Pentax K10D� a year later

About this Review

Since I don�t think that the world
needs yet another K10D review or that I can (nor want to) compete with the cohorts
of highly talented and meticulous professional reviewers, I decided to focus on
what makes the K10D unique and innovative and not waste your time going after the
minute details of each and every options.
All my comments
about Image Quality are based on

Stormy Skies

Between Washington and Somerville, Texas. Stormy skies and rain showers but it was a nice day, overall. And I am glad that the Pentax K10D is weatherproof.

Cows Limited

K10D with FA 77mm Limited and DA 21mm Limited. There lenses are fantastic!

Testing K10D and K100D Shake Reduction

Quick and dirty test to evaluate how SR performs with the K10D and K100D. Lots of people are asking me about SR performance and I wanted to provide a bit more than just my suggestive evaluation.
I used the Pentax DA 50-200mm for this test. For reference, I also added 3 shots from Nikon D200 with Nikkor AF-D 80-200mm f/2.8 (obviously, no SR).

All shots were hand held (duh!) and taken at 200mm ISO

K10D + jpeg + FA 50mm f/1.4 wide open = ...

I never shoot jpeg, but I was curious to see how "bad" the jpeg mode was with the K10D. (I am being sarcastic, K10D jpeg is great).

To make things worse, I used the FA 50mm f/1.4 wide open.

You tell me ;-)

K10D 1/250 f/1.4 ISO 100 - FA 50mm f/1.4

Full image:


1:1 Crop (center)


1:1 Crop (edge)

K10D and SR: it's insane!

Couldn't believe my eyes: 1.3 seconds hand held! And yes, I do drink coffee ;-)

Full image



1:1 Crop

K100D at Rocky Mountain National Park

Few pictures from today at Rocky Mountain National Park. The hike starts off at Bear Lake to ends up at Emerald Lake. Very short and easy one.



Elevation is between 9,000 and 10,000 feet and temperature was in the high 40s at Emerald lake. Not extreme at all, but I though it was worth mentioning it.





K100D shows a tremendous amount of details in the shadows. Not so great in the highlights:

Pentax K100D at ISO 1600

I am having lots of fun with K100D, SR and Kit Lens. AF performed
flawlessly in this very challenging lighting. Noise is almost non
existent. Also, metering nailed it all the time.



OK, quite silly and boring subjects, but I can't help myself taking
pictures with this wonderful and exiting little camera ;-)




All pics at ISO 1600 with shutter speed between 1/2s to 1/8s.
Handheld, obviously.

Pentax K100D Second Day

Second day with the K100D and a lot of fun with this cute little camera ;-)

I went to Pawnee Buttes, CO for a quick hike. Size and weight of the camera with kit lens is a blessing when hiking.




The Weather was fantastic (as usual) and the sky deep blue... which produces horrible noise when the raw image (converted with Pentax Photo Laboratory to DNG) is processed with Adobe ACR with the

Pentax K100D First Impressions

Just received my K100D kit yesterday.
First impressions are very positive. I love the size of the camera, the effectiveness of the SR feature, and the overall build quality.

AF is way better that what I was expecting after reading all these posts about slow and hunting AF. It seems to be reasonably fast and very accurate. I didn't have any issue focusing with low light and/or low contrast