New Year, New Camera

Talia inspects my new kit

That's right, I am now the owner of a new Pentax K-5 with 16-50, 100, and 55-300mm lenses.  This is a big upgrade from my old camera (a Canon 400D - aka rebel xti). Among the things I am most excited about are in camera image stabilization (or in the Pentax language, "shake reduction  (SR)") , a much more robust and better sealed camera, and better high iso performance. I am not complaining about a bigger and better sensor, better viewfinder, more handy controls, bigger and better chimping screen, video capability, and probably lots more stuff.

The things I am not so excited about is not being able to use my Canon lenses and losing some features with the accessories and needing to learn a whole lot of new stuff (some of that is good). It is a little frustrating from going from something I knew pretty well to something I am sort of blundering with - but not for long.

I haven't had a chance to figure everything out, but it is pretty exciting anyway. iso 51,200 is just a bit ridiculous, and looks worse than iso 1,600 looked on my old camera, but the images at iso 3,200 look pretty good at screen size.
The SR can work amazingly well, but not always and it doesn't do any good for fast subject motion.
A 34 minute exposure on a cold night looks pretty clean.
Now everyone in the house cringes when I walk in with the camera.

34 minute star trails on a cold night - the light of Boston is pretty pervasive

an orchid - testing out the macro

3/4 moon - testing the telephoto

I still have a ton to learn, but I am on my way, and I haven't really even started with the video side of things.