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Pentax K200d
Pentax K200D 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera with Shake Reduction 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens
Price: $579.99.00 with lens, $544.58 body only on 081003 from Amazon
Pros:
- Dust-proof, weather-sealed construction
- SDHC cards
- "Built like a tank"
- 11-point Wide-frame AF
- In-body Shake Reduction and Dust Removal
- Lots of lenses available
- AA Batt'y
Cons:
- A little slow to focus in low light
- Burst rate is low - not a sports camera
- Not a 'hand-holder' ; you'll have to learn the camera.
- Large and Heavy, See Above re: "Built like a tank"
Finding: We purchased a k200d and it is performing beautifully. Rugged, extensible, weather sealed, flexible... OK!
The k200d is a pleasure so far. It is not a small camera, but a joy to use. Extensive comparison between Pentax, Nikon, Sony, Olympus and Canon led me to pick the K200 as my first DSLR and after a few weeks of shooting it's starting to feel comfortable and so very much better than my old Canon point-and-shoot. Comments from a newbies perspective:
The menus are truly a pleasure for older eyes. Choosing the 'large' text only affects the line on which the cursor rests, so as not to overcrowd the display. Both sizes of text are very readable. If you wear or need glasses, you'll like the menus.
There are two menu systems to consider when operating the camera. The 'Fn' button on the right brings up a smaller set of menus for ISO, white balance, and shooting 'mode' (single frame, burst mode, bracketing exposures & etc) and a few other functions that you will be most likely to need to access when shooting. This allows you to dive into your most-needed settings without having to slog around in the larger full menu set. Both menus are well designed to be shallow lists rather than deep trees. Hurray Pentax!
Ergonomics are good for me, a medium-to-large handed lefty. As others mention, the camera is large and no lightweight. Oddly (for such a big camera), the buttons on the 4-way controller ought to be a bit larger but it's very useable as-is.
The kit lens is intended for generic use: it's not meant to be extremely good in low-light situations without flash, and if you're looking for a lot of zoom you'll be buying another lens shortly. It's a compromise, a good lense for most peoples daily usage. There's nothing really 'wrong' with it, but it may not be the only lens you'll want to own. The kit lens uses 52mm filters, while other lenses you eventually buy may use other sizes. You should get a UV filter and a polarizing filter right away and leave the UV filter on most of the time to protect the lens. Either of these filters can make a huge difference in the quality of your pictures, with the polarizing filter giving you the ability to 'dial out' glare and reflected or scattered light.
You Will Read The Fine Manual. The Product Description section on Amazon that claims the K200D is 'as friendly as a simple point-&-shoot' is quite a stretch of the truth. The manual is pretty good, luckily. Your best bet might be to set the camera up on a tripod indoors and actually work through any section that confuses you. Hint: learn about using Aperture Priority and take series of shots that use f-stop to adjust depth of field. I'm sure this camera works great as a point-and-shoot but that's probably not why you're spending this much; save the auto modes for things like urban photography where you're not always sure what's going to pop up next.
The USB connection works fine connecting to my Asus F3J series laptop running Debian Linux, with the camera appearing as a hot-plugged USBFS file system. Hurray for Linux!
There are two 'Cons' against buying this camera. There is no live view through the LCD, though there is a 'preview' mode that displays a frozen frame. So if you want to frame shots by looking through the LCD this might NOT be the camera for you. I shoot through the viewfinder at all times so this is fine for me, but might really disappoint someone who expects to be able to see their shots lined up in the LCD and changing as they move the camera.
The second possible issue is the USB connector. The end that plugs into the camera is a sort of micro-mini d-shaped connector. The tiny jack on the camera is one exception to the 'built like a tank' design of the k200, and I'm not sure how it'll hold up. It's so small that it's hard to tell when plugging in the cable which orientation is correct. Maybe other cameras are no better, but I would have liked to see a larger, more robust connecter here even if it had to be proprietary. If you plan to remove the memory card when pulling your images this won't be an issue.
I expect this camera to keep me confused and entertained for years, and feel very pleased and proud to have chosen it over other great entry-level DSLRs like the Olympus Evolt series, the Sony A series and the various Nikon D models. Four AA batteries, rugged weather sealed construction, a reasonable price and a huge, easily legible LCD made this camera a winner for me.