Pentax doesn't care about landscape and astro photographers...

I'm writing this just to say that I'm extremely dissapointed to see that Pentax doesn't care about photographers who wish to make long exposures with good quality, and not being forced to wait for the dark frame subtraction/long exposure noise reduction to do its work.

I have a K10d which I love, which has amazing quality, which has the option to turn off dark frame subtraction, BUT, sensors evolve, and megapixel counts get higher, and when you want to make BIG prints, more megapixels help in getting better quality.

As such, it's a shame to see I can't go for the K20d and, big surprise, the K7, as none of them has acceptable quality in long exposure work, and that's why we can't turn off the DFS on these cameras.

When you are trying to make images like this, you can't simply afford to have to wait so much time waiting for the DFS to finish its work:

90 seconds exposure

180 seconds exposure

30 seconds exposure

150 seconds exposure

Being this a brand which is directed to the passion of taking photographs, of making photographs , the brand which looks at the real needs of it's users, it's a shame to see it doesn't have a place in two important photography niches (specially the landscape one). Lots of people complained about this since the launch of the K20d, and Pentax still doesn't want to hear.

And sadly... for the first time I'm seriously considering to change brand... and no, I don't have the money to afford a 645d...

--
José Ramos
http://www.joseramos.com (nature/landscape photography)