I would Like To..................

Hi all,
I have been taking wedding photos etc now for 25 years useing Nikon Gear, Last year I moved to Canon and was dissapointed with there cameras and the big Q is ???? Pentax K20D what can you advice me? Please..

I don't have a K20D, so can't advise you, but I'd be very interested to hear why you changed from Nikon to Canon, and why you were disappointed with Canon.

Sorry if that sounds like the Spanish Inquisition, but most of us here have a fairly substantial investment in Pentax bodies and lenses, so making brand comparisons is not easy. So it would be great to hear from someone with relatively recent experience of the others.

Well over the years Nikon have been getting more and more expensive and I thourght a change would be good thing for me to do (mid life,54 years old, 2nd divorce etc )Anyway I borrowed a Canon 40D from a mate while my Nikon D2X was in for a service, great photos, sold D2X got a 40D sent it back three times ( Mirror Locking Up ) Now befoe returning to Nikon I am looking around i e, Pentax K20D or Olympus E3 hope this helps you see where I am comming from..

Terry, the K20D is a fantastic camera and the price is good as well. If you can run to taking the 16-45mm lens instead of the kit lens it will be to your advantage in terms of quality. But the pentax kit lens is better than the Canon one, so I'm sure you will be pleased with either choice.

Have used *ist-D and *ist-DS (both 6Mp) and these compared very well against the Canon 20D. Did one with the K10D - that was good too.
Have a K20D arriving tomorrow and a "do" to do in a couple of weeks for a friend.... will let you know!

As John says, the 16-45 is a good step up from the 18-55 kit lens. Then there's the (more expensive) 16-50 f/2.8 (which is weather sealed as well!).

I just love the bokeh and rendering of the Pentax glass
Matt

If you are going to move to Pentax then you'll have the advantage of having the choice of some outstanding optics. All of the lenses, including M42 screw, ever made by Pentax can be used (with some limitiations) on all of their DSLR bodies.

The K20D body has got to be my recommendation. Mine will arrive this week. The K20D has the facility to 'tune' the AF focussing mechanism for each of up to 20 (I think) lenses.

I have a large collection of Pentax glass and I've had some problems with focussing on the K10D. Basically, my tests show that each of my Pentax AF lenses needs a different focus offset. The K20D handles it, the K10D doesn't. The K20D has a 14+Mp CMOS sensor and costs circa £650, the Nikon D3, although it's full frame, has around 12Mp sensor and costs circa £2500.

Hi,
Thanks to all for your info I am trying to make arrangements this week at a Pentax dealer to test drive so to speak a K20D, hopefully take a c/f card, test, and return home and run through L/R2 or DxO in my own time.

Regards to all, Terry.

Good luck - look forward to hearing what you think.

SD card, though, not Compact Flash

I am surpised to hear that... how much out of focus are we talking here and which in particular lenses Peter?

You'll need an SD card, K20D can't use C/F.

Shot a wedding recently with a K20D and was pleasantly surprised when I got a copy of the official photographers shots taken with a Nikon D200, and to put it bluntly, was amazed how much better the K20 was, probably helped by only using DA* & Limited lenses.

If you go for it, would wholeheartedly recommend that you get the following 2 lenses

DA* 16-50 2.8
DA* 50-135 2.8

They are internal focussing, quiet, fast, weather sealed, with terrific image quality, ans even with my bag full of lenses, these were the 2 that got used the most, and to be honest, would have been quite happy with only those 2, on 2 bodies of course!

Good luck, whatever your decision!

Pentax FA 100mm Macro, Pentax DA* 50-135mm (needed a different offset at the extremes of the zoom range), DA* 16-50mm, DA*300mm, Sigma EX DG 180mm. I can't remember the exact offset figures now, but the Sigma needed around -70um as I recall. The others needed anything between +60um and -20um adjustment.

I now have the K10D set up for the DA* 300mm. I'm just waiting for my K20D to arrive to use the remaining lenses properly.

I decided to do all this because I was unhappy with many of my pics as they were out of focus, not by much, but enough.

I may even get a magnifying eyecup to help with manual focus as well because my tired ol' eyes aren't what they used to be. I'd have bought McBrian's if Matt hadn't beaten me to it.

This focus issue is a problem for me, and evidently for Pentax et al. Why else would they build in the ability to make these per lens adjustments? Answer, because it's needed.

There is an additional problem if you have a collection of Sigma glass. Sigma lenses are not uniquely identified, so the K10D/K20D thinks they are all the same lens. They are simply identified as 'Sigma', nothing else.

How do you go about making this 'um' adjustment on K10D please, is it in the manual?

Sorry Lilly, it's not in the manual. Checkout this topic. Everything you need to know is in there.

You'll need the English version of a Russian programme, some test charts, a USB - K10D cable, and lots of time.

The "debug menu" is is supposed to be a facility for service engineers only, so it's not mentioned in the manual. In fact it's not directly accessible if you have the latest firmware installed. There is a Russian software utility that gets you into it.

It's best not to touch the adjustment, though, if you are happy with the focus of most of your lenses. I've found it's all too easy to think there is something wrong with your camera and a lens when really there isn't. Any adjustment of the K10D's AF will affect it with ALL lenses.

I only have an AF problem with one of my lenses - Tamron 17-50 - and it's too variable and random for any adustment of the camera to help anyway.