Really nice to see a positive Pentax video. I have K10D and its still my daily camera. CCD sensor brings such a nice colours and camera is robust in a old Nokia kind of way which i love
Great deal ;). If you want to be in the club, you surely are in the club. :) I've recently 'rediscovered' Pentax after decades (yup) of using other systems, and I love the handling, and the intuitiveness. Even the old, old ones. In fact, particularly the old, old ones.
@@Mr50mmish 👍 At the moment, I've gone full-on CCD retro, and using a *istD from 2003 and a K100D from 2006, Same Sony sensor. They have different color science though. Love them both. I was an affirmed Pentax user in the 80's, then used other systems for a few decades. Now back to Pentax and looking for a Pentax K-5 🙂
This is a brilliant camera. Worth noting though that many pieces had misaligned AF and therefore seemed soft/inconsistent. Good news: it is EASILY fixable via the debug menu. Google that, it will fix your AF related issues. Thanks for the video! PS. LOL, commented before reaching the part where you actually do mention the debug menu 😆
I sold and serviced the K10D when it was new, and from the factory, they were all good. Just a few started to slip out of alignment over the first few years, but now, they are nearly all really bad. I have an unproven theory that soft components that hold the AF system aligned are wearing out. The biggest problem is that yes, you can use the debug menu to adjust if the AF is very far out and can never achieve good focus, but once you do that, it still can't consistently achieve good focus. You may go from having 0% or 10% of your shots in focus to 60% of your shots in focus, but you'll never get 100%. With each shot, there is still some mechanical variability in where components like the mirror come to rest, so you can focus and take a shot of a static subject from a static position several times in a row, and the focus will vary each time. It seems to even affect manual focus, based on testing with a split-image focusing screen. I know AF microadjustment isn't perfect, and you're just aiming for consistent averages (I used to regularly do alignment on Canon, Nikon, and Olympus cameras) but the K10D at its current age is far worse than any other camera, and far worse now than it was when it was new. It's a shame, as I really like the design of the camera, and I have a bunch of Pentax lenses, but I'm down to owning one K10D (the best out of several I purchased, tested, and compared) and the focus difficulties make me reluctant to take it out shooting. If you love Pentax, it was a pivotal camera in their history and worth owning, and it has very clever exposure modes that I wish other companies had adopted. But if you just like the sensor, and want consistently-focused photos, get a D200 instead. L
@StephenStrangways thanks for the insight, that does suck if that's the case. Basically would rule out this camera. Do you think it is isolated to the K10D? If so atleast there are other options that employ the same sensor!
@Mr50mmish it seems isolated to the K10D and K20D. I've never run across anything quite like it on other Pentax bodies, or bodies from other manufacturers. I would just caution that my personal sample size isn't perfect, because problems were far more likely to come to my attention with higher-end bodies. The kind of person that bought a K10D or D200 would pay close attention to their results and bring them to me if they saw any problems, whereas the kind of person buying a Sony A100 or an *ist DL didn't tend to be as critical, or as likely to bring their camera in for service. So, issues may exist that I'm not aware of, because of a camera selling in small numbers, or to a market segment I didn't serve widely, but I've had enough K10D bodies pass through my doors to say I don't think they're very reliable, the main problems being autofocus accuracy and physically broken memory card doors, and enough D200 bodies to say they are quite reliable by comparison. It's a real shame because I much prefer the form factor and operation of the K10D!
A great video, i have a new buyed in 2008 with the 50mm lens, and for travel light buy a Tamrom A18 28 to 250 m.m. y use for my work in proyects of High Tension Lines and sub-Stations and for fun. The CCD brings a clear and nitid colours and and the pictures have light weight in Mb. My camara have 10000 shoots aprox. is a younger yet. Here in Chile have many weather and conditions, i work over 4800 meters over the sea and the K10D take pictures easily .The heavy rain, the mud and dirth no damage the K10D, best regards from the corner of the world.
Thanks! Always nice to hear from a long term user of the camera! That is awesome! Sounds like it has taken photos everywhere and that you have put those weather seals to use! Awesome!
