Pentax Life

Last week was reach in different Optios reviews. DigitalCameraReview.com have tested A30 and E30. The first one was praised because of its color reproduction and overall image quality, shake reduction and manual controls in an easily portable compact body. And the second one is named a great choice for first time camera buyers.

Tech Digest take a look on T30: “The T30 is a great point and shoot camera that’s easy to use and creates great pictures. It’s reasonably priced at £189.99 for a 7.1 megapixel camera and it’s small enough to carry with you most places you go. The touch sensitive screen is very simple to operate, although it is prone to greasy marks after a little use.“

Steve reviewed M30 (he called it average) and the Pentax’s most popular point & shoot - waterproofed W30: “the Pentax Optio W30 is yet another “Cool” underwater model. It can produce nice photos along with good shooting performance, loads of exposure modes, and lets not forget the added versatility of being able to take pictures underwater! At about $US250 or less, I feel the Optio W30 offers a great value for a camera in this category, and is sure to be a very popular digicam this year.“

Photozone.de contributor Klaus Schroiff has tested five Pentax DA and FA lenses. DA 40mm Limited, FA 43mm Limited, FA 50mm F/1.4, DA 16-45mm F/4 and DA 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6 are thoroughly reviewed including distortion, vignetting, resolution and chromatic aberrations charts as well as full size samples made with K10D. Another five primes and a couple of zooms are listed as “coming soon”. Thanks to Pavel Stanek for the link.

Camera Labs put their hands on DA 40mm and DA 70mm pancake limiteds. DA 40mm got the 81% score (recommended) and DA 70mm - 84% (highly recommended).

The Imaging Resource have posted Pentax K10D user report by Shawn Barnett. He named K10D the unique camera tuned for advanced photographer. Also he discovered an interesting thing with it - the phantom pixels phenomenon.

Camera Labs have tested K10D and compared it to Nikon D80, D200, Canon 30D and Sony A100. “…in our view, the D80 simply out-performed the K10D in day-to-day use.” Canon 30D found to be better than K10D becouse of “magnesium alloy body, 5fps continuous shooting, superior metering and again more consumer-friendly output using the default settings.” Even Sony outperformed K10D in their review: “In practice we found the Sony A100’s Super SteadyShot provided slightly more effective than the K10D’s Shake Reduction.“

DigitalCameraReview have published Optio W30 - latest Pentax waterproof point & shoot - user report. Japanese review of Pentax Optio A30 appeared in Impress Watch. And another new Optio - M30 - have been tested by TrustedReviews.

Ned Bunnell has posted a dozen of pre-production Pentax DA* 50-135 F2.8 sample photos shot with K10D in RAW. All pics have exceptional sharpness and color fidelity. Bokeh is not so “artistic” as with some Limiteds but very correct, smooth.

Pentax K10D rated “Excellent” (81%) by LetsGoDigital. Camera praised for its all-weather sealing, built-in shake reduction and best on the market value for money. The only complain is not about soft JPEGs but:

I thought that several buttons had not been placed logically and some settings could not be found and operated intuitively. It’s probably a question of getting used to, but it’s still an important point. Maybe Pentax should take a sly look at competitors who are bringing out more ergonomic cameras.

Another K10D review (rather short but with the couple of nice samples) provided by Howard Creech at DigitalCameraReview.com. “The K10D was clearly designed by photographers, for photographers.“

The same person has reviewed Pentax DA 70mm f2.4 Limited pancake-style prime lens. Howard is very impressed by this lens: “this is one of the nicest prime lenses I’ve ever used.” By his words 70mm limited is the perfect fit for candid street photography and travel.

Japanese blog Digital1gan takes a closer look on FA 50mm F1.4 normal prime from the film era. One post is about the lens itself and the other full of real life samples.

Impress Watch has rolled out one more Pentax K10D review, in Japanese (auto translated). Now with more thoughts on image quality settings, white balance and ergonomics, with even more full resolution samples, and side by side comparison of the four major 10 Mpix competitors: Pentax K10D, Nikon D80, Sony A100 and Canon 400D.

