The Pentax K10D is a Disappointing Letdown

(This is just a draft entry for the purpose of experimenting with the formatting options of blogger.com)

My, my…what a disappointment; I was rooting for the Pentax K10D digital SLR and hoping that its vaunted 22-bit analog-to-digital conversion would make a lot of difference in image quality.

But no, that 22-bit jazz did not seem to matter at all. DP Review has put the K10D on its paces and examined it thoroughly, and the Pentax entry-level (actually their top model) DSLR disappoints where it matters most: image quality.

A camera has one and only one purpose in life: to take pictures. If you don’t take good pictures, you’re not a good camera. If you fail in image quality, all your 72 seals to fend off dust and water will not count. If your image quality does not measure up, your Shake Reduction will not rattle the competition. If you fail in image quality, you are a failed camera.

If it’s any consolation, DP Review gave the K10D a Highly Recommended rating, but just barely. While it delivers smooth clean images with good color and tone, the photos are not as crisp as it should have been.

Notes DP Review’s Phil Askey, “Either a poorly implemented demosaicing algorithm or a strange choice of sharpening parameters means that while the K10D’s JPEG images have plenty of ‘texture’ they can lack the edge sharpness we’re used to seeing from semi-pro digital SLR’s. Pentax may well have been aiming for a smooth film-like appearance but I at least feel that the inability to tweak this out by increasing sharpness is a mistake.”

To be able to produce good crisp images you have to shoot in RAW, and then tweak the image in Adobe Camera RAW or another third party converter because the supplied converter produces similar results to the camera.

Is there a way to save this very promising camera? Maybe it’s just the in-camera software that needs a little tweaking. Perhaps Pentax engineers should go back to the drawing board and fine-tune its algorithm?

Please, Pentax. I’m still rooting for you.

[Via: DPreview.com]

(DRAFT ONLY)