Literally had one delivered yesterday. Matched with a good copy of a SMC PENTAX -m 1.7 50 M LENS is sweet. Really nice images. My copy on the K10D is really sharp and clear with not much apparent distortion and chromatic issues and focuses well compared to my sigma 28mm super wide ii that performed better on my Pentax k200D that broke but also yielded really nice images. . Its interesting how certain lenses work better than others on different bodies. Next to try is my super takumars. By the way I like how the greens look with these Pentax CCD cameras and also they are contrasty the images can look to my eyes. Not flat looking.
Oh that's odd I wonder if they tweaked the AA filter on the camera or maybe the imaging processing was tweaked since they otherwise use the same sensor!
That back focusing issue seems like a common thing with k10d cameras on the forums. As a matter of fact i went through the trouble of trying to help someone on one of the ccd groups on facebook....guiding them to the screw adjustments...i had to do the same thing on my Konica Minolta 7d and i cant say that id want to do it again. One of the reasons ive never picked one up.
Yeah someone mentioned that the K10D does seem to have it particularly bad, which sucks. The adjustment I did for it generally went ok, I did a similar on on the A100 and that worked a treat.
I did that on sony A300 ( Minolta DSLR rebrand) it's really pain in the a***. But it's work 😂😂😂. After that. I only use nikon DSLR. Somehow their AF so good
Thank you for another interesting video! May I suggest something, please? When quoting a large set of numbers or obscure things like sensor name -- could you please put the text on the screen also? Thank you and looking forward to more of your videos! Cheers!
That's a good idea! Next time I do sensor names I'll pop it up on screen! Don't expect to see it for a few months though, haha there are a lot of pre-recorded videos already up!
I have 2 Pentax 6 megapixel CCD sensor cameras a Pentax *istDL and a Pentax K100D both cameras have the Sony sensor i bought both cameras new and still use and photograph with them as they still work fine
@Mr50mmish Of course I have a favorite it's the Pentax *istDL the first one I bought I loaned my son the K100D and I got it back when I traded a Pentax K50 camera for I believe there is something special with the colors on the CCD sensor cameras . I seem to always shoot more pictures with the *istDL than the K100D I'm just more familiar with the camera even though it has a number of limitations more so than the K100D which has a better focusing system
You mentioned being a RAW only shooter. I prefer RAW+JPEG. If the JPEG is sufficient for what I wanted, I just keep/use that. It can be more efficient.
I use to do that but the proportion of images I'd keep vs work on in post was not great and it made file organization more messy so I just stopped shooting jpeg. That's just me though.
@Mr50mmish what I do for file organization is just make batch copies. *.jpg to one folder; everything else to another. Then I use the operating system file preview (I use MacOS, Linux & Windows - all do similar things.) to chimp the JPGs first. (From that I also have a corresponding idea of which RAW files are likely to be worth looking at.) And then finally I make adjustments to the RAWs where necessary. (The exception to this being my Phase One, which just does RAW; and often my Foveon based Sigma which never makes a JPEG as good as their software.) The first few steps; parsing and ingesting to my computer's storage, and even the chimping, can be reduced to a couple of minutes at most. Even with hundreds of pictures, it's quick. I'm relatively lazy and busy, so I try to optimize my workflow as tightly as I can get away with. My goal is always to find the keepers as quickly as possible, so I can get to a finished product as quickly as possible. If the JPEG is sufficient, I keep it. If it's close, but lacking, I go to the corresponding RAW file to make it into what I want. It probably seems slow and laborious, but I assure you, it's faster than you might expect. 😁👍 (Unless your computer is a potato, with slow storage and processing abilities, that is.) 🤣
Ah that's too bad. Was it just the kit lens that back focuses? If so that's not too bad. It seems these things have a tendency to develop focus shift issues but if it's just on the one lens it might just be bad luck!
