Pentax Life

Chasseur D’images, French photography magazine that is very popular in Europe, has tested two latest Pentax DSLRs and 20 (yep, twenty) lenses mounted on the Pentax K20D.

Lots of optics tested here: from FA* 27-70/2.8, FA*85/1.4 to all
Limiteds, DA*, the new DA17-70 SDM etc…

Most lenses are quite good and a couple numbers simply excellent !!

Talking about recent lenses:

• DA 17-70 SDM: it is good, vingettes a lot at 17 but it very nice upgrade over the kit lens. They say there’s no focus touch up (!! to be confirmed) but there’s indeed weather sealing. They do not say if it is SDM-only but I think so.
• DA*200/2.8: excellent !!
• DA*300/4: excellent !!
• DA35/2.8 macro: excellent !
• DA* 50-135 and DA* 16-50/2.8: centering defects but otherwise very good.

Great thanks to Thibouille for sharing such a good news.

For those who can’t read French or live outside of Europe there is DA 35mm f/2.8 Macro Limited review from the DigitalCameraReview:

In short, the new 35mm Limited is an amazing lens with fabulous edge-to-edge sharpness, amazingly close focus, great bokeh, and exceptional build quality common to the Limited series lenses. Once again, Pentax has delivered a fantastic professional-quality prime lens at a reasonable price.

Chinese Engadget (quite trustworthy resource) has reported the rumors that Chinese manufacturer Patriot Aigo in cooperation with Carl Zeiss planning to roll out first China DSLR with Leica-M mount. What’s most interesting is that Engadget has illustrated this rumor with something looking just like Pentax MZ-D 2001 6Mp full-frame DSLR prototype with Patriot Aigo logo on it:

Here is how the MZ-D looks like:

Yes, the first image is undoubtedly poorly photoshopped MZ-D. But it’s nice to see that its memory still lives in people’s hearts.

Hoya Pentax Imaging Systems Division and Microsoft Corporation have signed the cross-licencing deal today. The agreement covers digital cameras made by PENTAX as well as a broad range of other consumer products each company manufactures and sells. Ko Torigoe of Hoya Pentax said that “We believe that this contract will further solidify the alliance between the two companies. We also expect that it will bring considerable benefits to consumers in the near future, as we should be able to shorten the time required for product development because of technological advancement by both companies, and therefore deliver higher-quality products to the market.”

So what exact benefits to consumers Ko Torigoe is talking about? Ars Technica contributor Emil Protalinski has speculated about it:

Camera functionality for the Zune is entirely possible. The current Zunes can all store and display both pictures and videos and, while phone capabilities are unlikely, that does not mean that the Zune cannot pick up features that almost every mobile phone has nowadays: photo and video capture.

He could be right. It’s not the new business for Pentax, which is pretty known for its camera modules for mobile phones.

Have you ever wonder how Pentax DA Limited lenses working on the film SLR cameras? Boris Liberman has collected a bunch of photos made with three DA Limited lenses mounted on the 35mm film SLR.

Pentax DA 21mm Limited shows a strong vignetting at every apperture up to F/22 while DA 40mm Limited and DA 70mm Limited are quite good even wide open.

The new Pentax entry level DSLR K200D got a lot of attention last month. Most of the popular consumer electronics and photo equipment reviewers have put their curious hands on it. And most of them have been pretty excited.

CNET has rated Pentax K200D 7.7 out of 10 which is “Very Good” in their classification:

Pentax’s K200D entry-level SLR gives a lot of bang for the buck and has better performance than last year’s model. Despite low noise and pleasingly detailed images, technically inaccurate colors keep it from capturing the gold medal for image quality.

Read the rest of this entry »

DxO has updated Optics Pro v5 popular RAW manipulation software. Among the loads of Nikon lenses in the What’s New list there are Samsung GX-20 14.6 megapixel DSLR and some glass:

• Samsung GX20 Samsung 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 (and Tamron branded analogue too)
• Samsung GX20 Samsung D-XENON 12-24mm

AnandTech has tested Pentax K20D high ISO performance and resolution against Sony A350.

The K20D noise is well controlled through ISO 3200. Noise at ISO 6400 is comparable to the Sony A350 at ISO 3200

K20D is “traditionally” softer at the lower ISO settings but shows much cleaner images at ISO 1600 and 3200. Also, white balance could be set more accurately for better comparison.

UK’s one of the most trusted photo magazine Amateur Photographer has raised the curtain on Samsung’s plans to join Canon and Nikon on the full frame battleground.

Samsung has hinted at plans to develop a full-frame CMOS imaging sensor for use in a ‘professional’ standard digital SLR.

So far, however, the sensor has only reached the design stage and it is far from clear whether it will become a reality.

We also understand that, late last year, Samsung Electronics set up a secret team within its HQ in Suwon to begin research on a professional DSLR.

Of cause, we will not see any full frame professional K-mount DSLR neither from Samsung nor from Pentax until 2010 but the knowledge that Samsung is working on the full frame CMOS sensor sweetens the pill of the recent 645D news.

Pentax K10D + Pentax DA 35mm F2.8 macro Limited. 100% crop of this image (1.6Mb)

Weblog Insomnia have published a load of full rez samples of soon to be available Pentax DA 35mm F2.8 Limited macro lens mounted on the Pentax K10D. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Another two of the new lenses - DA 55-300 F4-5.8 ED and DA* 300mm F4 ED - were shipped to the Japanese stores yesterday. In the U.S. Amazon promises to start shipping the first one on May 31 for $349.

Akihabara News and Impress Watch have published the photo reports from the Pentax booth at the Photo Imaging Expo 2008 which was held in Tokyo Big Sight complex in Japan last weekend. The key products were, of cause, latest Pentax K20D and K200D DSLRs. Upcoming DA lenses (highly anticipated DA 17-70 F4, DA 60-250 F4 and DA 55 F4) were shown as well. Here you can find the Akihabara’s report in English (they’ve mostly focused on model rather than gear) and Impress Watch’ one in Japanese.