Pentax First day with Pentax MX-1

tilman

All-Pro
Location
Portland, OR
got my Pentax MX-1 in the mail yesterday :)
So of course I had to give it a try today - even though the conditions weren't ideal. Summer's over here in the Pacific Northwest, that's for sure. But I guess that's to be expected in November. :)

First impressions are "The camera seems to be doing its job fine." Not as good as the EM-5 obviously, but jacket-pocketable instead; and pretty decent image quality for a small sensor compact.

A lot of reviewers complained about the camera being chunky. But the fact that it's longish (it's wider but not as high as the Olympus XZ-2 - which has the same lens/sensor) makes it slip in and out of a pocket much easier. Not having a hotshoe helps too.
Especially when hiking in the rain it's nice to have a camera that you can just put in a pocket of your rain jacket.

Camera got pretty wet. From the rain, and from holding it under dripping water to get some shots :rolleyes: It kept working fine, but it's still sitting in a ziplock bag with cat litter right now. Better safe than sorry :)


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Elk Creek 01 by tilman paulin, on Flickr

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Elk Creek 02 by tilman paulin, on Flickr

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Elk Creek 03 by tilman paulin, on Flickr

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Elk Creek 04 by tilman paulin, on Flickr

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Elk Creek 05 by tilman paulin, on Flickr

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Elk Creek 06 by tilman paulin, on Flickr

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Elk Creek 07 by tilman paulin, on Flickr
 
Thanks guys! Yes, my first impression of the macro mode on the MX-1 is really positive. You can go as close as 1cm in "super macro" mode.
I'm sure I'm going to use the macro option a lot in the rainy winter weeks to come :)

The forest shots with their high contrasts and lots of detail in foliage&branches are a challenge to any camera/lens.
Detailwise I think the MX-1 did well enough (as far as you can judge from handheld photos on a rainy/misty day :) ).
I was definitely impressed with the metering though. The MX-1 did a great job with nailing these tricky exposures.
 
now that I'm using the MX-1 for a bit longer I can say that I still like it. :) Whenever I don't want to carry around my bag with the EM-5 and lenses I'm happy enough with the MX-1's results...

JPG output is really good. Nice colours (I use the 'vivd' setting) and a good balance between noise reduction and sharpening.
I had a hard time matching the in-camera-jpgs with RAWs, so I might just use jpgs a lot of the time.
Capture One did the best job from the three raw-converters I own (Lightroom, Noise Ninja and Capture One). Lightroom and Noise Ninja have very muted colours by default - they're probably only using a generic dng-profile...

My biggest gripe/wish with the MX-1 is that it doesn't display the focal length at all. I wish they'd add that with a firmware upgrade. (Or even better a step zoom setting of some sort.)
Another thing (which is my own fault admittedly) is that I got a big scratch on the screen after two weeks of using. Not sure what I did, I only put it in and out of pockets. Never happened with my previous cameras (probably dumb luck), so I bought a screen protector which should take care of that :)

Some more shots:

The beach at Pacific City on Black Friday:

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Happy Thanksgiving by tilman paulin, on Flickr

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Pacific City beach by tilman paulin, on Flickr

Yesterdays hike. Elk Creek again - the same hike as in the initial post. This time without rain but with low clouds instead :)

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start of the hike by tilman paulin, on Flickr

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Elk Creek by tilman paulin, on Flickr

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up in the clouds by tilman paulin, on Flickr

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cloud walking by tilman paulin, on Flickr
 
Great images from you and the Pentax .
The beach portrait is really nice.
If it only had a viewfinder :-(


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks!
I know what you mean with the viewfinder. Every once in a while I catch myself moving the MX-1 to the eye :-D

But I guess a viewfinder would have added to size and/or price. Since I wanted to spend as little as possible (I wasn't sure how much/little I would use a pocket digi-cam) I decided to live with some compromises. So far it's been ok, maybe I'll change my mind next summer, when the sun is out again :)
 
I would agree. I am sure the MX1 is fine, but the quality of these photos is all down to Tilman's eye, IMO. Please feel free to post more. Enjoying your work! :)
 
Hehe, thanks Luke and wt21! And "sorry Luke"! :tongue:

Judging by how long the MX-1 deal on woot is running by now... (and that you can get it at Adorama for the same price in the meantime)
I don't think you have to rush a decision... :)

(P.S.: actually Adorama is cheaper since they do free shipping, AND you have the right to return it (you can't with woot). But I guess I'm not helping here ;) Take your time with a decsion. This one won't sell out in a hurry :)
 
woot still has it listed on it's photography page. Guess it's not selling well at all. Feel almost bad for Pentax :)
It's not a bad camera, but I guess it missed the boat in a some ways. It's the cheapest way to get the Olympus XZ-1/XZ-2's lens though... (other than buying used/ebay) which counts for a lot in my view...
 
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