10+ Things I Learned With my First DSLR

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
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May. 19, 2008

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A DIY guide for GTD like a PRO with a DSLR.

Why ditch the point-and-shoot?

It strikes me as pure poetry that the acronym for point-and-shoot is POS. Wait, no, it's not. That would have been apt.

Let me get this out of the way: I know non-DSLRs are great, vastly improved over the model that I toted with me on many occasions, and that an aging Canon PowerShot A95 isn't the least bit representative of what you can get today for the same price. Even then, it wasn't bad for taking pictures. The "auto" setting yielded a pile of harmless pictures without difficulty, or even effort.

But anytime something superb, something unique came up, the machine was at a loss. Fuzzy, blurred, under- and over-exposed composition was the best I could get out of it. This extended beyond the occasional interesting could-be photo to plain difficult, technical shots (as you can imagine, I want a camera that can take photos of computer parts, too).

Or, at least I thought they were difficult, until a friend loaned me his Canon 20D. In an afternoon, taking product shots went from a detestable, any-excuse-to-put-it-off event to something... simple? Fun? Remarkably, taking pictures changed from something that I sucked at to something I could really get into.

And, just like that, I started shopping around for DSLR bodies.

What'd I buy, and Why?

Let's get the peer-pressure factor out of the way. I am walled in by photographers. I don't know if it's me or if they're secretly everywhere, snapping photos and clogging the tubes in a race to populate and capsize Flickr's servers. Now we, my friends and I, all have DSLRs, and can easily, almost exponentially, raise the value of our cars if we leave our glass in the trunks.

Not to be wholly molded, I bought a Pentax and not a Canon, which means that I can't use any of my friends' lenses. I mulled this for a while--I put off getting a camera for four months after I decided to go that route, to get an idea of what it would cost, and learn more about what I was getting into--but since I already own a Pentax A3000 that shoots real film, I have a stack of lenses that work with it and, thus, work with the K100D Super that I ended up buying. And I can guarantee that you have three or four Pentax K-mount lenses somewhere; everyone does, they're just in the basement. Seriously, they're in the dictionary under ubiquitous. In Australia, kangaroos outnumber people. In Japan, people are literally born holding a Pentax lens in each hand.

And in the strictest sense, Pentax is cheaper. Not that it's inexpensive, or that the hardware is cheap, but that I went for the value route. The value of the arrangement increased even more when I added the worth of the lenses I owned into consideration; I can't bother everyone else to lend me glass when it was convenient for me. And there's no way I could take photos without shake reduction, something of a, well, exorbitant extra cost with Canon (it's lens-specific) that's just built into current Pentax bodies.

The Pentax K1 series of cameras has been discontinued, with exception to the K100D Super, which is essentially just an entry-level K200D. It's been improved with all the bits that make the K2 series worth upgrading to; namely, compatibility with Pentax's new ultrasonic autofocus lenses, SDHC cards, and a slew of little improvements. But the K2 series also uses the same (excellent and award-winning) frame and sensor as the K100D and K110D. The money saved bought me a swank fast 50mm f/1.4 prime lens. (I'll touch on the technical crap later.)

My other option was to get the K200D (with a similar feature set and a higher-megapixel sensor), and stick with my older manual 50mm lens, which only stopped to f/2.0. I decided against spending the extra $300 since I assumed (correctly) that I'd wind up buying accessories I didn't even know I'd need or want.

In a few months, I'll probably upgrade to a better body, but not until I get this sweet super-wide 16-50mm f/2.8...

[Editor: Max has been hounding me for weeks to purchase this lens for him. On behalf of TheTechLounge. Because he totally needs it for product shots...]

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Page 1: My First DSLR
Page 2: What I Expected, What Surprised Me
Page 3: My Findings
Page 4: My Findings, continued...
Page 5: The End Bit

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4 User Comments

1 - Posted by aireiq on May 20, 2008 - 3:02 pm

> [Editor: Max has been hounding me for weeks to purchase this lens for him. On behalf of TheTechLounge. Because he totally needs it for product shots...]

So did you buy it for him?

2 - Posted by aireiq on May 20, 2008 - 3:03 pm

I mean, since he seems to be responsible for something like 90% of your content....

3 - Posted by Kurtis on May 20, 2008 - 5:45 pm

No, we didn't buy it for him. But I'm REALLY considering it. ;-)

4 - Posted by handrail on May 20, 2008 - 10:54 pm

me and my clunker D70 will take you and your pentax on any day, max!

brad.

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