Last 6 months have been rather tumultuous for me. When my Film SLR broke down, I was devastated at the prospect of losing it and spent the best part of 3 months running to and fro Nikon service centre trying to save a piece of history. But this was only the tip of the iceberg. The real hard part was that of the decision to branch out of Nikon, the system I had been using all along for the last decade or so, in favor of Pentax.
Pentax traditionally had a great following in India during the film days. The Spotmatic was, and still remains one of the most frequently used cameras in classrooms for teaching Photography. However, come digital age, Pentax pulled out of the country and like many other Companies (read Yamaha) made the Indian public literally starve for a taste of its class leading products. As on date, it still doesn’t retail its digital line of cameras in India and may not do so in the near future.
The Pentax K-r is supposed to be an entry level camera but its performance will have you think otherwise. At half the price of the Nikon D7000 (and I have been using the latter for almost a year and a half now) it rivals and methinks in some situations (low light and multiple exposures for example) even bests the picture quality of D7000, a camera widely regarded as the best cropped sensor Nikon DSLR available today.
For 500$ the K-r offers a most compelling mix of features that even pros will find useful. The picture quality (color depth) as also high ISO(/low light) performance is stellar and will only be beaten by hardly a couple of cameras, one of them being the K-5, Pentax flagship DSLR that retails at about 900$ at the time of writing. The K-r can shoot at 6 fps which makes it the only non-pro camera which an enthusiast will likely use for shooting action/wildlife/children. The camera has less startup delay than most of its competitors and a minimal shutter lag (105ms) something which even pro cameras don’t offer (if you have missed the "decisive moment" in the words of Bresson because of shutter lag, you’ll know how important this is). If you are into shooting handheld at high ISOs, this is the best DSLR you can have for the money.
Pundits will tell you that a camera is only as good as the lens in front of it. And this is where the Pentax system really outshines the rest of the DSLR pack. Pentax glass has a cult following. The lens coatings on SMC (Super Multi Coated) Pentaxes are supposed to be the best in the business for controlling aberrations, flare and ghosting. If you could ever see a bane turn into boon, this is it. Because Pentax doesn’t have a presence in India, all the old Pentax glass sells at a huge discount. I got myself a near pristine copy of the SMCP 50mm 1.2, the legendary pinkish-red piece of glass that can turn night into day, for a paltry 2000 bucks !!
Pentax glass isnt the only draw. There’s much more to the system than their glass. The company has had a history of encouraging innovative/creative features in their products, including :-
(1) In body stabilisation - which means you dont need to spend a fortune buying lenses which are VR/IS enabled. For focal lengths between 10-300 mm the in-body stabilization works as well as the in-lens stabilization offered by Nikon/Canon does, giving you a 3 stop advantage if the holding technique isn’t too faulty.
(2) oddball focal lengths/f-stops on lenses e.g., a 21mm f/3.2 lens instead of the usual 20mm f/2.8. What this does is drastically reduce weight and size (and often the pricing) without sacrificing f-speed too much. Pancakes are the future and once again Pentax along with Olympus has taken the lead.
(3) Focusing on Manual lenses - Pentax is the only company which has made all its lenses compatible with all its cameras. Even M42 lenses can be mount using a cheap 2$ adapter. So you could use a 30 year old manual lens costing of a similar automatic lens and get the same results at 1/8th the price if you are willing to focus manually. You’ll get the benefit of in body stabilization and TTL metering just the same.
The drawbacks - The power department is perhaps the only significant count where the k-r falls behind its "pro competitors" (read Nikon D7000 and Canon 7D). Typical of light weight entry level DSLRs, the K-r has a battery which is rated for ~450 shots and may actually last even less since it doesn’t have a 2nd LCD screen and one is often forced to use the primary screen, resulting in a unnecessary drain on the battery. The saving grace is good quality OEM batteries are available at 5-10$ on ebay and can save the day. The even bigger saving grace is that the camera can take on AA batteries with an adaptor (costing 3-4$) that dramatically increases the battery backup options.
The second issue which might be important to many users is that being a entry level cam, there is no second dial for f-stop/shutter speed adjustments and neither a second LCD on top, as mentioned earlier. So every time you need to check the settings you might have to press the ’info’ button and take a look at the screen.
Other "desirables", if I may put it that way, is the lack of continuous autofocus for video mode (which is of importance if you plan to use your DSLR for videos, something which most people seldom do), a smaller viewfinder compared to the pro models and pentamirror instead of pentaprism (making the viewfinder a bit darker than it would otherwise have been) and the hunger for evermore pixel count (12 Mpx is still a great pixel count if you ask me).
I suppose, the biggest argument against getting a Pentax in India is the warranty, support and serviceability of its products. However, while choosing Nikon/Canon over Pentax please bear in mind that the "warranty" offered by the two companies is of very little practical use because (a) it’ll expire after a short time, say a year and (2) even during the warranty period Indian technicians neither have the skill nor the wherewithal to service small repairs, forget more serious ones. If your Canon/Nikon camera develops a snag, it’ll likely be sent to Bombay and from there to Singapore or some other place to get it mended, leaving you camera-less for at least a few weeks, probably even months. Most of the actual servicing in India is still done by semi-qualified technicians outside the companies.
The good news is sites like ebay and amazon now make it possible to buy Pentax products, sometimes at higher prices (because of the import duty) and sometimes at roughly the same price (when its sent as a gift by the seller). Which means if you do your calculations and ordering properly, coupled with a modest lens, say a sigma 17-70 2.8-4.5 (costing $250), the Pentax k-r gives you one hell of a world beater camera combination at the price of ~800$. In fact if you are willing to spend a bit more you could get the recently released K-30 for about ~800$ (body only) which will hold its own against any cropped sensor DSLR today.
Get a K-mount ! I assure you, you wont regret it !!