Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic - Leaving Olympus and moving to a different system...advice?

uros78 · Joined: 28 Sep 2007 Posts: 91

I would recommend a Pentax K20D. I own K10D, and a K20D is a great upgrade, lots of features, sealed body, 14.6 MP, Shake reduction, great price-quality ratio. Only minus is 3fps, but for me that's not a problem, I never needed more than that. It certainly is a bit better than Canon 40D, and at the same level with Nikon D300, but with much lower price. So, if you're not brand freak, looking only for Canon and Nikon, then go for Pentax! Or wait for Canon 50D to see if it can match!

willall · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 9:34 am

Eppicphotos, I'm looking into SLR's at the mo and wondered how you find the A350. I heard that it has some problems with noise at higher ISO settings, how noticible is it? Have you tried it at all at night, how does it fair up there.

Uros78 Im also interested in the K20D, its a bit of streach on my budget. However I would rather pay a little more for a camera that is going to last. The only problem I have with it is that I'm not so familiar with pentax, I know alot of people would only go for the big two or maybe three. But what sort of lens range is there for pentax?

Thanks!

eppicphotos · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 11:02 am

The A350 is flawless at ISO100 and still quite useable at ISO200. Even ISO 400 in a composition with no shadows can be used. If you find a tilting liveview screen advantageous, then the A350 is definitely a good choice as the live view works almost identical to that of a P&S.
The other great thing with the A350 is that all the old Minolta AF lenses are 100% compatible and there's many fine quality minolta AF's on Ebay at very reasonable prices.
Check out the Minolta forums for further user comments on both the A350 and the plethora of lenses at www.dyxum.com
For under 1000.00 you could get yourself a fine assortment of good quality Minolta glass as many quality lenses go for between 100 and 200.00. I curently have 4 lenses and none of them are Sony brand.
For night shots, I did a photoshoot of Canada Day fireworks with most of my exposures set between 15 and 25 seconds at ISO 100. The noise was minimal and far better controlled than what I got from my Olympus DSLR's.
A couple things you may want to consider though if this is an issue for you is that the A350 has a slow F.P.S. when firing off multiple images, so I wouldn't recommend the
A350 for any kind of sports or fast action photography. I shoot landscape so it's not an issue for me.

willall · Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 4:08 pm

Thanks eppicphotos, thats cleared a few things up for me. I was also wondering about AF, this may sounds a little stupid but with diffrent lenses is there an option for manual contole e.g. a built in ring motor? I havent had much experience with SLR's as of yet, so I'm not sure on this side. The A350 does not list manual focus in its spec list, so I'm not sure on this.
I dont intend to do much sports stuff, there may be some occasions. However 2fps or more sounds fine to me.
Thanks

eppicphotos · Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 4:40 pm

Yes the A350 has a switch between AF and MF by the lens mount. Some lenses of course are better suited than others when it comes to MF. Macro lenses generally have a larger manual focus ring and have a more precise focus control than regular lenses do.
The A350's viewfinder however is a bit on the small side when it comes to MF, however some are overcoming this shortcoming by installing a 1.2x viewfinder add-on made by Pentax which then brings it up to a decent DSLR quality. This pentax viewfinder is around 40.00. I'm going to get one myself pretty soon.