Kyle Nagel
New member
In another thread I posted some of my first impressions of Pentax's newest DSLR, that post was made after less than a days experience with the camera, since then I have had an opportunity to spend more time with the camera and images, as well as reading some other forums and reviews.
I wanted to follow up within a couple of days of my first post, but things posted on other forums, as well as my own observations caused me to hold off until now. I knew I would be speaking with the Pentax Rep on December 1st, and I decided to wait until I spoke with him to inquire about some of my observations, I'm glad I did as he was able to explain a couple of things that at first glance seemed a little confusing.
Below is a link to my first post regarding this camera:
http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14635&postcount=10
Well in keeping with my last promise in the above post I will explain a little about the in camera RAW converter. This is rather slick, basically if you shoot RAW and want to quickly get a JPEG for what ever reason, you can bring up the image and actually scroll through the various settings (Sensitivity, saturation, contrast, various White Balances with the ability to adjust and fine tune the White Balance, brightness, compression, and recorded pixels) and you can see the effect of the changes on the image in real-time, then you convert, and Viola! you have a JPEG.
Now for a few other observations:
Image Quality. (I'm hoping to eventually post some samples within the next month)
Despite what I have heard and seen posted on other forums I cannot produce the banding a few have mentioned seeing. Some of the "me to" posts on the other forums were actually various incarnations of posterization, or moire effects, and some were hard to determine the cause of, but without working with the image myself it is hard to say what the cause is. I have only seen images by maybe two posters that appear to be actual banding problems, and because I cannot reproduce the same effect with my camera, I have come to the conclusion that it is a problem with either only a very small number of the bodies, or it is caused by something other than the camera. The banding issue was one area I spoke to the Pentax Rep about and I was told that they have heard nothing about this from early recipients of the camera, and the quality control on this camera is higher than any other camera they have released to date, which is one of the causes of the slower than anticipated roll-out. He did say he would pass on the information.
As expected the noise is obviously higher than their 6mp cameras, from 400 to 800 ISO I still prefer my old *istD 6mp, at 100 ISO it has about the same noise that I saw at 200 ISO on my *istD, which did not have a setting below 200 ISO, so at 100 ISO it has the advantage of the additional resolution from the 10mp sensor. I generally do not like shooting above 800 ISO, and try to stay at 400 or lower, so I have not tried shooting anything at 1600 yet.
Ergonomics. The camera is fairly comfortable to hold, and the addition of a lip to the left side of the body makes it even more comfortable to hold when using two hands. The button layout and placement seems OK, but the menu actions seem counter intuitive, you use the left and right directional buttons to "check" or "un-check" a box, and the center "OK" button to move back to the main menu, I've got confused more than once. But this is something that once you become familiar with will probably get easier. I have accidentally moved the "mode" dial on my *istD several times while putting it in and out of my bag, or bumped it with my left hand causing it to move off of my preferential setting, the K10D suffers from the same problem. Pentax has a locking center button on their 645nII that needs to be pushed in order to move the dial, this needs to be incorporated into the DSLRs as well, especially since the dial is so close to the edge of the body, and turns very easily, harder clicks or a stiffer dial may also fix the problem.
Flash Issues. This was my biggest problem with the camera, for two reasons, first was the fact that it was not compatible with the TTL flashes, only the much newer P-TTL flashes (of which there are only 2), I have several TTL flashes, 2 are were expensive models, including the AF 140C macro ring-flash, which is over $500, evidently I can no longer use this flash on the K10D, I was very concerned about their choice to do this, especially since my experimentation with my TTL flashes created unusable images, even in manual mode, this confused me since it should work in manual flash mode, but the communication with the camera seemed to cause the TTL flashes to fire a full power burst, regardless of the camera and flash settings, I had a hard time understanding their choice here since my older *istD could do both TTL and P-TTL. The Pentax Rep explained this was due to the sensor coating that has a reflectivity problem that throws off the flash metering during exposure. Since this was unavoidable due to technical reasons I will consider myself lucky that I had recently picked up their newest flash, those with older units will have to buy a new flash, and there is no macro flash currently available for the camera. For those interested only the AF 540FGZ, and the AF 360FGZ, will work on this camera, so add about $220-$300 to the cost of the body if you don't own one of these flashes and want to do flash photography.