Images by Impress Watch (Copyright (c) 2006 Impress Watch Corporation and an Impress Group company) were used to build this chart.

K10D shows significantly more details, especially in comparison with Sony’s first DSLR. Of cause, Pentax DA 16-45mm F4 lens is better than Nikon, Canon and Sony lenses used in this “test”, but it also have a big minus - chromatic aberrations visible in the first row. It seems, DA 16-45mm produce amount of CA (or purple fringing) that was hardly visible at 6 Mpix shots but too bad for K10D’s higher resolution. On the other shots made with Limited lenses in similar conditions or in the night shots there are no remarkable CA at all.

Impress Watch have posted a brief review of the Pentax Optio A20 point & shoot digital camera (auto translated). There are a dozen of real life samples including ISO from 64 to 1600 performance test. Low ISO shots shows pretty much details for the tiny densely packed with 10 million pixels digicam’s sensor.

Pentax K10D digital SLR cameras are becoming more and more commonly used. PBase camera statistics counted 7 users and 23 images by now. Japanese website Impress Watch have published full resolution K10D sample photos made with different ISO sensitivity settings in the “First shot” column (auto translated). The most interesting are three pictures of the hotel row in twilight at ISO 400, 800 and 1600.

PentaxForums user volosong noted that “Other than the weight, it is very ergonomic and easy to hold. Very much like the Ds. The K100D has a weird sharp edge on the front of the battery grip that is somewhat uncomfortable (compared to the previous Ds). They dumped that ’sharp’ ridge on the K10D, and the grip is more like the Ds.“

DPreview forums user Derek L posted some great lions shots from the San Diego zoo. He said: “The improvement in dynamic range was very noticeable, even though I shot in jpg, highlights I was sure to be blown weren’t blinking on the lcd.” Another DPreview user Djedi posted three night shoots made with K10D + Sigma 17-70mm at ISO 100, 200 and 1100. And .Sam. enjoyed by the K10D’s dynamic range on the very high contrast image taken under bright sunlight.

One more bunch of full size samples could be found at the AllAbout website (text in Japanese). IT media +D LifeStyle have a thorough review of the Pentax K10D in Japanese along with the load of full sized samples (check the last two pages) made with almost all DA series lenses.

Sirfishalot taken a couple ISO1600 shots on a cloudy day. Check his K10D gallery at PBase for full resolution JPEGs.

German version of CHIP Online have published the K10D review - looks like the first in Europe. But no samples inside. (Thanks to Peter for the link)

First Pentax K10D digital cameras hit the shelves last Saturday. The first luckies in the US were able to buy their K10Ds at the San Diego Photo Expo. Internet started to fill up with the real life samples and user reviews from now.

Ned Bunnell was among of the first owners (did anybody doubt it). You can read his impressions over the first shots at his blog post “A few K10D snapshots“: “I shot in AV mode at f/8.0 and let the camera meter without any EV adustments on my part. Histograms were nicely distributed and there’s good detail in the shadow areas. The surfing shot is interesting especially if you look at the rays of light falling across the shoulder of the surfer, and then the shadows around the board. The shot of my wife in her Peets hat was in direct and extremely bright sun…consequently her shirt is pretty blown out, but the detail in the hat and hair is pretty nice.“

This photo album by William L. Leven (thanks to javi for the link) demonstrates K10D’s ISO 1600 performance. A dozen indoors full size samples made with the kit lens (DA 18-55) shows great high ISo performance.

A downsized K10D images from LaRee can be found in this gallery. Kit lens and DA 50-200.

More user’s opinions and real life shots coming soon. Stay tuned and share your links.

Two more K10D sample shots can be downloaded now from the Pentax Japan website. The one sample made with ISO 800 sensitivity settings and the other with ISO 1600.

100% crops of Pentax K10D official high ISO samples: ISO 800 (left) and ISO 1600 (right)
Both images copyright © 2006 Pentax Corporation

K10D images looks noisier than those made with its 6 Megapixels predecessors but contains significantly more details. Colors remains as vibrant as at the lower sensitivity shots also.