Pentax K100D Digital Camera
- Camera Type: SLR/Professional
- Weight: 1.24 lb.
- LCD Screen Size: 2.5 in.
- Resolution: 6.3 Megapixel
Available From
Why are these offers here?
Lowest Price!
- Overview
-
Reviews
- Compare Prices
User ReviewRead All Reviews »
Eat your heart out Canon & Nikon
Pros
Body-integral anti-shake, superior Pentax optics & build quality
Cons
No anti-dust feature for the sensor
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
If you want top image quality without spending $1k , this is the way to go.
I bought my Pentax K100D when I was ready to move up from my Olympus superzoom "prosumer" point & shoot camera.
I bought it to get into digital SLRs. I already have an outstanding Olympus OM system for film, and a nice little Canon Elph for a pocket size digital. I wanted top-quality optics, good durability, good backwards compatible lenses, and anti-shake.
Many people don't know this, but Pentax & Carl Zeiss worked together to develop this ultimate lens multi-coating. Zeiss' T* and Pentax SMC coatings are identical and lead the world in this technology. The Pentax lenses are all glass. I really liked that the anti-shake technology is integral to the BODY of the camera, not to each lens. This means I get to use anti-shake feature with my 25 year-old 50mm manual focus lens as well as my brand new telephoto zoom. While it is true that it doesn't work as well as the lens-integral image stabilization for long lenses, you can count on it "giving" you 2-3 stops of extra stability for low light shooting without a flash.
I have had this camera now for a couple years. I would classify myself as a serious amateur photographer. I've shot a few weddings & parties professionally with it, as well as the more typical family, vacation, and ebay photos. I have the kit lens, the 18-55 f/3.5-5.6, as well as the partner telephoto lens by Pentax, and an old Pentax 50mm f/2 manual focus lens. They are all very sharp & contrasty, and the hoods that are included with the two new Pentax autofocus zoom lenses are just the thing to get good shots outdoors without lens flare to rob me of contrast. I also bought the top-of-the-line Pentax bounce flash. This was about the best $400 I've ever spent. I thought about getting a wide angle zoom, but then I realized that I would get a lot more use out of the flash. Family photos indoors and product photos after daylight has expired are vastly improved with a bounce flash, especially such an intelligent one.
There are only two minor things about his camera that need to be pointed out:
a) There is no "sensor shaker" to keep dust off of it. It is easy enough to clean the sensor with compressed air or even a soft brush. but Olympus had the sensor shaker. (and no anti-shake)
b) On long exposures, I sometimes get green hot pixels. At first, I went crazy trying to clean the dust off the sensor. But I realized after returning the camera and getting identical results with a new one that it is a function of long time exposures, not dust. I felt pretty stupide when I figured that out. It was easy to fix with good software, but I shouldn't have to.
When shopping for this camea, I also considered Minolta, Sony, Nikon, and Canon. The Canons seem to be made for ladies' hands. Way too small for my average size man-hands. The zoom and manual focusing action on their entry level lenses is sloppy, and the "optical plastic" used does not give such good results as the glass optics of the Pentax kit lenses.
The Nikons are big enough to be comfortable, but they dumbed the controls down too much. Everything I wanted was buried in 10 menus. They also have "optical plastic" in their kit lenses. Gag.
Sony was a bit too expensive, and even if I sprung for the Sony body, I could never afford the Carl Zeiss optics to go with it.
Minolta had just gone out of business or been bought out again. I had lost all faith in them, or their high-end camera would have been top of my list.
Pentax has the best build quality of the Japanese Big Four. (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax) The zoom & focusing action is smooth. The lenses are all glass, and have the outstanding SMC coatings & top-quality hoods. The Pentax flashes are also top quality, and the cam device to lock it into the hot shoes is a stroke of genius. I never realized how bothersome multiple turns of a typical threaded flash mount was until I got this Pentax flash. If you buy this or another Pentax camera, DO spring for the Pentax brand optics & flash. They are really worth the few extra bucks over aftermarket ones.
