If you have a K20d is it spot on? Or just a big improvement?

Several times a week I fantasize about upgrading from my K100ds to the K20d., rather than following my plan and waiting at least one more generation.

Reading the reviews and comments, it seems as if in the K20d Pentax has fixed most of the major issues that I have with my K100ds. But, I also get the gut feeling that while most of the big issues are fixed, there are a bunch of small little details that still need a bit of polish. Granted, many of those may well have been fixed in firmware updates.

If you have, or have used, a K20d, how happy are you with it? 100% 90%, and why

If you are not 100% happy with it, what could be fixed without incresing the cost? Or would any significant improvements also significantly increase the cost?

--

There's a box? photos at http://flickr.com/ellarsee

At the risk of sounding like a "fan boy", I think the K20D is a fine product and a major upgrade from the K10D. I'm not sure what it's lacking that I use. I recommend it without reservation as long as you know what the specs are (i.e. don't buy it and then complain because it only shoots 3 fps).

For my needs it's a fantastic camera. YMMV.
--
Russ
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rfortson/
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/russfortson
Even bad photography can be fun

Russ Houston said:

you know what the specs are (i.e. don't buy it and then complain
because it only shoots 3 fps).

Click to expand...

I'm not so worried about 3fps, but how many frames per buffer in raw. How many shots can I do before the buffer fills and I have to wait for it?

I hear that it's a big improvment over the three frames of the k100, but I don't remember how many.

--

There's a box? photos at http://flickr.com/ellarsee

My K20D seems bug-free to my knowledge. It performs up to all the specifications advertised, and far exceeds my original expectations. The Green button that never worked on my K10D is fully functional on my K20D, the problems I had with WB on the K10D are non-existant on my K20D.......all in all, I can't seem to find a single complaint. There was that problen I posted a while back about not getting any Hot Pixels, but if you saw that post , I was able to make my own in PS, so that is no big deal anymore. The higher ISO value is worth a fortune to me, shooting in low light has become much easier.
--
'This is more serious than I thought.....but it is still fun!
http://www.pbase.com/rupertdog Take a look- It's Free!

I too find the white balance much improved. That was the first thing I noticed. My tungsten light shot turned out the right color in AWB!!! For reference, the tint number in Lightroom for RAW with the K10D was selected at about -19, the correct setting the K20D chose was about 18 to 20 (same as selected by Lightroom with digital grey card using the eye-dropper). The temperature was still a little warm, but very usable straight from the camera. My blue counter top actually looked blue instead of green. My brown walls were brown, etc. I was shocked.

The other main reason for upgrading as Rupert stated is high ISO. If you use it to get higher shutter speeds for sports, or other moving objects (like squirrels). It is better than the K10D. The extra 40% resolution doesn't hurt either. ISO 100 is very nice too, so good for you detail oriented people.

Some reasons not to upgrade from a K10D: It isn't much faster than the K10D (unless you use burst mode). I find if you shoot RAW + 14.6 MP JPEG it is probably about the same speed as the K10D is with RAW + 10 MP (I would have to verify this, but I don't notice a big difference either way). Live view is limited. If you had a good K10D the AF-S isn't much difference, I wonder if some of the K10Ds had faulty AF or something. I haven't tried AF-C, rarely use it. If you are coming from a K100D, you would probably be pleasantly surprised by the performance of the K20D.

Rupert60 said:

My K20D seems bug-free to my knowledge. It performs up to all the
specifications advertised, and far exceeds my original expectations.
The Green button that never worked on my K10D is fully functional on
my K20D, the problems I had with WB on the K10D are non-existant on
my K20D.......all in all, I can't seem to find a single complaint.
There was that problen I posted a while back about not getting any
Hot Pixels, but if you saw that post , I was able to make my own in
PS, so that is no big deal anymore. The higher ISO value is worth a
fortune to me, shooting in low light has become much easier.
--
'This is more serious than I thought.....but it is still fun!
http://www.pbase.com/rupertdog Take a look- It's Free!

Click to expand...

Without restating what the previous posters have said, I have to agree with just about everything that has been said. The K20 is a big improvement over the K10. I just get consistently better pictures--and more of them--than I did with the K10D. If you bought one I don't think you would be disappointed...
--
Too many subjects, not enough time...

