hefty2002 on eBay

02 May, 2010

More Quality - Less ££££'s

I was challenged by a friend to buy her a digital camera for £30 that would out-perform the various supermarket own-brand cameras available for similar money - with the Sony S80 I excelled myself! Firstly, I paid only £15 for it - leaving a chunk of cash available for a memory card and some rechargeable batteries and still be under budget. Secondly, the image quality is excellent! OK, it may "only" be a 4 megapixel camera but there's more to great pictures than just a pixel count. With the size of a typical compact camera sensor being a little on the small side, actually somewhere around 4-6MP is the sweet spot when it comes to detail vs. low noise - plus it's still plenty enough resolution to print up to around 10"x8" (A4-ish) size without giving much away to modern 12+ MP models. What really makes this camera sing is the wonderful little Vario-Tessar lens. OK, maybe it hasn't ever seen the inside of a Zeiss factory but it certainly behaves in a very Tessar-like fashion: It's sharp wide open and has gorgeous rendering. I don't know what coating it uses (probably not Zeiss T* or I'm sure there would be a sticker shouting about it on the camera somewhere) but it does seem very good at rendering reds - something many lenses costing far more struggle with - and is very resistant to flare (despite my best efforts of shooting into the sun in the hopes of provoking it). If I have any complaints at all then it's that the wide end isn't terribly wide (37mm equivalent) and at that length there is some visible barrel distortion. Given the cost it feels churlish to complain though... The ergonomics of the camera are also excellent. It's not as pretty as more modern wafer-thin designs but that chunkiness actually means you have something to grip onto and one-handed operation is a piece of cake. The controls are logical and very easy to follow - even for a photographic novice like my friend, yet the camera also allows more advanced users a degree of manual control tht's missing in most current compacts - making this a genuinely useful creative tool rather than a simple taker of snapshots (although you can hand it to Granny and she can use it in snapshot-mode if you wish). Something else that this camera has (and which most current compacts don't) is an optical viewfinder. It's a little tunnel-like and tiny, but when the sun is glaring off the screen making it impossible to see it's a vital aid to composition - all cameras should have one! Overall, if I'd paid £100 for this camera in today's market I'd still think it was worth every penny - it's easy to use, easy to carry, quick to respond and takes genuinely gorgeous pictures. The fact that you can pick one up on eBay for less than the cost of a round of drinks makes this - in my eyes - one of the greatest bargains to be had. If you see one, buy it. :-)

1 of 1 found this helpful

24 Jul, 2007

What the Internet can't tell you...

I've been taking photos almost as long as I can remember - as a kid it helped that my Dad was a keen photographer and there was always a spare camera for me to take snapshots with. As I grew up I bought my own cameras (in a pre-digital age) and my skills evolved, by which I don't mean my technical abilities which anybody with a little patience can learn, but rather my eye for a picture and my ability to use my equipment almost like an extension of my own body... When digital cameras began to be released onto the marketplace I bought a state-of-the-art (1 megapixel!) Kodak compact and, despite its woeful battery life and lack of manual controls, I could immediately see the benefits the new medium would have over film in the future. A couple of digicams later and the future has truly arrived in the form of the Pentax K10D! The K10D is my first DSLR (but not my first SLR) and the reasons for buying it over strong competition from Nikon/Canon/et al were primarily those which seldom seem to get a mention in reviews; ergonomics. Every review I have read in magazines and online seems to concentrate on technical aspects that - if truth be told - are only noticeable under laboratory conditions. The greatest influence on the outcome of any picture is not the camera or even the lens, it is the person holding it. This is why the K10D shines in a very crowded and competitive market place. I had the good fortune to be able to borrow a K10D along with a Canon 30D and a Nikon D200 before I actually took the plunge and bought one, whilst the Canon and the Nikon were undoubtably excellent cameras the K10D was the one that immediately felt the most useable. Controls were well placed and the grip was extremely comfortable and within a few weeks of buying it I've pretty much forgotten that I'm using one of the most complex and powerful pieces of photographic kit ever made, instead I just concentrate on taking photos in exactly the way I want them - something the K10D does astoundingly well. This really is the sort of camera that I couldn't have imagined existing in my wildest dreams as a youngster, yet here it is made real. I'm not going to suggest that you ignore all of the technical specs that are plastered all over the web, however, I would suggest that if you get a chance to borrow one for a day you should do so. Compare it to the opposition and see if you don't reach the same conclusion I did - that this is a camera that really has been designed with photographers in mind rather than marketing departments, company bean counters and people who spend all day taking shots of test charts in their bedrooms... ;) Oh, and as this review is also supposed to cover the 18-55 lens I ought to just say that it's pretty good. It's not the very best that money can buy (what kit lens is?) but if you're moving up from a compact camera then you will find the results absolutely astounding. If my review has helped you decide to buy a K10D and you find yourself bidding against me on an elusive Pentax Limited lens, please take pity and let me win! Cheers, Paul (hefty2002)

24 of 24 found this helpful

02 May, 2010

More Quality - Less ££££'s

I was challenged by a friend to buy her a digital camera for £30 that would out-perform the various supermarket own-brand cameras available for similar money - with the Sony S80 I excelled myself! Firstly, I paid only £15 for it - leaving a chunk of cash available for a memory card and some rechargeable batteries and still be under budget. Secondly, the image quality is excellent! OK, it may "only" be a 4 megapixel camera but there's more to great pictures than just a pixel count. With the size of a typical compact camera sensor being a little on the small side, actually somewhere around 4-6MP is the sweet spot when it comes to detail vs. low noise - plus it's still plenty enough resolution to print up to around 10"x8" (A4-ish) size without giving much away to modern 12+ MP models. What really makes this camera sing is the wonderful little Vario-Tessar lens. OK, maybe it hasn't ever seen the inside of a Zeiss factory but it certainly behaves in a very Tessar-like fashion: It's sharp wide open and has gorgeous rendering. I don't know what coating it uses (probably not Zeiss T* or I'm sure there would be a sticker shouting about it on the camera somewhere) but it does seem very good at rendering reds - something many lenses costing far more struggle with - and is very resistant to flare (despite my best efforts of shooting into the sun in the hopes of provoking it). If I have any complaints at all then it's that the wide end isn't terribly wide (37mm equivalent) and at that length there is some visible barrel distortion. Given the cost it feels churlish to complain though... The ergonomics of the camera are also excellent. It's not as pretty as more modern wafer-thin designs but that chunkiness actually means you have something to grip onto and one-handed operation is a piece of cake. The controls are logical and very easy to follow - even for a photographic novice like my friend, yet the camera also allows more advanced users a degree of manual control tht's missing in most current compacts - making this a genuinely useful creative tool rather than a simple taker of snapshots (although you can hand it to Granny and she can use it in snapshot-mode if you wish). Something else that this camera has (and which most current compacts don't) is an optical viewfinder. It's a little tunnel-like and tiny, but when the sun is glaring off the screen making it impossible to see it's a vital aid to composition - all cameras should have one! Overall, if I'd paid £100 for this camera in today's market I'd still think it was worth every penny - it's easy to use, easy to carry, quick to respond and takes genuinely gorgeous pictures. The fact that you can pick one up on eBay for less than the cost of a round of drinks makes this - in my eyes - one of the greatest bargains to be had. If you see one, buy it. :-)

hefty2002

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