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- Pentax K100D
- geofferiah's review
Picture courtesy of Zack G.
| Image Quality | 9.5/10  |
|---|---|
| Battery Life | 9.3/10 |
| Features | 8.5/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8.8/10 |
| Value for Money | 9.8/10 |
| Reviewer Rating | 9.3/10 |
| Overall Rating | 9.5/10  |
By geofferiah on 7th Jan 2008
| Time Digital Camera Owned | 1 - 4 Weeks |
|---|---|
| Image Quality | 10/10 |
| Battery Life | 10/10 |
| Features | 10/10 |
| Ease of Use | 10/10 |
| Value for money | 10/10 |
| Overall value | 10/10 |
 geofferiah's recommendation | |
Compact, solid, comfortable, intuitive, easy, in-body shake reduction works with ALL lenses, works with any K mount and even M42 screw mount lenses from the 60's (numerous and CHEAP!), true DOF preview, auto bracketing, AA / lithium power source I can go on..
None whatsoever. With all these features for this price you cannot possibly complain. If you want more features, pentaprism, faster fps etc. you can buy another cam for twice the price or a lot more.
I could hardly be happier with the K100D. It is an absolute steal and could easily be priced much higher.
For the casual snappers, just set it to auto and fire away. If you are coming from a compact, the results will astound you.
Do not fall for the megapixel sell as 6.1 is enough for a sharp A3 enlargement (or more). Unless you are printing larger than this you are just wasting memory card space with higher resolution. For this reason I believe 6.1 megapixels is something of a sweetspot for a DSLR.
If you are into your photography you will find the K100D a capable beast. The controls are well laid out and always at your fingertips. I came to the K100D from an EOS1000 and within a matter of a few shots was completely comfortable with the different layout of the controls. I actually much prefer the K100D's control layout to my old EOS. The handling is as good as you'll find in a camera of this class.
The viewfinder was one concern I had before buying this camera. Coming from film cameras to a DSLR with a mirror-based finder I was a little apprehensive, but this disappeared within moments of powering the thing on. It does a fine job and is perfectly comfortable. The one time I have trouble with it is when focusing a manual lens with very narrow DOF in low light. Not a common problem for most people.
Speaking of low light, with up to 3200 ISO sensitivity, in-body shake reduction and one of the 1000s of cheap fast primes available on the used market you can shoot without flash in areas not possible with other cameras.
Arguably, Pentax also gives you the best usability with the great history of manual lenses. The K mount dates from the 70's, and even the M42 screwmounts from before this work well. Both will function as aperture priority with focus confirmation. A friend with another brand of DSLR added a new lens to his kit for $800. I just added 5 good prime lenses to my kit for $80 and have taken sharp photos with every one. If you want to spend more, of course you can do that too - but then you're probably not looking at buying the K100D.
10 thumbs up from me.
| Helpful | Unhelpful | Agree | Disagree |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Total Respect: +1
Would you like to see a review that's not being listed?
justwally
on 1st Feb 2008