I have K10D, K20D, K5 and K3. About 30+ K mount lenses. K10D is camera I wanted back in 2007 but fortunately camera shop was not able to find Sig17-70/2.8-4.5 lens with K mount for it so later in 11/2007 I've cancelled the order and only few months later Pentax introduced K20D which was my first DSLR one of first bodies in my country. Much later about year ago I bought one K10D just because the price was a joke and it was with two lenses. Well.. I like old cameras, but K20D image output is way better. AF operation is also much better and K20D offers proper AF fine tune for 20 lenses while K10D only can do one overall correction in service menu. I have the latest firmware and service menu with AF adjustment is still there. Whole AF operation on K10D is just tragedy. With FA50/1.4 it barely is able to hit target with shallow depth of field properly. A tiny bit better with DA*16-50/2.8 or DA*50-135/2.8. Usable for F3.5+ lenses. JPG output is completely horrible, RAW is quite good for that era, but K20D is significantly better. That Samsung sensor was kicking well above its league and was later used in K7 and various Samsung mirrorless cameras. It also has Live view, so you CAN manually focus with some accuracy, which on K10D through prism is..ehm.. K10D image is usable in ISO100-400 range. K20D is perfectly ok in 100-1600 range (K5 and K3 nice up to 3200 and for smaller sizes usable up to 6400). It makes no sense to compare it with K3 as properly developed K3 RAW simply has MUCH more image data thanks to AA-less 24Mpix. But it needs hi-res lens to show it. FA50/1.4 is very poor until F2 on K10D and F3.5-4 on K3. DA70/2.8 is also quite soft wide open, but with F3.5 it starts rendering fine details well. Pentax fans who want cheapest DSLR should only look at K20D as a starting point. K10D is for those who like pain and suffering. Especially with manual focus lenses it is punishment as you cannot see the focus through OVF with matte screen. Maybe if you replace it with split circle focusing screen. But why :D K20D solves it :D I love it even for M42 lenses. That Live View simply does the manual focusing easy job.
Haha, I guess I picked the wrong Camera to be my Pentax Starting point. Luckily I did eventually grab a K3. I'll probably eventually grab a K1 if I can find a deal on it!
When it comes to output I am actually a bit happier with the K10D, but when it comes to overall feel I do happen to like the D200. But if I had to choose between the 2 it'd be D200.
Sure, because it works ok only with lenses that are F3.5+ Anything fast like F2.8 or brighter is just suffering :D And this applies for any Pentax DSLR up to K3III. Even though it was improved a lot, it still struggles with F1.4 lenses to achieve consistent AF. My K3 does quite good job with lenses like Sigma 17-50/2.8, Sigma 18-35/1.8, Sigma 24-70/2.8, Sigma 70-200/2.8, Tamron 70-200/2.8, Sigma 100-300/4, DA40/2.8, DA70/2.4, DFA100/2.8WR.. but when I attach 35/2 it starts to have inconsistency and FA50/1.4 or Sigma 35/1.4 can reliably do some AF only in live view. Tested K3III with these, ok it is a bit better, but still absolute hell when I compare it to my Olympus EM5III which I also have and if I attach Oly 45/1.8 lens, that thing is simply able to nail focus on eyes without any effort and with very good consistency. Damn even my Oly EPL-6 which is low-end camera has better AF accuracy with fast lens than K3III which cost unbelieveable amount of money for being barely 2015 tech camera still on market today.
The lack of AF micro adjust killed the K10 for me as did the general AF performance ...... however the sensor and the build quality was right up there ..... Jps were poor.
Yeah, it's a bit odd that they basically nerfed their own debug mode to remove it. I just picked up the K2000 digital and was lucky enough to have it on a firmware that was upgradable to the variant that had the debug AF adjustment setting. I will probably do a review of this one after a bit of shooting.
I have seven copies of this particular camera model, each camera with its own lens. And the main genetic disease of this camera is the degradation of the mirror unit. All copies of the Pentax K10D have this problem, most likely this is an engineering error in the design, the focus inexorably misses the target. The solution to this problem may be as follows: constantly adjust the camera to one specific lens, after such a procedure the camera will shoot accurately for some time, but the mirror will also accumulate fatigue during operation, which will lead to inaccuracy of focusing again in the future. Constant adjustment of the autofocus is needed. The second option: take the camera to an official specialized service center, where the mirror unit will be repaired, after the procedure the camera will shoot sharply, and the problem with the inaccuracy of the autofocus will be eliminated forever, but this is a very expensive repair!!!! As for the 22-bit chip, you need to understand that the camera shoots data in 22 bits and packs them into a 12-bit RAW file, yes, it's only 12 bits, but they are incredibly accurate!!! Additionally, the 22-bit analog-to-digital converter is designed to preserve complex shades. The K10D has an incredibly accurate color gamut of the image, this camera is capable of accurately conveying the surrounding world. But perhaps people with an art education can appreciate this.)))
