sllɐqǝʎǝʎzznɟ

The boxy and pretty weird looking Pentax K-01 arrived in stores yesterday and after breakfast today … I dragged Fitzand along to the shop to pick up a set. Not sure if it was a right thing to bring him along because what originally was supposed to be a black version … ended up … yellow. That’s just because I asked to take a look at the yellow one and Fitzand’s eyes suddenly went all time big and went ‘Daddy! This one nice! Bumblebee (blame Transformers!) camera! Buy this one!’. The rest (again) is history …

Of course I took the package with the super duper slim 40mm f2.8 lens. It is pretty ‘wow!’ looking at how thin it is … it is probably almost as thin as the body cap! 😀

First impression … it feels really solid and boxy. Weight wise it is just nice too. Only thing I feel a little weird is the rubbery flap (part of the yellow thingie) that covers the SD card slot etc. Will the rubbery flap get loose and fall off one day? 😀 I’ll worry about that later. The other thing I was worried about is the rubber body cover (grip). A black one won’t give any problem but will the yellow get stained easily? After a day of random use … it still looks clean to me … so I’ll just hope it stays this way for at least a year or more. Who knows some 3rd party replacements will pop up on eBay soon … hmm … some leather looking ones will be awesome eh?

The top is neat and clean with a red and green button. The red is the dedicated video button which I think is very nicely placed. It won’t be easily pressed by accident. I haven’t really gone thru the menu/manual but I think these two buttons are programmable.

See how sexy the pancake lens is …

The little rubber lens cap is cute too! I couldn’t resist taking a photo of it. I’ve been very very careful when removing it as I don’t wanna lose this very little cap. 😀

So as usual … like most weekends which leave me not much ‘me time’ for photos … I randomly took some test shots with the K-01. It did give me a few surprises when the camera gave me messages about some card problem. Not sure if it is because of an old el-cheapo 8GB card that I used but I’ve replaced it when I got home and will give it more test tomorrow. Pray that it is the card that’s cranky.

Here are some of the test shots I did. Please note that this ain’t no review/preview or whatever view like those done by the experts. These are just test shots by an uncle with fuzzy eyeballs … so don’t draw any conclusion about the camera after looking at my photos. My photos  usually don’t do the cameras any justice. 😛

Low light test at ISO1600 … at f2.8. Forgot to switch the noise reduction off though. 😛

Another one at low light … with a 100% crop for those who ermm … like to view things at this magnification. Please note that I do not actually know if it is the right way to do a 100% crop but … ermm … I’ll just assume that’s the correct way to do it. 😛

All these photos are straight outta the camera and just resized for web. I was too lazy to adjust the white balance (as usual) or compensate the exposures etc too.

The slim 40mm lens is pretty darn sharp (I think!).

Little model started to clown around and made a mess in the end. Hahaha!

Focusing speed is pretty good. Don’t ask me how good because my expectations are usually very low … so I don’t wanna give wrong info. 😀 As usual … I’ll say that any camera that can focus fast enough for me to capture photos of Fitzand … is fast enough. 😛

The 40mm lens made it a bit challenging as I usually tend to get too near to my subjects when I shoot on the streets. I did attempt to shoot some other subjects …

Looks pretty okay … right? I thought of trying to pair some of my other Pentax lenses with the K-01 tomorrow but I somehow like how the flat pancake lens so much that I’ve told myself to postpone the test with other lenses til next weekend.