Topic: Anyone use a Pentax K100D?

[Jamos]

I'm thinking about picking one up to use with all my old Pentax glass.  This would be my first venture into Digital SLR land...but it seems to make the most sense considering I already have a bunch of lenses.
It's only 6.1 MP, but that doesn't really matter as I probably won't exceed that w/enlargements, image quality is more important to me and what I've read so far is impressive.

Opinions?

[phanophish]

Don't know too much about it.  If you don't have any true fast glass that you are hoping to use there might be other better options for the long run.  Here's a review from a site that typically has pretty through reviews. In general they seemed to like it.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/pentaxk100d/

[boojum]

I have some good glass from my K1000 and ME but have not gone to the digitals which can use it as I understand that my 35 - 205 zoom would be a 70 - 410 zoom and so on.  The sweet 1.2 50mm becomes a 2.4 100mm.  Is this correct.  And are the plastic lenses that bad??

[Frank in JC]

If you don't have any true fast glass that you are hoping to use there might be other better options for the long run. 

I agree... and there's another factor--are your Pentax lenses autofocus?  The reason I ask isn't for the sake of convenience (focusing manually is usually no big deal unless your subject is moving), but just for the ability to focus.  I don't know about the Pentax, but it's nearly impossible for me to judge perfect focus on my Nikon 200 because of the focusing screens they use.  You definitely want to use AF lenses on DSLRs since they rarely (ever?) use split-prism focusing screens. There's a little indicator that lights up, but that's not a convenient way to focus. 

FYI, a split-prism focusing screen is the kind where there's a little circle in the middle, split into an upper and lower half.  You line up the image on the top half of the circle with the one on the bottom by turning the focus ring.  Super simple and very accurate.  Now we need an on-board computer to do that 

[Frank in JC]

I have some good glass from my K1000 and ME but have not gone to the digitals which can use it as I understand that my 35 - 205 zoom would be a 70 - 410 zoom and so on.  The sweet 1.2 50mm becomes a 2.4 100mm.  Is this correct.  And are the plastic lenses that bad??

Cropping factors are usually around 1.5x so that makes a 35-205 something like a 50-300. 

One of my cheaper Nikon lenses has a plastic mount and while I wish it felt like more like a professional device, there's nothing wrong with it at all. 

[phanophish]

I have some good glass from my K1000 and ME but have not gone to the digitals which can use it as I understand that my 35 - 205 zoom would be a 70 - 410 zoom and so on.  The sweet 1.2 50mm becomes a 2.4 100mm.  Is this correct.  And are the plastic lenses that bad??

Remember,  that the crop factor does not impact the aperture, only the focal length with respect to field of view.  This means, to use your example, the 50/1.2 essentially becomes about a 75/1.2.  I'll echo the manual focus difficulties Frank mentioned.  Most DSLRs don't have the split prism focus screens that the old manual focus SLRs had.  It can make manual focusing, particularly in low light very difficult.

[darkfunk]

I am a k100d owner and I love it!  Probably the only annoyance is auto white balance does not work well indoors w/ incandescent lights (shots come out looking yellowish).  This can be worked around by just using any of the non-automatic modes when shooting indoors, which enables you to set white balance.

here's some pix i took w/ Pentax DA 16-45 mm lens: http://tinyurl.com/yqombh

and more sample shots can be found here: http://flickr.com/cameras/pentax/k100d/

[Jamos]

Well I ended up buying a K100D w/the 18-55mm DA lens kit.

I just got it, so I haven't had a good chance to really get into it yet, but my first impressions are very good. 

I hear what you guys are saying about the auto-focus issue.  Only one of my old lenses is AF, and it's a Ricoh Rikenon 28-100.  Hopefully it works without issue.  I've heard that the old AF lenses work fine with the new Pentaxes.

For lenses, I now have:

-Pentax 50mm 1.2 (I think it could be 1.4)
-Pentax 135mm
-Rikenon 28-100 zoom AF
-Pentax DA 18-55mm AF

It's been a while, looking forward to really shooting again!

[Frank in JC]

Well I ended up buying a K100D w/the 18-55mm DA lens kit.

I just got it, so I haven't had a good chance to really get into it yet, but my first impressions are very good. 

Happy shooting!