That's unfortunate with respect to the focus unit. I now have a K2000 digital which I hope will produce similar results. That said I haven't seen any material to state that this camera also uses the same ADC layout. So I get the idea that you can use the 22 bit output to get a more precise 12 bit output my concern is how advantageous is that really. 10 extra bits is a lot of data to compress. My argument would be that they probably could have gone for using a better set of 12-bit ADCs. Or if they really wanna stick with this method 14 bit or 16 bit Adcs then truncated to 12 would arguably offer very similar results 22bits since I assume they really are using truncating every significant bit after the 13th or 14th since the impact of every bit after would have another order of magnitude lower impact to the affect of packing a 12 bit file. Odd system. I'm sure they had their reasons.
Unfortunately, a 22-bit analog digital converter is an expensive pleasure that did not justify itself, or rather, the nuances in the shades of color were noticed by only a few. Therefore, in the future, this experiment in the accuracy of color coverage was abandoned, as well as the CCD technology itself, it is expensive in global production. Pentax K200D is a lightweight version of the K10D, of course, it no longer has a 22-bit chip, in general, it is a cheaper version of the ten, with the same Sony matrix, the K200D is more reliable in terms of focusing, because the problem with the degradation of the mirror unit occurs only with the K10D model.
Bringing the camera in front of your face every time kinda becomes irritating after some time. Please avoid doing it repeatedly. Overall an excellent and informative review .
Thanks for the feedback. Haha I was using it as a way to skim my script a bit longer, hopefully it'll be less anything moving forward, finally got a teleprompter!
Really nice to see a positive Pentax video. I have K10D and its still my daily camera. CCD sensor brings such a nice colours and camera is robust in a old Nokia kind of way which i love
That's awesome! How long have you been shooting it? It really does have an excellent output.
@@Mr50mmish on and off for 15 years but nowdays really trying to be more focused on learning and trying to shoot more
Great deal ;). If you want to be in the club, you surely are in the club. :) I've recently 'rediscovered' Pentax after decades (yup) of using other systems, and I love the handling, and the intuitiveness. Even the old, old ones. In fact, particularly the old, old ones.
@@SDWales haha yay! That's great, which Pentax camera are you using nowadays?
@@Mr50mmish 👍
At the moment, I've gone full-on CCD retro, and using a *istD from 2003 and a K100D from 2006, Same Sony sensor. They have different color science though.
Love them both.
I was an affirmed Pentax user in the 80's, then used other systems for a few decades.
Now back to Pentax and looking for a Pentax K-5 🙂
This is a brilliant camera. Worth noting though that many pieces had misaligned AF and therefore seemed soft/inconsistent. Good news: it is EASILY fixable via the debug menu. Google that, it will fix your AF related issues. Thanks for the video! PS. LOL, commented before reaching the part where you actually do mention the debug menu 😆
Haha, all good. It's neat they had basically unintentionally made micro adjustments before any other company haha.
I sold and serviced the K10D when it was new, and from the factory, they were all good. Just a few started to slip out of alignment over the first few years, but now, they are nearly all really bad. I have an unproven theory that soft components that hold the AF system aligned are wearing out.
The biggest problem is that yes, you can use the debug menu to adjust if the AF is very far out and can never achieve good focus, but once you do that, it still can't consistently achieve good focus. You may go from having 0% or 10% of your shots in focus to 60% of your shots in focus, but you'll never get 100%.
With each shot, there is still some mechanical variability in where components like the mirror come to rest, so you can focus and take a shot of a static subject from a static position several times in a row, and the focus will vary each time. It seems to even affect manual focus, based on testing with a split-image focusing screen.
I know AF microadjustment isn't perfect, and you're just aiming for consistent averages (I used to regularly do alignment on Canon, Nikon, and Olympus cameras) but the K10D at its current age is far worse than any other camera, and far worse now than it was when it was new.
It's a shame, as I really like the design of the camera, and I have a bunch of Pentax lenses, but I'm down to owning one K10D (the best out of several I purchased, tested, and compared) and the focus difficulties make me reluctant to take it out shooting.
If you love Pentax, it was a pivotal camera in their history and worth owning, and it has very clever exposure modes that I wish other companies had adopted. But if you just like the sensor, and want consistently-focused photos, get a D200 instead.
