Cheap K10D or Cheaper GX10 ?

My teenage son wants to upgrade from his D70s to a K10D (and join the Pentax fold, hurrah). We're looking at three options (all with kit 18-55 mk1) :
- used K10Ds selling on eBay ~£350 to £370
- new K10D ~£450 (Argos or Calumet)
- new GX10 ~£350 (ABC or Park, inc £50 cashback)

Which would you recommend? He's a cash strapped teenager, so why would he not go with the GX10?

Do I understand correctly that the K10D was "silently upgraded" during its production life, possibly the autofocus system? If this is true, what was upgraded, what age used K10D would we have to look at to be sure to get an upgraded model and did the GX10 receive the same upgrades?

David,

Have you considered a refurbished K10D from Chris at SRS Microsystems?

Good luck and welcome to Pentax to your boy!

Yes we did, but were too late. As of Friday 19th June SRS had sold all their refurbished K10Ds.

Thanks though, it did seem like a good deal.

The upgrades to which you refer were firmware related, all K10D's that left the factory came with firmware version 1.0 (except the limited edition GP model which had v1.3) so whether you bought the first K10D to come off the line or the last, you'd have the same camera.

Samsung weren't as quick as Pentax in releasing firmware upgrades but I believe the two cameras eventually ended up with the same feature list as each other (except the Pentax has the choice of two RAW file formats and the Samsung is .DNG only).

Either camera would be fine, the differences between them are mainly cosmetic and the GX10 can hold it's own against the K10D in terms of performance, however, the Pentax version is likely to retain a higher second hand value by virtue of being the better known "photographic" brand - whether that's an important consideration only you (and your son) can decide.

Good luck!

Not just firmware, apparently. There are hardware differences. I've read that the later model revisons produced images with lower noise. There may be other slight differences as well.

The one I got from Argos a few months is an early version (as I can tell with the PhotoMe program). Trouble is, stocks elsewhere are very limited now and you won't know what version you're getting anywhere.

The K10D has the option of the smaller PEF RAW files instead of just the larger DNG format that the Samsung provides. See this thread for opinions on the importance of the matter: https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8173 .

You learn something new every day!

I'm guessing mine's probably an early one but I can't say that I've ever been bothered by excessive noise - even at ISO1600 I find the results quite useable and if I could rewind time I'd happily buy the same K10D again.