The simple guide to choosing a digital camera

Pentax K10D: 10 megapixels, shake reduction & weatherproof D-slr

Pentax have unveiled their eagerly awaited 10.2 megapixel D-slr. The Pentax K10D offers some real enthusiast features including an all weather body which can be used in the rain and a shake reduction system which involves rapidly shifting the CCD to counteract movement. Pentax claim this gives the user a 2.5 to 4 stops advantage over D-slrs without anti-shake and since the system is built into the body, nearly all Pentax lenses can benefit from this facility. The weather proof body is great value in a D-slr which a has price of only $899. In pre-digital days, weather proof seals were mainly found on professional 35 mm SLR cameras such as the Pentax LX, Nikon F3 or Canon F1 and these were all priced at much higher levels than the K10D.

The other interesting feature is a dust removal mechanism which keeps the CCD free of dust and this is further boosted by a special anti dust coating on the CCD.. This will prove invaluable to all photographers who frequently change lenses as many SLRs suffer from hard to remove dust specks on the CCD which can accumulate over time.

The Pentax K10D also has a new faster image processing engine which it calls PRIME (Pentax Real Image Engine) for true to life images. The camera can take upto nine RAW images in succession or a continuous amount of jpegs at 3 frames per second. The K10D has a 210k high resolution 2.5 inch LCD with a wide viewing angle of 140 degrees and offers support for SD and SDHC memory cards. Transferring data can be achieved using the camera's USB2 connection. The K10D is compatible with previous Pentax lenses with KAF2, KAF or KA lens mounts and its's ISO sensitivity ranges from 100 to 1600. Shutter speeds are from 30 - 1/4000 sec and flash X-sync is a respectable 1/180 sec. Other features include a hotshoe, PASM modes and various metering modes including spot metering. The K10D weighs 793 g with a battery and its' measurements are 142 x 101 x 70 mm. The camera will ship in November for $899 or $999 with a 18 - 55 mm zoom lens. A newly released Pentax 70 mm F2.4 pancake style lens which is equivalent to 105 mm on a Pentax D-slr will ship in October 2007 for $600.