Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)When I decided to buy a DSLR for the first time, Pentax had an edge over Canon/ Nikon for me because I owned an old fully-manual Pentax SLR with several good lenses. I had decided on the K20D when the K-7 came out. After shelling out the $[...] and using it for 5 months, all I can say is it has performed beyond all my expectations.
The body is superbly constructed - it feels really good in the hand. The grip is very good and so are the controls. The top LCD is very convenient. The one-touch RAW shooting, depth-of-field preview, 100% viewfinder, electronic level indicator, in-camera HDR mode, built-in digital filters, multiple-exposure and time-lapse shooting options - everything is just perfect. I have shot outside in a snowstorm and the weather and cold sealing works perfectly. It has remote control sensors on the front AND the back, and a lock on the mode dial to prevent it from changing modes accidentally. Also, it has an ISO priority mode, a TAv mode and a USER mode for storing custom shooting presets and switching to them quickly while shooting, apart from the standard AUTO, P, M, B, X, Tv and Av modes. The battery life is excellent - and it also allows me to take one shot per second with the pop-up flash on. With the flash off, this camera can shoot over 5 shots per second. the shutter is amazingly quiet.
Special mention must be made of backward compatibility with old lenses. I have several old manual focus K-Mount lenses with aperture rings and all of them work perfectly with this camera. The autofocus system actually detects the focus as I am focusing these lenses manually and gives an indication as soon as it is perfect. The in-camera shake reduction ensures that I can use any old lens and get the same kind of picture for slow shutter speeds. There is even a "catch-in-focus" mode which can release the shutter automatically as soon as the focus is perfect. I bought the 18-55mm AF WR lens featured here and its performance is much better than the same focal length kit lens from Canon. I have used this camera with old 50mm f/1.4 prime, 40-80mm f/2.8-4.0 zoom, 100-300mm f/5.6-6.5 zoom lenses and a 2x teleconvertor and they gave me perfect results.
Sensor performance is better than the only other DSLR that I have ever used - i.e. Canon Rebel XSi. However, to be fair this camera is priced at double the Canon's price. The saturation and contrast are excellent, and the RAW images are fantastic. However, JPEGs are noisy at high ISOs, especially when compared to Nikon sensors (I have not used Nikon, I just saw sample shots on the Net). If you shoot RAW, your worries are less though. I do wish, however, that this camera had an ISO setting less than 100. I do not bother too much about noise as I am an amateur.
Autofocus is excellent in bright light. However, most online comparative studies suggest that Pentax's autofocus lags behind the competition's in low light shooting conditions. This refers to the autofocus speed and not the accuracy. I have hardly ever found an out-of-focus shot when using autofocus, but yes, it is sometimes slow in low light.
One of the reasons for my choosing this camera over the K20D was the HD video shooting capability. The video quality is really good, and I can use the large-aperture manual lenses to give my videos the shallow-DoF "movie-look." It even allows aperture changing during shooting and shake reduction in movies. It has a stereo jack for attaching an external microphone - another Pentax-only feature.
The only negative thing that I found out about this camera is it uses mandatory Dark-Frame-Subtraction (DFS) on all exposures over 30 seconds long. That means, if I take a one-minute exposure, the camera will shoot two one-minute exposures, the second one with shutter closed, to cancel out noise. While this does reduce noise, this also renders the camera unusable for an equal amount of time after long exposures. However, I have never shot this long an exposure yet, so thankfully I did not face this problem.
Overall, I will say this camera is the best value for money at its price range. Canon and Nikon cameras at this cost are far behind in all respects. And if you have an array of old Pentax lenses, then you should definitely go for this.
To see samples, visit my photoblog at [...]
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