Lens availability - While it is true Pentax's line of lenses isn't as extensive as Canon's or Nikon's, look at what you actually are likely to need and buy. For 99% of us, all the right lenses are there.
The battery situation on this camera is a mixed blessing. The reviewers at magazines harp on it for not having a dedicated lithium ion rechargable pack. I admit that this is sometimes a disadvantage. There are good options though. When I am on vacation, the AA battery format is really a blessing. I bring my fully-charged NiMH AA batteries with. I use them up as main batteries. If for some reason I can't charge them (due to foreign voltage sources and no adapter) I can switch to alkaline or lithium AAs in the blink of an eye. There are now other battery chemistries between alkaline & lithium, but they are not cost-effective compared to lithium. My strategy on a recent 3-week trip to Europe was to bring two sets of NiMH AAs (NOT Energizer) a set of lithium AAs, and a set of alkalines. If it got too cold or I ran out of juice on the other batteries, I'd go to the expensive lithiums. As it turned out, I never needed to even go to alkaline. It is very nice to have options. Around home, a lithium-ion rechargable pack would be more convenient. They last a long time, charge quickly, and don't lose their charge quickly just sitting in the bag, like NiMH batts do.
A few times, I wondered if I shouldn't have sprung for the K10D. When I'm walking around and it starts drizzling, it is a shame to have to put the camera away. I don't beat the hell out of my cameras, so the metallic body panels were not missed. The extra resolution is not missed; 6 MP is plenty unless you plan on making huge enlargements. One other super-nice thing on the K10D is the larger viewfinder magnification and glass pentaprism. The view on this one is a bit smaller & more "squinty."
The built-in flash, I only used a couple times. One of the main reasons I bought this camera was so that I wouldn't have to use flash. Direct flash washes out the depth, ruins colors... It is only good for snapshots and for triggering a proper remote flash. Instead, I set the ISO to 800 or 1600, zoom back as far as I can, switch on the anti-shake and do my best to hold still. More often than not, I do better this way than with flash.
The diopter correction on the viewfinder would probably be great for glasses-wearers. I'm 20/20 myself, by my grandpa loves it.
Another great feature about this camera is the depth-of-field preview. It is on the power switch, right next to the shutter release. It does darken the view, just like the old-fashioned mechanical DoF previews. There is also the option of programming that to be an electronic preview. This part is useless; may as well just take a picture and look at the REAL preview.
If you have older Pentax SLR lenses, even manual focus ones, they can be used with this camera. my 50mm f/2 is a manual focus "A" lens. "A" means I can set it there and have fully automatic exposure control, only having to focus manually. Those lenses are amazingly sharp, though there are no optical focusing aids, so if you plan to use the old lenses, you'd better have good lighting or good vision. The digital "beep-beep" focusing aid still works, if you trust it.
Modes - As you'd expect, you can set this to the green idiot mode and give this to your wife/husband. Better than that, you can set it to any of several preferential idiot modes for portraiture, action, close-up, landscape, night scene, or no-flash. This gives enough manual control to really be useful, but without requiring knowledge of what apertures and shutter speeds do.
Like all digital SLRs, this doesn't focus well in low light. If you're using flash, the integral flash strobes a bit to help it get enough light to focus. This is not always acceptable. The aforementioned Pentax bounce flash has an infrared focusing beam that projects red vertical lines so the camera can focus in low light without blinding everyone and spoiling the mood.
The camera has two sets of menus. Don't worry, it isn't as bad as it sounds. One is the "Fn" menu. Here are the most common settings, to include white balance, ISO/sensitivity, drive mode, and flash mode. Personally, I would trade the flash mode for resolution. The other menu is the typical nested one, and has everything else. There is a nice thumb wheel for the manual settings, if you go to semi-automatic modes like aperture-priority, shutter-priority, or manual exposure. The auto exposure lock button is also handy and customizable.
