Testing...

I finally gave in and replaced my 7-year-old entry-level DSLR (Pentax K200D)!

This might be the darkest part of my yard

The replacement arrived yesterday, so this morning I went outside early to give the new entry-level DSLR (Pentax K-50) a bit of a workout. It's cloudy (of course) and dark, so I wanted to see how this model would perform.

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I'm not familiar with all of the modern settings yet (much higher ISOs, HDR, different autofocus and metering algorithms), so these photos will be pretty rough. I thought though that it might be a good opportunity to show you a few views of the garden that I don't show too often -- or at least haven't for a while. Mixed in with some familiar views as well of course.

My first impression of the camera: modern cameras are fast! Also, the kit lens isn't the best I have.

Through the front window (while it was raining):

The camera and lens are weather-sealed so technically I could take them out in the rain, but I wasn't chancing it on the first day.

I only took a few shots with my vintage macro lens...

...sticking mainly to the lens included with the camera.

Anybody who visited my garden last weekend would recognize all of this -- I literally have not done a thing in the garden since Saturday.

The pond is to the left in this shot, which I rarely show:

Turn to the left...

Turn a bit more to the left, past the pond:

That's my partially deer-trimmed cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) at the right of that last image. This would make a nice, big specimen in a yard that was not visited by hungry animals all day long.

Kit lens not as sharp as my macro lens

It did a pretty good job of exposing the dark, shadowy bamboo correctly:

Just a few more shots for fun:

I'll be learning more about this camera over the weekend, so hopefully next week's posts start looking better.

Have a great weekend!

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