ist DL? D50? D70? Rebel?

[Jason ON]

I'll have to agree with Michael. Not because I own 3 Pentax cameras, including the DSLR *ist DS, but because as a photography machine it's superb. As Michael explained, Pentax's are generally overlooked for their more popular competition: Canon and Nikon.

The Pentax is small and light but I like that, especially considering how much hiking I do. Lighter is always better.

The pictures are superb! Especially with the Pentax lense it came with. I have a couple Pentax third-party lenses, but they tend to be grainy and slow. I'm hoping to get the SMC DA-50mm-200mm in the next couple of weeks and retire the others (maybe to ebay).;) I figure that lense, plus the 28-80 it came with will cover most of my basis for now!

Anywho, back to the *ist. Don't take my word for it.

And the best part? It takes a licking and keeps on ticking. I was out taing pictures of my community a few months ago when a dog's leash triped me and I dropped the camera. Luckily I had the strap in hand (not around my neck, though) and it just grazed the ground, but it came back working just fine.

[ken1953]

Thanks all...haven't gotten a chance to get to The Camera Shop, because of the weather, but did stop at American. They had the D50, the Rebel and the Olympus E500. So Kim got to play with those, but I want her to actually get to a "camera" store where there are photographers who can really talk to her about cameras...I'm liking the D50 now that I've held it...but still want to put them all together and see which I like best...
All of your suggestions are engrained in me as I look and I ask many better questions than I would have with out your help...Thanks...
Ken

[Lava Lamp]

I received my D50 tonight and went over it closely, comparing it to my D70 and doing some test shots. I was only working at night under the lights in my house with some flash here and there, but the D50 seems to have comparable image quality to the D70 with lower noise and slightly better autofocus. There are a couple of minor missing features in the D50 (top LCD light, a few missing buttons that are instead accessed through menus) and it is a little smaller, but I wouldn't pay the extra for the D70 if I were doing it again.

[xsport652]

Sorry do you think you could go more in depth with the differences between the D70 and D50 so far.
How much better is the noise and autofocus on the D50?
What features would you say you really have to search through the menus to get on the D50?
Any opinions directly from you that you like about the D50 or D70 more?
What lenses are you using?
Thanks I just really can't decide what to do now.

[xsport652]

anyone. sorry im in a dilemma here.

[ken1953]

Hi Xsport...sorry I really can't offer you the details...but I recommend you ask this in the Nikon Manufacturers forum. Since I bought the Pentax yesterday, I think most people are overlooking this thread. But the Nikon and Canon forums are really good about these types of questions.
Ken

[Franglais]

Sorry do you think you could go more in depth with the differences between the D70 and D50 so far.
How much better is the noise and autofocus on the D50?
What features would you say you really have to search through the menus to get on the D50?
Any opinions directly from you that you like about the D50 or D70 more?
What lenses are you using?
Thanks I just really can't decide what to do now.

My experience with the D50 is limited to playing with a friend's new one for an afternoon plus reviewing her first 250 images. I certainly couldn't detect any difference in the noise, the autofocus worked great just like on my D70, the menus seemed to be just the same (I have done the firmware update so I have the D70S menus).

I did notice that the D50 JPG's looked better than the D70 ones - they look brighter and more saturated (the original D70 tended to make the JPG's rather dark to avoid burning the highlights, something that was corrected in the D50 & D70S).

I notice that the D50 has only one control wheel whereas the D70 had two. The body is smaller but still feels good and solid. I liked the smaller SD card but as I'm going to use the D70 as a backup for my D200 (when I find one) then it's better to have a CF card.

So far I've never used the D70 to remotely pilot my SB800's but it could happen - something the D50 can't do with its built-in flash.

Charles

[ken1953]

Thanx LL...tomorrow morning we're going to the Camera Store here in Madison...never know...I might just come home with one!!! hehehe...but, I want to put them all on a counter next to each other and really play with the lot!!!!
I'll let you know tomorrow night if I buy or wait!!!!! hahaha
Thanks,
Ken