In the days when film was king, Pentax had a mighty reputation for its SLR cameras, including a much admired K-series (K2, KM, KX) which culminated in the legendary K1000 that stayed in production from 1976 to 1997. Now that we're firmly in the digital era, Pentax has abandoned the pretentious '*ist' prefix of its last digital releases and harked back to the golden age once more with the K100D.
There have naturally been some notable alterations from the '*ist' series, both in physical design and camera operation. The body is curvier, including an expanded hand grip area which provides more comfort and solidity. Even though there remains a stainless steel chassis covered by reinforced plastic, the K100D is still relatively lightweight for a DSLR (660g) and comes as a body only or with a DA 18-55 mm lens.
Another change is a move away from the Penta-prism viewfinder typically found in the DS2 to a Penta-mirror system, which further reduces the weight. Menus and captured images are viewed in the 2.5-inch LCD monitor on the back, with a healthy 210,000 pixels. A useful new function is the digital preview which displays a test shot in the monitor that's saved in the buffer rather than the memory card.
A second mini LCD display on the top of the camera provides rapid information on camera settings and exposures, but remains stubbornly and curiously without a backlight. There's been a further change in the flash arrangement: this is now a P-TTL style which means it can pop up either manually or electronically and operates without an additional AF support light. The auto-focus itself now has three versatile modes; the highly accurate 11-point SAFOX VIII AF system, manual selection or centre point only.
There are a couple of other significant enhancements on the controls. The Auto Pict mode cleverly incorporates four scene modes (Portrait, Landscape, Macro and Moving Object) and automatically chooses which seems most suitable to the photo you're taking. If it's not sure, then it will default to Normal mode. In addition, the Function button (Fn) offers you a four-way controller to handle White balance, Flash, ISO and Drive modes, as well as DPOF, Slideshow and Digital Filters when set to playback.
Even though this is only a 6.1-megapixel camera, the sharpness, clarity and colour authenticity of the images are outstanding thanks to a new image processing engine, and this is further improved by the arrival of a built-in Shake Reduction mechanism that uses sensitive motion detectors to stabilise the CCD sensor so you can have crisp results even with low shutter speeds.
The only noticeable irritation is the somewhat useless continuous shooting mode which can only manage a maximum of four JPEG frames, but otherwise this is an excellent entry-level DSLR for both relative beginners and more experienced enthusiasts.