UPDATE Dec. 15, 2009 - The camera still works as well as new. Everything is perfect, and I am so happy with my kit lenses after seeing the Nikon kit lenses that my grandpa got. Pentax kit lenses are pro caliber; they didn't cut corners like Canon and Nikon. Anti-shake is still brilliant, and there haven't been any problems with dust on the sensor either. What I once thought was dust was digital noise from shooting at ISO 3200 with anti-shake on. This is easily fixed in software. This model is obsolete now, as the new ones have an anti-dust shaking feature, so you should be picking these up as great used deals.
I bought it to get into digital SLRs. I already have an outstanding Olympus OM system for film, and a nice little Canon Elph for a pocket size digital. I wanted top-quality optics, good durability, good backwards compatible lenses, and anti-shake.
Many people don't know this, but Pentax & Carl Zeiss worked together to develop this ultimate lens multi-coating. Zeiss' T* and Pentax SMC coatings are identical and lead the world in this technology. The Pentax lenses are all glass. I really liked that the anti-shake technology is integral to the BODY of the camera, not to each lens. This means I get to use anti-shake feature with my 25 year-old 50mm manual focus lens as well as my brand new telephoto zoom. While it is true that it doesn't work as well as the lens-integral image stabilization for long lenses, you can count on it "giving" you 2-3 stops of extra stability for low light shooting without a flash.
I have had this camera now for a couple years. I would classify myself as a serious amateur photographer. I've shot a few weddings & parties professionally with it, as well as the more typical family, vacation, and ebay photos. I have the kit lens, the 18-55 f/3.5-5.6, as well as the partner telephoto lens by Pentax, and an old Pentax 50mm f/2 manual focus lens. They are all very sharp & contrasty, and the hoods that are included with the two new Pentax autofocus zoom lenses are just the thing to get good shots outdoors without lens flare to rob me of contrast. I also bought the top-of-the-line Pentax bounce flash. This was about the best $400 I've ever spent. I thought about getting a wide angle zoom, but then I realized that I would get a lot more use out of the flash. Family photos indoors and product photos after daylight has expired are vastly improved with a bounce flash, especially such an intelligent one.
There are only two minor things about his camera that need to be pointed out:
a) There is no "sensor shaker" to keep dust off of it. It is easy enough to clean the sensor with compressed air or even a soft brush. but Olympus had the sensor shaker. (and no anti-shake)
b) On long exposures, I sometimes get green hot pixels. At first, I went crazy trying to clean the dust off the sensor. But I realized after returning the camera and getting identical results with a new one that it is a function of long time exposures, not dust. I felt pretty stupide when I figured that out. It was easy to fix with good software, but I shouldn't have to.
When shopping for this camea, I also considered Minolta, Sony, Nikon, and Canon. The Canons seem to be made for ladies' hands. Way too small for my average size man-hands. The zoom and manual focusing action on their entry level lenses is sloppy, and the "optical plastic" used does not give such good results as the glass optics of the Pentax kit lenses.
The Nikons are big enough to be comfortable, but they dumbed the controls down too much. Everything I wanted was buried in 10 menus. They also have "optical plastic" in their kit lenses. Gag.
Sony was a bit too expensive, and even if I sprung for the Sony body, I could never afford the Carl Zeiss optics to go with it.
Minolta had just gone out of business or been bought out again. I had lost all faith in them, or their high-end camera would have been top of my list.
Pentax has the best build quality of the Japanese Big Four. (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax) The zoom & focusing action is smooth. The lenses are all glass, and have the outstanding SMC coatings & top-quality hoods. The Pentax flashes are also top quality, and the cam device to lock it into the hot shoes is a stroke of genius. I never realized how bothersome multiple turns of a typical threaded flash mount was until I got this Pentax flash. If you buy this or another Pentax camera, DO spring for the Pentax brand optics & flash. They are really worth the few extra bucks over aftermarket ones.
Lens availability - While it is true Pentax's line of lenses isn't as extensive as Canon's or Nikon's, look at what you actually are likely to need and buy. For 99% of us, all the right lenses are there.
