Wednesday, October 14, 2009

My Camera Dilemma

When I first looked at SLRs in mid 2008 I was looking at something small, the smallest one there was in fact - the Olympus E420. I played with 1 in a shop, but decided I wasn't ready to buy yet.

After discussing DSLRs with my Nikon and Canon owning friends at length, both seemed to recommend a Canon. So I went to get a hands on look at the 450D at my local camera store. However upon closer inspection I discovered the 450D to be quite uncomfortable to hold, it was a bit too small for me to grip nicely. This threw a bit of a spanner in the works, as the 40D felt lovely and comfortable, but was outside my price range by quite a bit.

It was at this point that I remembered that my Dad used to have an SLR. I gave him a call and discovered he had a Pentax K1000 with a few lenses. So I got into looking at the Pentax DSLRs. As it turns out, Pentax DSLRs are compatible with all Pentax lenses (some via adapters though).

Once again cost came into the equation - the K20D was about the same price as the Canon 40D - out of my price range. The previous model was the K10D. This seemed to be a good option. I had recently seen a Samsung GX-10 sell 2nd hand for less than half the price of a new K20D (the Samsung GX-10 is a rebadged K10D).

I decided I was ready to purchase a Pentax K10D, 2nd hand. They were cheap and plentiful a month or 2 earlier. Demand seemed to have suddenly peaked, availability was down and prices were up. Then I discovered the Pentax K200D. Slightly smaller than the K10D/K20D/40D, but larger than the Canon 450D, and with the same sensor as the K10D. It seemed to be a competitor to the 450D but had in body IS (SR) and had a top LCD, which the 450D did not. Pricing was cheap, very cheap compared to the 450D.

I went shopping for good prices. After a couple of weeks I dropped by my local JB Hifi, the K200D was on special for only $644. About 2 hrs later I went back to the store and I was the proud owner of a Pentax K200D DSLR with a Pentax SMC DA 18-55 AL II f3.5-5.6 lens.

Introduction

I have decided to start recording some of the information I collect in my brain before it comes too full. I read a lot of forums and general stuff on the internet, lately I have been particularly interested in photography. So I am going to try to pool any useful information I gather here. I will also do some equipment reviews, link to some bargains, link to other interesting blogs, articles, photographers, photos and so on.

Hopefully this blog can be useful to someone out there. I know it will help me to keep all my info together, and make it easy to find those little details I had forgotten about!