I eyed this camera for a long time before buying. I always had SLRs before but lately only owned super zoom point and shoots. (5 M pix). I wanted a little better resolution and a lot more flexibility and ability to control what the camera does as well as quickness, and smarts. This one has it all. Now after having gotten used to it, I love everything about it. For example, it has several different "themes" for the display and you can set the "Vari-program" modes to look different than the "P, S, A and M" modes so you can see at a glance if you're in "point and shoot" or "think about it" modes. The "Quick-Set" menu button makes it super fast to set the most commonly changed settings. I love the way you can set ISO to be "Auto" in the "P, S, A and M" modes but set a minimum shutter speed and max ISO and it will ramp up the ISO within those limits. So it keeps ISO set at 100 until correct exposure would require a speed slower than your min shutter speed setting and only then starts ramping up the ISO. Really smart. And it has a real "Time" function like the old SLRs had. You have to buy the little remote but it's cheap, works fantastically and goes in a tiny case that goes on the camera strap so it's always with you. That replaces the old locking cable release you had to have to do time exposures. So you can take long exposures and from my initial tests in light polluted skys, it's going to take great starfield and milky way shots (with the fast lens I also bought. See separate review of the 50mm f/1.4G). And I love the exposure/focus lock button that can be set to do either or both (five different settings). And having good, precise manual focus at a touch of the focus ring is such a refreshing change from the point-and-shoots. The "delete" button is super fast to delete any shot. Just push it twice. I also love the rapid fire mode where it shows you how many shots are left in the buffer in viewfinder. So when you fire off four rapid shots of that little soccer player about to score, you don't have to wait for all four to store, you can see as it progresses that you can take one, two, three and finally four rapid shots again to plan ahead. And in that same situation, using the "sports" mode, it automatically sets focus to "continuous" which I normally don't use and stresses high shutter speeds. (Another place where it's nice to have a fast lens.)
Speaking of that, I've hardly used the 18-55 VR zoom that came with the kit. I've read that it's a very nice lens but have no experience yet since I LOVE the 50mm f/1.4G I got. I could go on and on. Photography is fun again!
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