Pentax presented the “Q” with “Toy” lenses. What they had been smoking?

For half the price you get an Olympus XZ-1 - OK, no fisheye lens and retro design and only half the price …

After Real good stuff like the K-5 and the 645d, cameras really made for photographers, now a line for giving a camera to your wife that she can pass on to the 16-year old.

The must be either extremely smart or desperate.

I had been considering Pentax before eventually deciding for Nikon ( I discarded Sony and Canon earlier in the selection*) and I hadn’t been 100% sure if I made the right call. Now I am, the prognosis for Pentax is no good

*in case you are interested how I decided on a DSLR system read on

It was late 2009 where I got frustrated by my Fuji S100fs, AF to slow, manual focus hardly possible and epic shutter lag. Otherwise it is a very fine camera, but I was hitting the limits all the time and got frustrated about working around them.

My last SLR had been a OM10, I briefly used some Pentax, but Olympus gave me a fuzzy feeling. Logically the first look was at the E-620. Nice camera, but in terms of user interface a catastrophe. The E-30 fixed all this, as well had a bigger body that fits my hands, but the price was ridiculous. I liked the idea of the 4/3 format, I never had been a fan of 3:2 images, but I turned to the APS-C pack:

Canon 500d, 50d

Pentax K-x, K20d

Nikon D90, D300

Sony A-550

Best bang for the buck of these had been the K-x and the 500d, the K-x despite being small has a good handling and its 18-55 is perhaps the best kit-lens in this range. The poor display, the missing AF-point confirmation, dim view-finder and the odd AAA batteries put me off. The K20d fixed all that, but it had been an aging body, but it made it into the shortlist.

Canon 500d is a good camera and there had been rebates on it, but the handling is horrible, I can’t hold it in one hand because the grip is too small. Add a dim viewfinder and you go over to the 50d that hadn’t had any rebates going. I disliked the EV compensation limited to +/-2 and the missing AF light - two things I overvalued in these days because it was a limiting factor for the S100fs. Shortlisted

Sony - I like Sony, I had a F707 which got replaced by the Fuji. The Sony is a camera where you can’t say anything bad (beside the abysmal  kit lens) about, but neither something good. The lens issue made the decision, there are good and expensive Zeiss lenses, but the choice is limited. Sigma makes some lenses for Sony, but well nothing to rave about. It has shake reduction built-in (like Pentax), so using older lenses would be an option (Sony is Konica/Minolta rebranded).

D90 and D300 are similar cameras with a huge price gap. The AF-system and additional controls (including real mirror lockup) favor strongly the D300 (+ 100% viewfinder, 1/8000s shutter), but the price was the differentiator, D90 shortlisted

So I had been down to D90, K20d, 50d. These are bodies, I need as well a lens and I wanted a zoom lens to start with. The D90 was sold as a attractively priced kit with the solid 18-105, the K20d could be had with a good 18-55 and the Canon …   the 17-85 barely fit into my price range. Still the 50d combo would have cost me almost the double of a D90 kit - so out.

What made it finally - money and availability. The K20d was hard to find, I only managed to find it on the Salon de Photo and I didn’t like to buy such an item via the internet (I strongly advise against this decision, buy your stuff at Amazon or an other well-known internet merchant, they might be anonymous, but they try their best, the nice person from the shop around the corner might stiff up when you run into a problem) and I find the best price almost around the corner for a D90 kit.

Fast forward 12 months.

I am  sure that Pentax would have been the better decision for the things I’d been doing, but the limitations of the D90 are easy to work around and the CLS is simply awesome, so all in all no regrets

Fast forward 9 months

Pentax is loosing it, glad that I didn’t board a sinking ship