My second issue with the flash was there is no built in wireless mode, with my old *istD I could do wireless P-TTL flash photography with only one flash unit, however the K10D requires two, count them two of their newer flash units to do wireless flash photography, one on the camera to act as the master, and then the off camera unit. The Rep told me this question has come up before and was posed to those that did the development, and they had no reason for not including this feature, other than that they had just chosen not to. So not only do you need to buy one new flash, but TWO new flashes to do off camera flash photography. This is my biggest issue with the K10D.
Focusing. The focus is considerably faster than their other bodies, especially on larger lenses, I assume there is a better focusing motor in the body, it seems to move the larger lenses faster and more easily than my *istD. Nikon still takes the biscuit when it comes to fast focusing, but this one is a lot better than other Pentax bodies, and Pentax is coming out with some new SSM lenses next year that will be even faster.
In Summary. Over all I am very happy with the camera, the image quality seems on par with other 10mp DSLRs, but has some nice advantages over a lot of them, the in-camera shake reduction(SR) is one, and since the SR is on the sensor it can do rotational movement reduction, something that cannot be done with in-lens SR, it can only be done by moving the sensor, and you also don't need special lenses, it works on all of them. The weather and dust resistant feature is nice on a camera in this price range also. The dust removal/sensor cleaning system can be set to go off each time you turn on the camera, or you can manually do it when ever you want.
The K10D is a very competitive offering from Pentax, for the price and features it will be hard to beat, pick up a couple of the Limited Edition lenses and you'll be off and running with a top notch system. My only big issue is with the lack of built in wireless flash, especially since you can only use their two newest flashes in the first place, and now you'll have to buy two in order to do wireless flash photography.
Kyle
I wanted to follow up within a couple of days of my first post, but things posted on other forums, as well as my own observations caused me to hold off until now. I knew I would be speaking with the Pentax Rep on December 1st, and I decided to wait until I spoke with him to inquire about some of my observations, I'm glad I did as he was able to explain a couple of things that at first glance seemed a little confusing.
Below is a link to my first post regarding this camera:
http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14635&postcount=10
Well in keeping with my last promise in the above post I will explain a little about the in camera RAW converter. This is rather slick, basically if you shoot RAW and want to quickly get a JPEG for what ever reason, you can bring up the image and actually scroll through the various settings (Sensitivity, saturation, contrast, various White Balances with the ability to adjust and fine tune the White Balance, brightness, compression, and recorded pixels) and you can see the effect of the changes on the image in real-time, then you convert, and Viola! you have a JPEG.
Now for a few other observations:
Image Quality. (I'm hoping to eventually post some samples within the next month)
Despite what I have heard and seen posted on other forums I cannot produce the banding a few have mentioned seeing. Some of the "me to" posts on the other forums were actually various incarnations of posterization, or moire effects, and some were hard to determine the cause of, but without working with the image myself it is hard to say what the cause is. I have only seen images by maybe two posters that appear to be actual banding problems, and because I cannot reproduce the same effect with my camera, I have come to the conclusion that it is a problem with either only a very small number of the bodies, or it is caused by something other than the camera. The banding issue was one area I spoke to the Pentax Rep about and I was told that they have heard nothing about this from early recipients of the camera, and the quality control on this camera is higher than any other camera they have released to date, which is one of the causes of the slower than anticipated roll-out. He did say he would pass on the information.
