Creatures of the Night: First photos with new camera
The new camera arrived a day early via FedEx - it was coming from Brooklyn, NY, which is only two days away even by UPS Ground - so I rushed out to Circuit City to buy the cheapest reasonable piece of SD media they had (512MB for $29.95) to prevent the camera from being merely an expensive paperweight until the 2GB card I ordered separately arrives on Friday.
I shot a few photos last night. Although I'm not yet very familiar with the camera, I managed to set it for ISO3200 - How cool is it that I have a camera that can do ISO3200? - and shot a landscape scene with flash disabled (ISO3200, 1/20, f4.0) and a portrait in "night scene" mode with a long exposure and fill flash (ISO800, 1/1.4, f5.6). Other than setting ISO and scene mode, everything was automatic, including exposure and focus. The autofocus took a couple of seconds in the low light, but did a pretty good job. Click each 200x133-pixel thumbnail for a larger image:
Neither image really shows off the capabilities of the camera, shooting handheld with the shutter open for a significant amount of time, and any apparent unsharpness is obviously a result of these conditions. Also, white balance on the portrait is impossible, since the ambient lighting was sodium vapor and the foreground lighting was daylight-balanced flash.
Since the original images were shot at 6MP, posting them for download is not really practical, so I cropped 800x1200- and 1000x1500-pixel regions from the center of the landscape and portrait images, respectively, to demonstrate the full resolution of the camera, despite the previously noted unsharpness resulting from conditions. Click each 200x300-pixel thumbnail for a full-resolution image:
Although I've shot less than 10 pictures with it, so far I'm very happy with the new camera. I had to perform a firmware upgrade because the distribution firmware does not support SD media larger than 1GB, but that was uneventful. The 18-55mm (28-85mm equivalent field of view for 35mm film) lens seems rather cheaply made, but optically is not bad. I need to try some of my favorite Pentax lenses, especially my 50mm f1.4 that resembles a crystal ball in a lens housing.
The big decision will be whether to risk using the new camera Friday night at Rocky Horror before becoming really familiar with it. At least I'll be using the same flash: while an unfamiliar camera might be compared to a trained dog in terms of unpredictability, an unfamiliar flash behaves like a trained cat.
I shot a few photos last night. Although I'm not yet very familiar with the camera, I managed to set it for ISO3200 - How cool is it that I have a camera that can do ISO3200? - and shot a landscape scene with flash disabled (ISO3200, 1/20, f4.0) and a portrait in "night scene" mode with a long exposure and fill flash (ISO800, 1/1.4, f5.6). Other than setting ISO and scene mode, everything was automatic, including exposure and focus. The autofocus took a couple of seconds in the low light, but did a pretty good job. Click each 200x133-pixel thumbnail for a larger image:
Neither image really shows off the capabilities of the camera, shooting handheld with the shutter open for a significant amount of time, and any apparent unsharpness is obviously a result of these conditions. Also, white balance on the portrait is impossible, since the ambient lighting was sodium vapor and the foreground lighting was daylight-balanced flash.
Since the original images were shot at 6MP, posting them for download is not really practical, so I cropped 800x1200- and 1000x1500-pixel regions from the center of the landscape and portrait images, respectively, to demonstrate the full resolution of the camera, despite the previously noted unsharpness resulting from conditions. Click each 200x300-pixel thumbnail for a full-resolution image:
Although I've shot less than 10 pictures with it, so far I'm very happy with the new camera. I had to perform a firmware upgrade because the distribution firmware does not support SD media larger than 1GB, but that was uneventful. The 18-55mm (28-85mm equivalent field of view for 35mm film) lens seems rather cheaply made, but optically is not bad. I need to try some of my favorite Pentax lenses, especially my 50mm f1.4 that resembles a crystal ball in a lens housing.
The big decision will be whether to risk using the new camera Friday night at Rocky Horror before becoming really familiar with it. At least I'll be using the same flash: while an unfamiliar camera might be compared to a trained dog in terms of unpredictability, an unfamiliar flash behaves like a trained cat.