Photo Mojo

We loaded up the kids and drove up to Nashville to visit my friend Robert and his family this past weekend. I have two small boys and Robert and his lovely wife have three small girls. So with five kids in the house, ages 6, 4, 3, 1, and 6 months, things were lively to say the least. But I did get an opportunity to admire Robert’s new digital SLR, a Pentax K10D. I used to think the choices for pro-sumer grade digital cameras were Nikon and Canon. Well, this camera changed my mind quickly.

First, I should tell you I have known Robert since we were four years old. He has always been one of the most talented and creative people I know. I won’t say what company he works for, but lets say if you own an iPod, you probably also own an accessory Robert designed for it. Maybe it’s because of his creativity, but Robert has always been one of those few people who can, shall we say, think outside the box. Maybe that’s why he picked this camera.

I got to play with it a little bit between being a human jungle gym and playing with Hot Wheels cars. I read some reviews about it before and was intrigued. After I handled it for a bit, I was impressed. First thing I noticed was the camera’s heft. It’s made of high-impact plastic, but it definitely has some weight behind it. It’s got (according to Pentax) no less than 72 seals in the body to keep out dust and moisture. There a locking latch for the SD memory for pete’s sake! This is much stronger construction than other cameras you see at this price point (c. $600~$700 U.S.) including, in my opinion the Canon Digital Rebel XTi. Robert told me he recently returned from a trip to Las Vegas where he was caught in a dust storm but the camera had no problems with it.

Just as I was admiring this burly camera body, I noticed a hole in the top of the camera about the size of small pea. “Oh, that,” said Robert. Apparently he had a little accident recently outside the Louvre in Paris. Being a mouth-open tourist wandering Paris one evening and snapping photos of everything in sight, Robert didn’t notice a chain strung across the sidewalk. He tripped and the camera took the brunt of the fall landing on the concrete, corner first. Despite that, the camera is still working well, although, I image its not so dust and moisture tight now.

Two features I found really interesting on this camera are the RAW button and a function called “Sensitivity Priority.” If you are like me, you only shoot in the camera’s RAW format occasionally. Most of the time j-peg works just fine for me, thank you very much. But every now and then, you come across a shot that you know is going to be tricky. You just want to shoot this photo in RAW. Just press the RAW button and this image will be in RAW format. Release it, and you are back to shooting in j-peg. There is even an option in the custom settings to save the RAW files as Adobe DNG instead of the Pentax format. Nicely done.

The other interesting feature is the sensitivity priority. Despite the name this isn’t the program mode that is really, really nice to people and protects their feelings. Instead you set the ISO and shoot in a program mode. Unlike program mode though, you can easily change the sensitivity via the rear dial. The shutter and aperture priority mode lets you set the shutter and the aperture and the camera will change the sensitivity to match. Very cool.

My only gripe is that currently, there aren’t nearly as many lenses available for this camera as there are for either Canon or Nikon. That’s pretty obvious, but there really aren’t many to chose from. A quick check on a major camera retailer’s Web site showed only eight Pentax lenses, seven made by Sigma, and two from Tamron. Robert had a couple of wide-angle lenses from Sigma, a 10-20 f/4-5.6 and the 18-50 f/2.8 macro. They seemed nice to me. Robert said they were very sharp as well. Looking at his shots with them on Flickr, and my own experience with Sigma glass, I believe him. One thing though, they are both direct-coupled lenses, meaning the focus motors are in the camera and not the lenses. Usually this makes them a little slower to focus than electro-coupled lenses. Robert felt this was true, but it didn’t really present a problem for him since these are such wide-angle lenses.

He did have a very nice Pentax 50-135 f/2.8. This is one of the first in a new line of lenses from Pentax and features yet more dust seals and a built-in super-sonic motor in the lens for focusing. I didn’t use this lens (at this point I was being beckoned to come outside and push the swing) but Robert said it was much faster focusing.

By the time we left on Sunday, I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept well and I had a long drive back to Birmingham ahead of me. But, I had fun. It was nice to see my friend and his family. And I had a new respect for camera maker I hadn’t considered before.

Related links:
Review of Pentax K10D on dpreview.com
Robert’s profile on Flickr
Photos taken with a Pentax K10D on Flickr

I’ve been taking pictures it seems like my whole life. I bought my first camera when I was eight years old. It was a Kodak 110 format camera. When I got to middle school, I learned the ancient secrets of darkroom alchemy and began developing and printing my own black and white photographs. My parents gave me my first real 35mm SLR for Christmas when I was 12. It was a black Nikon FE2. It would the camera I would carry around the world photographing things I saw for the next 16 years. (How many cameras can you buy today and use that long? Also, I still have that camera, but I now shoot digital)

 

In the year 2000, two amazing things happened to me. First: I married my wonderful wife Susie, and then, secondly, we went to the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_hours_of_le_mans) car race in France. Actually, we got married so we (me) could go to Le Mans for our honeymoon. No fooling, when I suggested we take a trip to France to see a car race, my future wife said “Sounds great!” This is how I knew I had found the love of my life.

 

Since then, the honeymoon hasn’t ended. I love my family, photography, and motorsports, particularly sports car racing found in the American Le Mans Series (ALMS, http://www.americanlemans.com) I have gone to every Petit Le Mans race at Road Atlanta since 2001. Taking photos of fast cars is my favorite thing to shoot. It’s difficult to be sure, but there is something thrilling about capturing a fleeting moment of action in a single frame.

 

My favorite subjects to photograph are (in order):

• Motorsports

• Travel (especially places I have never been to before)

• My family

• My friends

 

And just so you know what I am packing, here is a list of my current kit:

Canon EOS 10D

Canon 17-40 f/4 (my most frequently used)

Canon 28 f/2.8

Sigma 28-70 f/2.8

Canon 70-200 IS f/2.8

Canon Speedlight 420EX

Canon TC-14 1.4 teleconverter

 

When I’m not out shooting fast cars, I work as a mild-mannered Web Communications Specialist (my actual title) at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (http://www.uab.edu)

 

See you at the track.

 

Jeff Keeton

AKA “Mulsanne”

http://www.gobyfastphotos.com