Pentax K-x Review: DSLR for Beginners
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Electronics
When it comes to budget DSLR cameras, Pentax certainly has that market covered, and the release of the Pentax K-x is yet another fine example of that. Tech Radar has been spending some time with the new camera and thought they would offer their readers an extensive review.
They start off by letting us know that the Pentax K-x is a DSLR for beginners, so means that it is simple to use and will not break the bank. The price is just £599, that does sound a lot at first, but you have to consider how much camera you are getting for that price.
The Pentax K-x and the Pentax K-m look very much the same when side-by-side, they both have a 2.7-inch LCD screen and the button layouts also look the same. However, the similarities end there, all the hardware inside is different.
The Pentax K-x comes with the PRIME II engine and an upgraded 12.4MP sensor. The new camera’s sensor is a CMOS chip, this allows for HD Video. Read Tech Radar’s review and their final thoughts on the Pentax K-x.
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I recently bought the Pentax K-x in white with the standard white 18-55mm lens as well as the 50-200 lens that comes with the twin lens kit.
I am very impressed with this camera.
The colours and dynamic range are very good indeed, and far better than you would expect in a camera in this class and price range.
The video works amazingly well, and the videos are very clear with great colour balance. As long as you remember to have the anti-shake switched on, panning and fast moving objects are represented very well indeed.
The video quality is far better than many cheap video cameras, and I guess that the large size of the chip really helps here as the chip is many times larger than most if not any affordable video only camera.
I also use a Canon D20 and was looking at buying the Canon D500 or Nikon 5000, but after handling them, I didn’t like the way they feel and some of the menus were hard to go through.
The menus in the K-x are very simple to use and it’s very quick to get you from one mode to another and I’m sure that any proficient user will nail the menu system very quickly and it’s so easy to use that even begginers will be changing parameters and not just rely on the Auto Pic setting, although that does do a very good job on its own.
Now that the prices of this camera are starting to fall, I think it is about the best of this class of SLR with easy handling, great ergonomics and mouth watering picture quality.
However, why doesn’t Pentax offer its lenses in different colours to match the camera (apart from the standard 18-55mm lens)? At least they should do it with the more popular colours such as white and red. It seems funny to me that Canon have a great range of white coloured lenses, yet all their cameras are black, and Pentax have coloured cameras, yet all their aftermarket lenses are only available in black.
If you are thinking of getting a really good, all-round DSLR, I doubt you could go much past this Pentax K-x.