Pentax K100D

[zx3guy2000]

Okay so I've been looking at this DSLR to be my first digital. After all the reading I still have a couple questions.

1. The lowest ISO is 200 .... The skill level of my photography is amateur, and I usually shoot Landscapes (Sunsets), Wildlife, but I'm looking at Wedding Photography.

Am I really going to miss/or really need ISO 100 ?? (I'm still new and learning)


2. In regards to the wedding photography I'm curious on how well this camera will print a 14 x 19-inch prints.
It says in the key features this: 6.1-megapixel CCD captures enough detail for photo-quality 14 x 19-inch prints ......

Has anyone here actually printed something this large from this camera or would recommend doing so?


Thanks

Tim

 

[seanberry]

Welcome to the club, I have a K100D that I bought in August. This is my first real camera so I don't really have much to compare it to. I don't feel like I need anything lower than ISO 200 but... I certainly feel 3200 is kind of useless. Again, I haven't printed anything that big yet, but I will be soon (my school is setting up a new printer) but I have heard accounts that it makes decent 20x30's, it all depends on your viewing distance. Might I recomend checking out http://www.stevesforums.com/forums/view_forum.php?id=80 and http://www.pentaxforums.com/. They are chock full of helpful people who helped convince me to buy mine.

 

[fmw]

In the old days the ISO of a film said things about its grain structure and contrast. As you chose faster emulsions you got larger grain and less contrast. In the digital era it is just a familiar form of terminology that doesn't mean the same thing at all. It really refers to the sensitivity of the sensor and how much amplification of the signal it will produce (with side effects) to record the image. They are saying that your camera at ISO 200 should require about the same exposure as an ISO 200 film would require for the subject and the lighting. That's the only connection.

The camera designers simply gave you a film-like description of the sensitivity of the sensor they used in the camera. It has nothing really to do with image quality. The image quality will only suffer when you begin to go beyond ISO 200 and amplify the image with the noise that the process generates. It is a trade off that allows you to get an image where there might not be enough light to get it with a lower ISO. A sensor with an ISO 100 rating would simply be one that is less sensitive to light.

The size of print you can make without visible pixelization is a function of camera resolution and cropping. Noise and other things will get enlarged right along with the rest of the image.