The people who don't buy the K20D generally find its too expensive, but really it fixes everything from the K10D and either improves them of makes them better.

The problem is on paper it looks and sounds like a K10D with a bigger sensor but its so much more than that.

IQ is the best feature. The RAW buffer i think holds 12 or 14 or something like that. I rarely find i need 3 FPS and I shoot sports. But thats my style I guess.

The price is starting to come down now as well. I believe new rebates for those in the US have just started too.

ellarsee said:

Several times a week I fantasize about upgrading from my K100ds to
the K20d., rather than following my plan and waiting at least one
more generation.

Reading the reviews and comments, it seems as if in the K20d Pentax
has fixed most of the major issues that I have with my K100ds. But,
I also get the gut feeling that while most of the big issues are
fixed, there are a bunch of small little details that still need a
bit of polish. Granted, many of those may well have been fixed in
firmware updates.

If you have, or have used, a K20d, how happy are you with it? 100%
90%, and why

If you are not 100% happy with it, what could be fixed without
incresing the cost? Or would any significant improvements also
significantly increase the cost?

--
There's a box? photos at
http://flickr.com/ellarsee

Click to expand...

--
Justin
--------------------------------------------------------
The Blind Pig
http://www.jeber.com/Members/Justin/Gallery/
Photobucket
http://s107.photobucket.com/albums/m313/justin-23/

I think from a strictly technical point of view ISO 100 noise is more on K20D than K10D (Gordon and others showed this on some early tests) and it can definitely show if you open shadows up a lot in PP ...

BUT even with that, I still prefer what I get from the K20D. I think the reason is that the K20D noise is easier to reduce satisfactorily; and, of course, the smaller pixels help when comparing on reral images rather than pixel-by-pixel.

WB is very much better, which may be why the colours look so much more natuaral. Usually when I look at photos (anywhere, any time, not just my own) I see them as pictures. With ny K20D I often see them as real - like looking through a window at real life.

The isn't a way to turn off dark frame subtraction like there is on the K10D.

There is less room for pushing shadows in PP.

I would be hard pressed to say either one mattered to me, but there was discussion about it on the forum.

If I could afford it, I would buy the K20D and the DA*s, and immediately send all of them in to Pentax to have everything tuned. In my fantasy world, I would have my current gear to play with until everything came back, so the time it took wouldn't matter.

I personally think Pentax should offer this * tuned system as a package, pay maybe a little more, but have a system, much like a blueprinted engine, in your hands at purchase. If it got more people to pony up for both 's, I don't even think it would have to cost more than buying everything separately.

Thank you
Russell

It would be an excellent suggestion because reality tells us this couldbe a solution to many issues with equipment. But Pentax (as any other brand) would never advertise with the such a * tuned package. It suggests that the quailty of any set, made up by parts bought separately, is not sufficient enough...

lock

I went from the DS to the K20D and, despite loving the DS's small size (I never thought that I would go to a bigger camera) and high ISO abilities, I now carry the K20D with me whenever I go out. The responsiveness of the K20D, and good high ISO abilites have won me over.

The DS is relegated to IR shots and backup body status

Laurens

--

Don't 'tag' posts - it wastes bandwidth and adds nothing useful! Most browsers have 'bookmarks'!

I got an K20d as my first digital camera after almost 30 years of Pentax film cameras.
The K20d is a 98%-er for me, and the remaining 2% is not very important for me.

One thing I would like is mecanical communication of aperture setting on K and M lenses, but that's not going to happen, and it's easy to work around. The slightly wonky metering on K and M lenses are also a mild annoyance, but also easy to work with -- if the photographer knows his manual stuff.

I an very, very satisfied with my K20d and does no hesitate to recommend it.

-- MW

100% from me, I went from a DL to the 20, took it to India a week after I got it and it was a delight to use. i am still learning its many capabilities and have found it has given my interest in photography a further boost.

Traveling thru India changing lenses and not a spec of dust on the sensor to remove in photoshop, its a keeper.

cheers,
John

On the whole Im happy with my K20D.

But ... and theres always a but ....

I am disappointed with the decision to do noise reduction before allowing another shot to be taken. So if you do a 30sec exposure you hae to wait another 30sec whilst its being processed. This didnt happen in the K10d and is a very backward step in my opinion.