L
@StephenStrangways thanks for the insight, that does suck if that's the case. Basically would rule out this camera. Do you think it is isolated to the K10D? If so atleast there are other options that employ the same sensor!
@Mr50mmish it seems isolated to the K10D and K20D. I've never run across anything quite like it on other Pentax bodies, or bodies from other manufacturers.
I would just caution that my personal sample size isn't perfect, because problems were far more likely to come to my attention with higher-end bodies. The kind of person that bought a K10D or D200 would pay close attention to their results and bring them to me if they saw any problems, whereas the kind of person buying a Sony A100 or an *ist DL didn't tend to be as critical, or as likely to bring their camera in for service.
So, issues may exist that I'm not aware of, because of a camera selling in small numbers, or to a market segment I didn't serve widely, but I've had enough K10D bodies pass through my doors to say I don't think they're very reliable, the main problems being autofocus accuracy and physically broken memory card doors, and enough D200 bodies to say they are quite reliable by comparison. It's a real shame because I much prefer the form factor and operation of the K10D!
@StephenStrangways Fair. I might see if I can get the K-m / k2000 and see how that fairs!
A great video, i have a new buyed in 2008 with the 50mm lens, and for travel light buy a Tamrom A18 28 to 250 m.m. y use for my work in proyects of High Tension Lines and sub-Stations and for fun. The CCD brings a clear and nitid colours and and the pictures have light weight in Mb. My camara have 10000 shoots aprox. is a younger yet. Here in Chile have many weather and conditions, i work over 4800 meters over the sea and the K10D take pictures easily .The heavy rain, the mud and dirth no damage the K10D, best regards from the corner of the world.
Thanks! Always nice to hear from a long term user of the camera! That is awesome! Sounds like it has taken photos everywhere and that you have put those weather seals to use! Awesome!
Literally had one delivered yesterday. Matched with a good copy of a SMC PENTAX -m 1.7 50 M LENS is sweet. Really nice images.
My copy on the K10D is really sharp and clear with not much apparent distortion and chromatic issues and focuses well compared to my sigma 28mm super wide ii that performed better on my Pentax k200D that broke but also yielded really nice images. .
Its interesting how certain lenses work better than others on different bodies.
Next to try is my super takumars.
By the way I like how the greens look with these Pentax CCD cameras and also they are contrasty the images can look to my eyes. Not flat looking.
The branches on trees don't look like mush as im fussy about them ha ha.
Its funny because the pentax SMC on the K200D the images looked softer compared to the K10D.
Oh that's odd I wonder if they tweaked the AA filter on the camera or maybe the imaging processing was tweaked since they otherwise use the same sensor!
@@Mr50mmish It is odd. But the copy I have of the SMC 50mm works better. Nifty fifty they say.
That back focusing issue seems like a common thing with k10d cameras on the forums. As a matter of fact i went through the trouble of trying to help someone on one of the ccd groups on facebook....guiding them to the screw adjustments...i had to do the same thing on my Konica Minolta 7d and i cant say that id want to do it again. One of the reasons ive never picked one up.
Yeah someone mentioned that the K10D does seem to have it particularly bad, which sucks. The adjustment I did for it generally went ok, I did a similar on on the A100 and that worked a treat.
I did that on sony A300 ( Minolta DSLR rebrand) it's really pain in the a***. But it's work 😂😂😂. After that. I only use nikon DSLR. Somehow their AF so good
Thank you for another interesting video! May I suggest something, please? When quoting a large set of numbers or obscure things like sensor name -- could you please put the text on the screen also? Thank you and looking forward to more of your videos! Cheers!
That's a good idea! Next time I do sensor names I'll pop it up on screen! Don't expect to see it for a few months though, haha there are a lot of pre-recorded videos already up!
I have 2 Pentax 6 megapixel CCD sensor cameras a Pentax *istDL and a Pentax K100D both cameras have the Sony sensor i bought both cameras new and still use and photograph with them as they still work fine
Dang, it's always awesome know someone bought em new and still has em! Of the 2 do you have a favorite?
@Mr50mmish
Of course I have a favorite it's the Pentax *istDL the first one I bought I loaned my son the K100D and I got it back when I traded a Pentax K50 camera for I believe there is something special with the colors on the CCD sensor cameras . I seem to always shoot more pictures with the *istDL than the K100D I'm just more familiar with the camera even though it has a number of limitations more so than the K100D which has a better focusing system
You mentioned being a RAW only shooter. I prefer RAW+JPEG. If the JPEG is sufficient for what I wanted, I just keep/use that. It can be more efficient.
