Nikonical becomes Fotojunkee

This weekend I realized Nikonical is too limiting. Yes, I love my D60 to death, but there's more to photography than Nikon. For example, I just bought a new Pentax *ist D.

Well, "new" is a relative term. My *ist D is new to me, but the actual camera is about five years old. I purchased it on eBay last week for the bargain basement price of $223. Its purpose is to give use to several Pentax manual focus lenses I have from my ME Super. These lenses include:

• 28 mm F2.8 prime
  
• 50 mm F1.7 prime
  
• 135mm F5.0 prime
  
• 70-200mm F4.0

Who can leave lenses like that to waste? Not me, so bought a digital camera that would let me use them. The *ist D was Pentax's first foray into the digital world. Like most of Pentax's creations, it's superb. What amaxed me most about the *ist D is that it's a little smaller than my D60. In 2003, when it was first released, the *ist D was the smallest DSLR out there. It seems there's a chance it could still be the smallest.

When I went shooting this weekend, I used only the Pentax. Sure, it's only a 6MP camera, but that's more than enough to print excellent high-res pictures. Here are some from my weekend trip to the Biltmore Hotel:





Click here to see all the pictures I took.

I also employed a new post-processing technique this weekend called Tone Mapping. It mimics the appearance of an HDR image and does a lot to enhance the quality of a photograph. Here's the tutorial I used to learn.