The battery situation on this camera is a mixed blessing. The reviewers at magazines harp on it for not having a dedicated lithium ion rechargable pack. I admit that this is sometimes a disadvantage. There are good options though. When I am on vacation, the AA battery format is really a blessing. I bring my fully-charged NiMH AA batteries with. I use them up as main batteries. If for some reason I can't charge them (due to foreign voltage sources and no adapter) I can switch to alkaline or lithium AAs in the blink of an eye. There are now other battery chemistries between alkaline & lithium, but they are not cost-effective compared to lithium. My strategy on a recent 3-week trip to Europe was to bring two sets of NiMH AAs (NOT Energizer) a set of lithium AAs, and a set of alkalines. If it got too cold or I ran out of juice on the other batteries, I'd go to the expensive lithiums. As it turned out, I never needed to even go to alkaline. It is very nice to have options. Around home, a lithium-ion rechargable pack would be more convenient. They last a long time, charge quickly, and don't lose their charge quickly just sitting in the bag, like NiMH batts do.
A few times, I wondered if I shouldn't have sprung for the K10D. When I'm walking around and it starts drizzling, it is a shame to have to put the camera away. I don't beat the hell out of my cameras, so the metallic body panels were not missed. The extra resolution is not missed; 6 MP is plenty unless you plan on making huge enlargements. One other super-nice thing on the K10D is the larger viewfinder magnification and glass pentaprism. The view on this one is a bit smaller & more "squinty."
The built-in flash, I only used a couple times. One of the main reasons I bought this camera was so that I wouldn't have to use flash. Direct flash washes out the depth, ruins colors... It is only good for snapshots and for triggering a proper remote flash. Instead, I set the ISO to 800 or 1600, zoom back as far as I can, switch on the anti-shake and do my best to hold still. More often than not, I do better this way than with flash.
The diopter correction on the viewfinder would probably be great for glasses-wearers. I'm 20/20 myself, by my grandpa loves it.
Another great feature about this camera is the depth-of-field preview. It is on the power switch, right next to the shutter release. It does darken the view, just like the old-fashioned mechanical DoF previews. There is also the option of programming that to be an electronic preview. This part is useless; may as well just take a picture and look at the REAL preview.
If you have older Pentax SLR lenses, even manual focus ones, they can be used with this camera. my 50mm f/2 is a manual focus "A" lens. "A" means I can set it there and have fully automatic exposure control, only having to focus manually. Those lenses are amazingly sharp, though there are no optical focusing aids, so if you plan to use the old lenses, you'd better have good lighting or good vision. The digital "beep-beep" focusing aid still works, if you trust it.
Modes - As you'd expect, you can set this to the green idiot mode and give this to your wife/husband. Better than that, you can set it to any of several preferential idiot modes for portraiture, action, close-up, landscape, night scene, or no-flash. This gives enough manual control to really be useful, but without requiring knowledge of what apertures and shutter speeds do.
Like all digital SLRs, this doesn't focus well in low light. If you're using flash, the integral flash strobes a bit to help it get enough light to focus. This is not always acceptable. The aforementioned Pentax bounce flash has an infrared focusing beam that projects red vertical lines so the camera can focus in low light without blinding everyone and spoiling the mood.
The camera has two sets of menus. Don't worry, it isn't as bad as it sounds. One is the "Fn" menu. Here are the most common settings, to include white balance, ISO/sensitivity, drive mode, and flash mode. Personally, I would trade the flash mode for resolution. The other menu is the typical nested one, and has everything else. There is a nice thumb wheel for the manual settings, if you go to semi-automatic modes like aperture-priority, shutter-priority, or manual exposure. The auto exposure lock button is also handy and customizable.
UPDATE Dec. 15, 2009 - The camera still works as well as new. Everything is perfect, and I am so happy with my kit lenses after seeing the Nikon kit lenses that my grandpa got. Pentax kit lenses are pro caliber; they didn't cut corners like Canon and Nikon. Anti-shake is still brilliant, and there haven't been any problems with dust on the sensor either. What I once thought was dust was digital noise from shooting at ISO 3200 with anti-shake on. This is easily fixed in software. This model is obsolete now, as the new ones have an anti-dust shaking feature, so you should be picking these up as great used deals.
See Related Products
Recently Viewed
Most Popular In Digital Cameras
