Trying out my *istD

Bill,

Slightly off topic. Are you using the SMC FA* 600mm f/4 ED [IF]? I have *istD and before investing in this lens I would appreciate your candid comments on how the lens handles - both good points and bad. Do you have further photographs I could view which were taken using with this lens?

Many thanks in advance.

Guy,

I did a review of this lens a few years back. I posted it in this (http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000Snv) thread. The review was my second submission to the thread. Have a look at it.

I have taken thousands of shots with this lens. Being a 600, it is difficult to use, and being a Pentax, it is my only choice for my many pentax bodies. However, I think it is a great lens.

Here is another shot I took today.

Bill,

Many thanks for the link and subsequent informative write up. No idea why I never came across it whilst doing many searches for such information on this site.

After day two in the field I have more impressions of this camera.

First, it has very good colour accuracy, but the images seem just a tad soft. Certainly softer than I would expect from good film.

It is noisy! It makes more noise than my Z1-p, which has to be one of the nosiest SLRs in history. Why do Pentax make such noisy cameras? Well, at least it gets the animals to look at me.

I had it lock-up on me today. I had to remove the battery grip and the batteries in the body to get it to reset. Even the power switch could not turn it off. Does anybody else experience that?

It does not work very well with the Pentax AF500FTZ. Not sure why not, but exposure was all over the place. I don?t get this with the AF500FTZ and the Z1-p or with the *istD and the AF360FGZ. There seems to be something funky going on here.

It does not seem to hold detail in the highlights as well as film does. I miss this. Overall, the exposure latitude seems to be a bit less than something like Ektachrome 100VS or Provia 100F.

It has a nasty habit of re-focussing spontaneously, even though the shutter release is held halfway down. This is an annoyance and has ruined some good shots.

I am sorry all this feedback is negative. It does have a bunch of good features, but they are all obvious and inherent in digital technology.

Well the little *istD performed better today. Or should I say, I seem to be getting the hang of it. It didn't lock up once, which was nice. Must have been something I did, but I'll reserve my verdict on this one for a while.

I'm still having a little trouble getting the exposure right for the latitude of the sensor. It's coming, but more slowly than I'd like.

I have found that this little camera along with my fairly light Tamron 300/f2.8 make a great flight combo. Now I just have to learn to get in front of my subjects. Actually I like this shot. The symmetry between the wings is almost perfect.

Bill,

Thanks for the updates. I'm pretty curious about the *istD and *istDS cameras.

<< It has a nasty habit of re-focussing spontaneously, even though the shutter release is held halfway down. This is an annoyance and has ruined some good shots. >>

I'm curious, does it do this with any lens or just the 600?

Hi Rob,

I guess I should have mentioned this in my latest update. I have figured out what was going wrong on the re-focusing issue. Again, it seems that the problem is more with me than the *istD. What has been happening is, I was assuming that once the little red square around the AF point went out, the camera had finished focussing and had locked. It turns out that the lock only occurs once the green hexagonal indicator has been illuminated. If I stick to this criterion, there are no problems with the camera re-focussing on me.

I should also mention that I am getting what I consider to be terrific battery life. I have been shooting straight for 3 days, over 700 exposures and have still not needed to charge the batteries. In fact, the battery indicator still shows full. I am using 2300 ma/hr batteries in both the grip and body. I have been using AF for all shots, but have not been using the internal flash. However, since I have been having trouble getting the exposure right (my fault, not the camera's) I have been using the monitor quite a bit. I have an extra set of batteries, so I should be able to find out how far I can go under these conditions. I?ll report on the outcome.

I used the *istD alongside the Z1-p today. It was kind of nice to compare them directly. The Z1-p is definitely easier to manually focus with as the image is brighter and larger. One thing I really miss on the *istD is the Z1-p's ability to set the flash compensation in the camera body. That is one handy feature.

The *istD works well as a part of my usual macro set-up with the Pentax A* 200/f4 a Stroboframe bracket and the AF500FTZ. I can use the AF360FGZ with this set-up too, but I need to buy another adapter. I'll get flash compensation with that unit, but it is still more convenient in the body. It works with any flash then. Pentax should make this a standard feature to differentiate themselves from all the other junk out there.

Batteries are still going strong with over 1000 images shot.