K10D, Wedding Trial by Fire

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to use the Pentax K10D in a very intense and difficult environment. I was shooting pictures at a wedding. This was not a very high pressure wedding but it was a wedding which is, by definition, high pressure.

I will update this post with more information after I process through my photos but I just wanted to make a few comments. I found that the K10D performed very well. I used two K10D bodies and two of my employees had a K10D each. All four K10D bodies also had D-BG2 battery grips attached. We also used three Pentax AF540FGZ flashes as well as three PowerPack TR III units to decrease our flash recharge time.

All three of us used monopods which helped significantly. As expected Shake Reduction was a huge help and made all the difference. Unfortunately, the light was very difficult to work with. This caused me to shoot many shots at ISO 800 and even ISO 1600. I was very impressed with how well the K10D performed in all respects. I did use a tripod for a few shots but the tight quarters caused it to be impossible to move the tripod around. A monopod worked much better.

I used mostly prime lenses which consisted of primarily the DA 40mm f/2.8 Limited, DA 70mm f/2.4 Limited, and the FA* 24mm f/2.0 lenses. I also used the DA 21mm f/3.2 Limited a couple of times. The other lens that saw lots of use during the ceremony was the FA* 80-200mm f/2.8 lens. Both of my employees used FA 28-200mm f/3.8-5.6 lenses primarily as well as a Pentax-F 50mm f/1.7 lens sparingly.

I was intending to use the FA* 28-70mm f/2.8 lens quite a bit but I have found that its focusing seems to be off for a significant portion of my shots. I have yet to really sit down and figure out why but I was not going to figure that out during a critical shoot. In any case, I will be getting the DA* 16-50mm f/2.8 and DA* 50-135mm f/2.8 lenses as soon as they are available and they will be my primary workhorses.

I will add some additional information and some sample photos in a few days. I need to get back to processing the 999 photos I took. I actually took a dozen more than that or so but I deleted some in the process.