Tuesday 22 January 2008

Pentax K20D

Once again it's an exciting time for Pentax Users everywhere - Pentax are gearing up to announce two new Digital SLRs, the K20D and K200D.

It's been just over a year since the K10D hit the shelves, and it's a year that's turned Pentax's fortunes around. Winning just about every award that was going, the K10D truly showed that you had a choice in the camera market. Although the *ist series Pentax cameras were great, they were always a bit behind the competition. But the K10D changed that, with a whole range of features and a build quality far ahead of its rivals from 'the big two'.

The K20D looks to be about to do the same again.

Doctored photo showing what the Pentax K20D will probably look like.


Based on the body of the K10D, the Pentax K20D will have a new 14.5Mp CMOS sensor, Live view, full weather sealing (of course), even better Anti-Shake, possibly higher frame rate (I'd guess 5 frames per second), higher ISO options, and a price tag of, I would guess, around £999. Mind you, we thought the K10D would be around £900, and that arrived at £600. We can only hope.

There are rumours too, about 'something revolutionary'. It may be something to do with the focusing. We'll have to wait and see, all should be revealed in the next few days.

The problem I'm left with, is that I bought my K10D last spring. Do I upgrade so soon? I think not, but if the K20D is as good as the rumours have it, I may have trouble resisting...


1 comment:

Daniel said...

I was wrong about the higher frame rate, well, sort of anyway. There is a 20 frames per second burst mode, with a reduced pixel count, but other than than the rate is the same, albeit with 50% higher resolution.

But there have been many tweaks and changes, apart from the headline changes, which make this a stunning looking camera. Retail price at the moment looks like £899, but I would expect that to be £849 or lower sooner rather than later. And I know pixel count isn't everything, but it is quite impressive that to get get more pixels from your DSLR, you'll need to spend £5,500 on a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III.

And the K200D looks very much like a winner too, taking a lot of the spec from the K10D and putting in a smaller, simpler, but still weatherproofed body. At around £500. Both of them are class beaters.

Good times :-)