I use to do that but the proportion of images I'd keep vs work on in post was not great and it made file organization more messy so I just stopped shooting jpeg. That's just me though.
@Mr50mmish what I do for file organization is just make batch copies. *.jpg to one folder; everything else to another. Then I use the operating system file preview (I use MacOS, Linux & Windows - all do similar things.) to chimp the JPGs first. (From that I also have a corresponding idea of which RAW files are likely to be worth looking at.) And then finally I make adjustments to the RAWs where necessary. (The exception to this being my Phase One, which just does RAW; and often my Foveon based Sigma which never makes a JPEG as good as their software.)
The first few steps; parsing and ingesting to my computer's storage, and even the chimping, can be reduced to a couple of minutes at most. Even with hundreds of pictures, it's quick.
I'm relatively lazy and busy, so I try to optimize my workflow as tightly as I can get away with. My goal is always to find the keepers as quickly as possible, so I can get to a finished product as quickly as possible. If the JPEG is sufficient, I keep it. If it's close, but lacking, I go to the corresponding RAW file to make it into what I want. It probably seems slow and laborious, but I assure you, it's faster than you might expect. 😁👍 (Unless your computer is a potato, with slow storage and processing abilities, that is.) 🤣
I got one new in 2007 I have used it a lot with older K lenses but the Kit Lens Back Focusses ! GOT.ANNOYED WITH IT !
Ah that's too bad. Was it just the kit lens that back focuses? If so that's not too bad. It seems these things have a tendency to develop focus shift issues but if it's just on the one lens it might just be bad luck!
I have K10D, K20D, K5 and K3. About 30+ K mount lenses.
K10D is camera I wanted back in 2007 but fortunately camera shop was not able to find Sig17-70/2.8-4.5 lens with K mount for it so later in 11/2007 I've cancelled the order and only few months later Pentax introduced K20D which was my first DSLR one of first bodies in my country. Much later about year ago I bought one K10D just because the price was a joke and it was with two lenses.
Well.. I like old cameras, but K20D image output is way better. AF operation is also much better and K20D offers proper AF fine tune for 20 lenses while K10D only can do one overall correction in service menu. I have the latest firmware and service menu with AF adjustment is still there.
Whole AF operation on K10D is just tragedy. With FA50/1.4 it barely is able to hit target with shallow depth of field properly. A tiny bit better with DA*16-50/2.8 or DA*50-135/2.8. Usable for F3.5+ lenses. JPG output is completely horrible, RAW is quite good for that era, but K20D is significantly better. That Samsung sensor was kicking well above its league and was later used in K7 and various Samsung mirrorless cameras. It also has Live view, so you CAN manually focus with some accuracy, which on K10D through prism is..ehm..
K10D image is usable in ISO100-400 range. K20D is perfectly ok in 100-1600 range (K5 and K3 nice up to 3200 and for smaller sizes usable up to 6400). It makes no sense to compare it with K3 as properly developed K3 RAW simply has MUCH more image data thanks to AA-less 24Mpix. But it needs hi-res lens to show it. FA50/1.4 is very poor until F2 on K10D and F3.5-4 on K3. DA70/2.8 is also quite soft wide open, but with F3.5 it starts rendering fine details well.
Pentax fans who want cheapest DSLR should only look at K20D as a starting point. K10D is for those who like pain and suffering. Especially with manual focus lenses it is punishment as you cannot see the focus through OVF with matte screen. Maybe if you replace it with split circle focusing screen. But why :D K20D solves it :D I love it even for M42 lenses. That Live View simply does the manual focusing easy job.
Haha, I guess I picked the wrong Camera to be my Pentax Starting point. Luckily I did eventually grab a K3. I'll probably eventually grab a K1 if I can find a deal on it!
i prefer the k10d to the d200. how about you?
When it comes to output I am actually a bit happier with the K10D, but when it comes to overall feel I do happen to like the D200. But if I had to choose between the 2 it'd be D200.
My K-10 AF with a Tamron 70-300mm is fast and spot on.
Nice, it's nice to see there are unaffected units! Seems from other comments it was a known issue.
