TheRightPic.com

Got my brand new K10D last night!

I bought it from www.tristatecamera.com.

I placed my order on Saturday the 3rd of November and got it on the 12th.

Here is what I bought with my initial order and how much I paid:

Item: [PENK10D] Pentax - K-10D 10.2 MEGAPIXEL, 2.5 INCH LCD, SR |
| SHAKE REDUCTION DIGITAL SLR CAMERA BODY |
|———————————————————————-|
| Price: 664.99 | Qty: 1 | Item-Total: 664.99 |
|———————————————————————-|
|———————————————————————-|
| Item: [PENDA50200] Pentax - SMC P-DA 50-200/4-5.6 ED F/DIGITAL SLRS |
| (52MM) |
|———————————————————————-|
| Price: 226.99 | Qty: 1 | Item-Total: 226.99 |
|———————————————————————-|
|———————————————————————-|
| Item: [PENDA4028] Pentax - DA 40/2.8 ED LIMITED EDITION AUTO FOCUS |
| LENS FOR DIGITAL SLR CAMERAS |
|———————————————————————-|
| Price: 279.99 | Qty: 1 | Item-Total: 279.99 |
|———————————————————————-|
|======================================================
| Sub-Total: 1171.97 |
| Shipping Charges: 5.99 |
| Total: 1177.96 |

All 3 of these items (and others) have rebates from Pentax right now:

The camera - $100
SMC P-DA 50-200/4-5.6 ED (if bought with a camera) - $25
DA 40/2.8 ED LIMITED EDITION AUTO FOCUS - $50

http://www.pentaximaging.com/files/scms_docs//brightenyourholidaydslrrebate.lr.pdf

The rebates end the 31st of January.

By the time I get the rebates back I will have paid around $1000 for the camera and the 2 lenses.

I also used BillMeLater which is a way to get 6 months no payments / no interest on approved credit. Not a bad deal.

Tri-State Camera was pretty good to deal with. They did ask me to call and confirm the order, mostly to try to upgrade what I bought to include some other stuff like memory cards and extra batteries, which actually is a good idea as they probably deal with people who don’t know what they need.

The rep was pretty easygoing and when I told him I didn’t want any upgrades he processed my order and said it would ship ASAP, which it did.

Instead of buying memory from them I looked around quite a bit and eventually bought two 2GB SD cards from newegg.com:

FLASH 2G|TRANS SD TS2GSDC R - Retail (Qty=2, Price=$27.98)

Extended Warranty Fee: 0
Subtotal: 27.98
TAX: 0.00
Shipping and Handling Charge**: 6.69
Total: 34.67

After worrying about the speed of the cards I finally just bought the cheapest ones and they work fine. I can take rapid fire shots and the ’slower cards’ don’t seem to make a difference.

From Amazon.com I purchased the Magic Lantern guide, which I have been told is the way to go if you want to get up to speed on your camera quickly.

I have read through it a little bit and what I like about it so far is that it seems to actually offer opinions on the best settings for your camera, whereas the manual that comes with the camera just seems to tell you what everything is and then lets you decide. I will write a review on it later once I have read through it completely.

—————-

I bought the Limited Edition 40 lens for portraits and because most of the reviews on it I read said it was a great walkaround and general lens.

The 50-200 lens I bought to be able to reach out and take some longer distance shots.

I have taken a few hundred shots and most of them are blurry or have bad lighting but I seem to remember having the same problem with my DSC-H5 when I first bought it. I need to become one with the camera, like danielson and his paintbrush (”Paint the fence…”) and then I will post some educated reviews of the lenses and the camera.

So far, I can post that I think the autofocus is pretty dang fast. One of my buddies who owns a Nikon D40X said that the K10D is faster at focusing. He also seemed impressed at how many pictures it can take when in continuous shooting mode. He is upgrading to a D80 this week so that will give us something to compare that should be equivalent.

One thing that bugs me about the K10D is that it is loud when shooting. Everyone who has been around it has mentioned it. Since we are going to start shooting weddings that may be an issue, however, there are a lot of guys over at pentaxforums.com who are using the K10D for weddings and so maybe I am making it into something bigger than it is, but man when you are shooting it seems like a little hammer is banging away inside it.

All of the guys that I have shown it to tell me I am just paranoid and that it is not ‘that bad’. I would say, though, if you are going to buy one of these go and shoot it first and see if you think it is loud. Make sure to fire off 10 or 15 shots and then shoot one of the Nikons and a Canon.

The Pentax also seems large, which I like. It fits well in my hands, which I think are either average or a little smaller than most adult male hands. The Nikon owner also said he liked the feel of it over his D40X and he has larger hands. I could see where some people would not like the camera because it is pretty big, though. You aren’t going to tuck it in a coat pocket.

I also went on a bit of a spending spree this weekend while waiting for the camera and I will post details about that later…

Here are some pics. These were taken with my old Canon Powershot A40, as my Sony H5 is in South Africa right now with a buddy.

——————-

The package was in good condition and was large and packed well:

The boxes seemed new, however they all had been opened I think, though I haven’t ever bought a camera like this so I don’t know if the boxes come sealed or not usually. The contents were all wrapped up and in good shape and the paperwork looked new (whatever that means, but it had a brand new look to it).

Here are a couple of shots of the whole package:

There is also a battery and charger that comes with it but that is not pictured. The battery is a proprietary size, and must be charged for a couple of hours when you first get it. That was a really long two hours!

Battery life is exceptional. I have shot 3 or 400 shots and it is still showing as full on the little camera LCD. I am very impressed.

Share This