Another thing I find Im not happy with is the liveview. At f stops above f11 or so the liveview is very dark. After f16 or more its not usable.

Subsequently Ive switched back to Digital Preview ... a new function is to be able to save the digital preview upon confirmation. I like it but ... its only in JPEG .... ARRRGGHHH!!! Why why why ??? Hasnt been shown that the best results from the K20D come from processed files?? Why then would there only be a JPEG option available??

Other than that ....

--
David



-sadly lacking a witty cliched comment-

I think it is an excellent idea.

I would easily be willing to pay somewhere 5-10% more for a package that was run through QC one more time and tested as a unit. I think they could get away with it by selling it as a gold/platinum package (Best cam with best zoom(s)), where fine tuning is only one part of the package you get.

If they could do that gold-edition-K10D why not do this?

Only problem might be the demand for such a package. Not sure how many of us are prepared to shell out for K20D+16-50+50-135 at the same time?

Edit: And to stay on topic...

I am very happy with my K20D, but then again it is my first dslr so I don't have that much to compare with. For a (dslr) novice like me there are lots of things to learn, but mighty fun.

It takes excellent images, but as far as I can tell it tends to underexpose a lot of images, to save highlites. Which is good as you almost never get bunt out images, but it also adds another adjustment that must be made before the image can be used.

White balance is good, sometimes I manually adjust when shooting indoors in artificial lights. Colours are very good (when tuned down slightly from factory settings), I have played around with raw a bit but still can't get the images to look better than JPEG out of the camera. But then, I am new to that bit too.

Before I got my K20 I thought the whole LBA thing was a bit silly. Now I am not so sure anymore. Got a Samsung 50-200 and is very pleased with the price / performance ratio of that one. But now that FA50 1.4 looks very tempting too. Cheap and great bokeh for portraits. Hmm.

A LBA shot from Samsung 50-200



--
Regards,
Johan - Swe

I have owned the following Pentax dslr cameras: *ist DS, K10D and K20D. The K20D is the best so far.

The K100DS is more like my *ist DS in that the memory buffer is limited so one does have to wait for the memory to clear. The K10D and the K20D has a very useable memory buffer. I never had to worry about waiting for the memory buffer to clear.

I would also guess that you will notice improvements in the AF in the K20D over the K100DS. In fact about everything about the K20D would be an improvement over the K100DS. The only downsize would be the size of the camera.

So far I have shot approximately 5,000 shots with the K20D and I am still very much pleased with it. There are a few things I would like to see changed by firmware updates but they are really minor things.

Dave

Johan Josefsson said:

Only problem might be the demand for such a package. Not sure how
many of us are prepared to shell out for K20D+16-50+50-135 at the
same time

Click to expand...

US $1100 K20
US $750 50-135mm
US $700 16-50mm
--------------------------
US $2550 total

As a side note, with the $100 rebate for each, the total would be US $2250. That is the same price as D300 and 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens bundle at B&H. Which would you rather have?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/519883-REG/Nikon_9481_D300_SLR_Digital_Camera.html

At what point does the better glass make up for the "better" camera? Is US $300 for a tuned Pentax system too much?

Thank you
Russell

Krazy_Kow said:

Why then would there only be a JPEG option available??

Click to expand...

I would think it is memory. Just not enough to hold the jpeg for display and the raw data. Maybe it is better just to buy a 16Gb SD card and save the photos?

Thank you
Russell

Good point Russell, re: D300 vs K20 kit.

Asked on this forum the Pentax package would have a lot of supporters. And I agree with the idea, but is there demand enough to take the expenses of releasing such a package?

That could be a job for Pentax marketing to sort out. As an idea I think it is great, and marketing is a part of my dayjob. Not having to worry about if your new cam and lenses are going to play nicely together - can you spell "added value"?

Ned B, Pentax marketing. Are you listening?

--
Regards,
Johan - Swe

If you'll use it for action/sports shots then you better buy the K10D and use the extra money for DA* or DA lenses. If you have the K10D then buy the new lenses and wait for the next body.
--
reygon
http://s129.photobucket.com/albums/p238/reygonz/
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