Not the rainbow I want but nice kit
The rest of the world deserves more colors! I want Purple K-x please. *(^.^)*
The Pentax K-x is arguably one of the smallest and more accomplished entry-level DSLR cameras on the market. The K-x inherits the compact body and the simple layout of the K-m while squeezing in quite a few of the high-end features of its bigger brother, the K-7. Pentax k-x Colour photography: Pentax's K-x The 12.4Mp …
Nothing new on the power management side of things - I have a k-100d and it ate rechargeables for breakfast and alkalines for lunch. They seem to set the voltage drop point too high, or there isn't enough calibration. Either way I found using Eneloops has cured that problem completely - can't recommend them highly enough if you have a Pentax DSLR.
I liked some of the effects, but it needs to include a lolcat caption tool.
the first sample shot, wide angle of the tea-light in the garden, actually looked more like something from a phone camera. The rest looked good and the figurine used for the ISO/noise samples was excellent looking. though on that note, I do miss the blue door :( I think a big mono-chromish surface tends to show noise more than intricately detailed subjects, especially with jpeg masking the noise.
the colours are a touch too much for my conservative tastes. Even silver Canons are vulgar in my eyes. Plus, a DSLR stands out enough due to its size! A red one's really going to get you picked up under the anti-terrorism laws.
I can imagine auto-iso being more useful than iso-priority.
finally, was that a Seagull guitar?
It seems like a great starter camera indeed. I'm waiting for the price of the K7 to drop though. :-)
It would have been nice if the picture for demonstrating the "miniature" mode was more adequate for the effect -- which did not show at all in the picture included.
If I understand correctly, miniature mode is an automatic fake tilt-shift baked in the camera. I wonder whether it works well here. I do fake tilt-shift in the GIMP with photos from my K10D, and it's cool. If you choose the right picture. Pictures taken from a high view point (but not directly overhead) are the best for this. Then, some manual selections followed by some well applied blur, plus an over-saturation of colors, and it looks like you are viewing a picture of a miniature model.
The full-res photos don't seem all that sharp. About only high frequency components that I could find in Photoshop was noise. It reminds me of some research in the 90s on how to upsample media in ways that trick the brain into seeing a higher resolution image. I recall that high frequency noise was used to mask lost details, then your brain would then replace that noise with a very convincing assumption about what the details should be.
The high ISO photos look great. There's relatively little noise and noise suppression damage. Put a bright lens on it and take it into town at dusk.