Photography News - The latest digital photography hardware and software news, reviews, articles, tips, techniques and more!

It may be the cheapest DSLR on the market, but the Pentax K100D isn’t short of advanced features, performance or image quality, and can comfortably hold its own against the Nikon D40. Build quality, design and handling are all superb, and the Shake Reduction system is as good as any on the market. If you’re looking for a good entry-level DSLR with the option to build up a kit, then look no further.

The K10D’s advantages over the competition are fairly clear; dust and weather seals, in-camera Shake Reduction which delivers at least some low light advantage with all your lenses, selectable RAW file format (although both are 10MB+), user definable Auto ISO, digital preview and those unique sensitivity-priority and shutter/aperture-priority exposure modes. It’s a camera which should provide more than sufficient ‘gadget satisfaction’ for even the most demanding shutterbug.

Pentax are back! With the possible exception of frame rate, made up for in part with the Shake-reduction and dual RAW capability, this camera is up there with Nikon’s D200 and Canon’s 30D. Packed with features that have been well thought out and are easily accessible in a body that has been built to withstand the pressures of hard use in typically English climates it has a lot going for it. If their lens line-up takes a similar leap in the next twelve months, Pentax will be back toe-to-toe with the big boys. This is a serious advanced amateur or semi-pro camera.

Not only has Pentax improved in-camera image processing but they appear to have overtaken some of the competition, the amount of detail delivered is about as much as we could expect to see from a six megapixel CCD. On top of this they’ve also taken the sensible compromise of using a minimal amount of noise reduction and not turning down sharpening at higher sensitivities which means you get almost as much detail at ISO 1600 as you would at ISO 200. This combination means that assuming the ‘input image’ is sharp (good lens and/or stopped down slightly) you’re going to get a great detailed image

A new race has begun in the digital camera marketplace. Manufacturers are now rushing to include elaborate systems that promise to reduce the effect of camera shake to their latest models. This doesn’t mean the long established quest for more pixels is over. The megapixel race is still very much alive, with higher resolution models pushing the 10 million pixel barrier. In this review Gary Wolstenholme takes a look at whether the Pentax Optio A20 will reign victorious in either of these competitions…

Although Pentax started with digital SLR cameras relatively late, the brand now frequently introduces new models. The Pentax K110D and the K100D are the latest entry-level models, which have been designed according to the Pentax motto: simplicity above all else. However, that certainly doesn’t mean they are plain cameras that offer little to no options to the more experienced photographer; on the contrary even! The Pentax K100D is an exceptionally complete camera that offers true value for money…