can be appreciated forever, so keep posting.  Recently I've had another curious thought. Being +80, what will happen to my photo files, online gallery or at home? I wondering how other older hobby posters using this forum are handling passing on their photo galleries. As far as I know, the only option for a DPReview gallery and Challenge entries is the Delete button, you can't even make a backup keepsake for someone. I guess my gallery will just stay put until there's no more DPReview. I suppose my wife will give my computer to one of the kids if they want it, but that's the most thought I seem to be able to give this question, and maybe that's best. Other than I have a few unique oldies which were never on-line and maybe should be in a local museum archive. What else?

Cheers,

Jack

Nothing wrong with your "Rubbish" Barry.

I think we have gone too far with the mp count, most are downsampling it to view either in print or on screen, compromising the original.

I share your affection for the *istD, my first digital Pentax too.  I never thought of it as 'only' 6mp, and at the time it was perfectly satisfactory - the defects were mainly in the mechanism behind the viewfinder!!

Your excellent photos are a reminder of the quality camera that it is, or in my case, was.  I had hoped to keep it, but a major malfunction meant that there was little point, and the cost of repair was just too much.