Back from the world - first time with DSLR

[ghost1000]

I've still got a lot to learn but I'm pleased with 90% of the shots - especially the Spectromagic ones. Here are some early favorites:

Camera is a Pentax K200D most of the above were taken with with a 50mm 1.7, and a couple with the kit lens and a 50-200

 

[fhirleighinn]

Your pics are nice. Some are slightly underexposed. I see that you bumped up the ISO to 800, But going slightly higher might have worked. Some people will say never go above an iso of 800, but if you are only going to make 4x6 prints and use noisninja or something similar, you won't really notice a difference. Not sure how the metering works on the pentax, but they do say pattern for the metering. If it is looking at the entire image area for metering, where most of the image is dark, that could lead to the images being underexposed.
Your pics do not say if you used the image stabilization (I guess not cause if you went any slower you would have a hard time with freezing the movements.

 

[ghost1000]

Thanks for the tips. I thought I had it on center weighted metering for the night shots and tried to remember to turn IS off in cases where the subject moves. Next time I'm out at night I'll try bumping the ISO higher to start playing around with it before my next trip in September.

 

[ukcatfan]

Nice shots. I am glad to see that you are enjoying your K200D.

 

[WVDisGeek]

ghost1000,

Nice shots. I too just purchased a K200D and will be taking my first World shots with it in December. Still learning the camera but your shots give me a bar to aim for!

Glad you are enjoying the camera and getting some nice "dark" shots. That was the main reason for me to finally make the DSLR leap. Took some shots last weekend at my wife's Relay for Life function with luminaria and minimal outside lighting and they truned out very nicely. Key for me was to use the tripod. I shot most of them AP as I wanted to control the depth of field. Letting the camera pick the shutter speed worked 90%+ of the time.

Keep us the shooting!

 

[Steve's Girl]

Wow! You did a great job. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Groucho]

Thanks for the tips. I thought I had it on center weighted metering for the night shots and tried to remember to turn IS off in cases where the subject moves. Next time I'm out at night I'll try bumping the ISO higher to start playing around with it before my next trip in September.

There's really no need to turn IS off if the subject is moving. You'll still want IS to help calm the background. The only time you should want to turn it off is when you're in a tripod (and I think it may automatically turn it off in some cases, even)... maybe for panning shots but even then, I don't think it makes much of a difference. I did a ton of panning shots at a racetrack last weekend and had no problem with IS causing any problems... the only blur was motion blur from too slow of a shutter speed or me not panning smoothly.

Nice shots BTW! The underexposure in the Spectro shots is pretty normal, I often dial in +1 or even +1.5 exposure compensation to try to bring out some background details (though it does mean slower shutter speeds, so more danger of blur, and the possibility of blowing some highlights.)