Sure, because it works ok only with lenses that are F3.5+
Anything fast like F2.8 or brighter is just suffering :D
And this applies for any Pentax DSLR up to K3III. Even though it was improved a lot, it still struggles with F1.4 lenses to achieve consistent AF. My K3 does quite good job with lenses like Sigma 17-50/2.8, Sigma 18-35/1.8, Sigma 24-70/2.8, Sigma 70-200/2.8, Tamron 70-200/2.8, Sigma 100-300/4, DA40/2.8, DA70/2.4, DFA100/2.8WR.. but when I attach 35/2 it starts to have inconsistency and FA50/1.4 or Sigma 35/1.4 can reliably do some AF only in live view. Tested K3III with these, ok it is a bit better, but still absolute hell when I compare it to my Olympus EM5III which I also have and if I attach Oly 45/1.8 lens, that thing is simply able to nail focus on eyes without any effort and with very good consistency. Damn even my Oly EPL-6 which is low-end camera has better AF accuracy with fast lens than K3III which cost unbelieveable amount of money for being barely 2015 tech camera still on market today.
The lack of AF micro adjust killed the K10 for me as did the general AF performance ...... however the sensor and the build quality was right up there ..... Jps were poor.
Yeah, it's a bit odd that they basically nerfed their own debug mode to remove it. I just picked up the K2000 digital and was lucky enough to have it on a firmware that was upgradable to the variant that had the debug AF adjustment setting. I will probably do a review of this one after a bit of shooting.
I believe the K-2000 (K-M).
Haha I actually did pick one of those up recently.
I have seven copies of this particular camera model, each camera with its own lens. And the main genetic disease of this camera is the degradation of the mirror unit.
All copies of the Pentax K10D have this problem, most likely this is an engineering error in the design, the focus inexorably misses the target. The solution to this problem may be as follows: constantly adjust the camera to one specific lens, after such a procedure the camera will shoot accurately for some time, but the mirror will also accumulate fatigue during operation, which will lead to inaccuracy of focusing again in the future. Constant adjustment of the autofocus is needed.
The second option: take the camera to an official specialized service center, where the mirror unit will be repaired, after the procedure the camera will shoot sharply, and the problem with the inaccuracy of the autofocus will be eliminated forever, but this is a very expensive repair!!!!
As for the 22-bit chip, you need to understand that the camera shoots data in 22 bits and packs them into a 12-bit RAW file, yes, it's only 12 bits, but they are incredibly accurate!!!
Additionally, the 22-bit analog-to-digital converter is designed to preserve complex shades.
The K10D has an incredibly accurate color gamut of the image, this camera is capable of accurately conveying the surrounding world. But perhaps people with an art education can appreciate this.)))
That's unfortunate with respect to the focus unit. I now have a K2000 digital which I hope will produce similar results. That said I haven't seen any material to state that this camera also uses the same ADC layout.
So I get the idea that you can use the 22 bit output to get a more precise 12 bit output my concern is how advantageous is that really. 10 extra bits is a lot of data to compress. My argument would be that they probably could have gone for using a better set of 12-bit ADCs. Or if they really wanna stick with this method 14 bit or 16 bit Adcs then truncated to 12 would arguably offer very similar results 22bits since I assume they really are using truncating every significant bit after the 13th or 14th since the impact of every bit after would have another order of magnitude lower impact to the affect of packing a 12 bit file.
Odd system. I'm sure they had their reasons.
Unfortunately, a 22-bit analog digital converter is an expensive pleasure that did not justify itself, or rather, the nuances in the shades of color were noticed by only a few.
Therefore, in the future, this experiment in the accuracy of color coverage was abandoned, as well as the CCD technology itself, it is expensive in global production.
Pentax K200D is a lightweight version of the K10D, of course, it no longer has a 22-bit chip, in general, it is a cheaper version of the ten, with the same Sony matrix, the K200D is more reliable in terms of focusing, because the problem with the degradation of the mirror unit occurs only with the K10D model.
Bringing the camera in front of your face every time kinda becomes irritating after some time. Please avoid doing it repeatedly. Overall an excellent and informative review .
Thanks for the feedback. Haha I was using it as a way to skim my script a bit longer, hopefully it'll be less anything moving forward, finally got a teleprompter!