As expected the noise is obviously higher than their 6mp cameras, from 400 to 800 ISO I still prefer my old *istD 6mp, at 100 ISO it has about the same noise that I saw at 200 ISO on my *istD, which did not have a setting below 200 ISO, so at 100 ISO it has the advantage of the additional resolution from the 10mp sensor. I generally do not like shooting above 800 ISO, and try to stay at 400 or lower, so I have not tried shooting anything at 1600 yet.
Ergonomics. The camera is fairly comfortable to hold, and the addition of a lip to the left side of the body makes it even more comfortable to hold when using two hands. The button layout and placement seems OK, but the menu actions seem counter intuitive, you use the left and right directional buttons to "check" or "un-check" a box, and the center "OK" button to move back to the main menu, I've got confused more than once. But this is something that once you become familiar with will probably get easier. I have accidentally moved the "mode" dial on my *istD several times while putting it in and out of my bag, or bumped it with my left hand causing it to move off of my preferential setting, the K10D suffers from the same problem. Pentax has a locking center button on their 645nII that needs to be pushed in order to move the dial, this needs to be incorporated into the DSLRs as well, especially since the dial is so close to the edge of the body, and turns very easily, harder clicks or a stiffer dial may also fix the problem.
Flash Issues. This was my biggest problem with the camera, for two reasons, first was the fact that it was not compatible with the TTL flashes, only the much newer P-TTL flashes (of which there are only 2), I have several TTL flashes, 2 are were expensive models, including the AF 140C macro ring-flash, which is over $500, evidently I can no longer use this flash on the K10D, I was very concerned about their choice to do this, especially since my experimentation with my TTL flashes created unusable images, even in manual mode, this confused me since it should work in manual flash mode, but the communication with the camera seemed to cause the TTL flashes to fire a full power burst, regardless of the camera and flash settings, I had a hard time understanding their choice here since my older *istD could do both TTL and P-TTL. The Pentax Rep explained this was due to the sensor coating that has a reflectivity problem that throws off the flash metering during exposure. Since this was unavoidable due to technical reasons I will consider myself lucky that I had recently picked up their newest flash, those with older units will have to buy a new flash, and there is no macro flash currently available for the camera. For those interested only the AF 540FGZ, and the AF 360FGZ, will work on this camera, so add about $220-$300 to the cost of the body if you don't own one of these flashes and want to do flash photography.
My second issue with the flash was there is no built in wireless mode, with my old *istD I could do wireless P-TTL flash photography with only one flash unit, however the K10D requires two, count them two of their newer flash units to do wireless flash photography, one on the camera to act as the master, and then the off camera unit. The Rep told me this question has come up before and was posed to those that did the development, and they had no reason for not including this feature, other than that they had just chosen not to. So not only do you need to buy one new flash, but TWO new flashes to do off camera flash photography. This is my biggest issue with the K10D.
Focusing. The focus is considerably faster than their other bodies, especially on larger lenses, I assume there is a better focusing motor in the body, it seems to move the larger lenses faster and more easily than my *istD. Nikon still takes the biscuit when it comes to fast focusing, but this one is a lot better than other Pentax bodies, and Pentax is coming out with some new SSM lenses next year that will be even faster.
In Summary. Over all I am very happy with the camera, the image quality seems on par with other 10mp DSLRs, but has some nice advantages over a lot of them, the in-camera shake reduction(SR) is one, and since the SR is on the sensor it can do rotational movement reduction, something that cannot be done with in-lens SR, it can only be done by moving the sensor, and you also don't need special lenses, it works on all of them. The weather and dust resistant feature is nice on a camera in this price range also. The dust removal/sensor cleaning system can be set to go off each time you turn on the camera, or you can manually do it when ever you want.
The K10D is a very competitive offering from Pentax, for the price and features it will be hard to beat, pick up a couple of the Limited Edition lenses and you'll be off and running with a top notch system. My only big issue is with the lack of built in wireless flash, especially since you can only use their two newest flashes in the first place, and now you'll have to buy two in order to do wireless flash photography.
Kyle
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