From DS to K10D, First Impressions

These are my first impressions of the K10D after three days of use, having come from a DS which I've used since March 06, before that a Nikon D70 for a year.

As others have it's not as heavy as expected. Perhaps the shape of the grip and the rubber coating where my right thumb rests are factors in this, giving a more secure feeling with less gripping pressure. But, after handling the K10 for a while then picking up the DS I was surprised at how small and light the latter felt—I guess I got used to the K10 very quickly.

The notch on the hand grip for my middle finger is a nice touch.

The doors (SD, battery and connections) have a very well-made, solid feel to them, much better than the comparatively flimsy battery door of the DS.

The power switch is a good bit stiffer than the DS's, a good thing for me as I've found my DS switched on in my bag many times (hurrah for auto power off—I set mine to 10 mins).

The 2.5" screen is great. It ghosts quite a lot, which would be terrible if it had to display moving images. As it is, the ghosting looks kinda cool when you move between images, like a built-in fade transition. The DS's screen actually feels small and kinda cutesy in comparison.

The flash makes a nice soft clunk noise when popped up :-)

The AF motor is rather high-pitched and quite loud—sounds a bit like a mouse squeaking. In a quiet room it's rather distracting, especially when the AF hunts. Outside it's not an issue at all. AF speed is a vast improvement over the DS and one of my main reasons for upgrading in the first place. This is sure gonna come in handy for gigs, not to mention some of the footy matches I plan on shooting next year.

Image review and playback is a huge improvement over the DS too. In fact, that was one of my main gripes with the DS: it just took far too long to review raw images. The K10 is nearly instant, and flicking between images likewise.

Speaking of which, I love how you can move through images even while zoomed in, by turning the front dial. Makes it very easy to check which of a series of images is the sharpest (especially useful when assessing the effect of SR).

Viewfinder blackout seems much faster. The mirror seems to go up and down a lot quicker than the DS, and with less lag after the shutter button is pressed. Can't be sure on this though, need to compare them some more. The K10 certainly feels much faster in this regard though. The mirror damping also sound more refined—the slap is much less harsh than the DS's. This isn't to say the DS's mirror slap is bad, in fact it's quite a nice sound, just different to the K10.

Auto ISO now works properly with EV compensation! Hooray! Means I can now leave ISO on auto most of the time (usually in the 100-800 range).

The AF mode selector dial (Auto/Sel/[·]) is being used more than I thought it would be. Since I had to dig through the menus to change this setting on the DS I never really bothered much; with an external control for it I find I'm changing it much more, mostly between Sel and [·].

Auto image rotation, at last! I disliked having to go through my photos on the DS to rotate all the vertical ones.

WB preview is really useful when combined with digital preview: snap a preview, press Fn and choose a WB setting that looks right. I also love being able to fine-tune WB on the B-A and G-M axes.

Shutter button is very nice. I love the lightness of touch needed to half-press it; indeed, it doesn't really feel like half-pressing, more like applying a bit of pressure to activate it then pushing it all the way to take the picture. I still need to get used to it when reviewing images, mind—a few times now I've pressed it without realising (mostly while wearing gloves).

The viewfinder eyecup is better and sturdier and more effective than the DS's.

The Raw button isn't all that useful to me. Ideally it'd switch between plain raw and JPEG, since I've never found a use for Raw+JPEG (my D70 had that and I never used it then either).

Haven't used Hyper-Program much. At the moment I've got the dials set up the way they were on my D70: back dial is program shift and front dial is EV compensation (in P mode obviously). I need more time with the camera to experiment, really.

The position of the right-hand strap lug is much better (recessed). On the DS it always dug into my hand, on the K10 I barely notice it and it keeps the strap out the way better.

I need more time to learn the positions of the EV+/- and AF buttons by feel as I'm still a bit awkward with them.

2006_12_27