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Very easy use and excellent picture quality. The features are quite easy and offer a lot of different possibilities according to what type of photo you aim to take. Video option also interesting, more for leisure. Good value for money !
I have had a Pentax K-r for some time and have been very satisfied with it. Needed a second body and the K-30 came at just the right time bringing some things that I had wished for in the K-r and more while keeping (almost) all the things I like about the K-r. One thing I wished for was faster autofocus which worked in lower light. I cannot say the K-r was poor in that respect but the K-30 is a significant improvement, especially tracking moving subjects with continuous AF. The weather sealing is the other main thing I was looking for - much better than trying to shield the camera with plastic bags or such things. You just shoot away without worrying about anything except to wipe rain drops or sea spray from the lens to avoid blurry images. Even better high ISO / low noise. The K-r was already a top performer in this respect and the K-30 improves further on that. It is perfectly OK to use 800 and even 1600 regularly without any significant noise and 6400 is perfectly usable in most situations though it will start to show noise in dark areas with no texture. The viewfinder is a big improvement over the K-r in terms of visibility of the overlay information (aperture, shutter speed etc). This is one of the few things I was not happy with the K-r as in bright sunlight it was almost impossible to see. The K-30 on the other hand has no such problem and the brightness auto adjusts very well to match the ambient light so it is never too bright or too dim. The second (front) control dial is also a great step forward from the K-r - it makes things that much easier and quicker. The functions of the front and back dials are also fully configurable as well as another two buttons making it very easy to adapt to your needs. One thing I like about Pentax in general is that apart from the advanced things the digital age brought us they also keep all the things that we used to have on film SLRs which seem to be missing on similar priced DSLRs. The K-30 is no exception in this respect. Just about the only thing it lacks in that respect is a mechanical screw on cable release, but the wired and remote ones make up for that just fine. As to what I don't like there is not much but here goes, most important ones first: - no tilting LCD this is perhaps the only serious shortcoming as I had been used to it on other cameras and miss it a lot. - for some odd reason they have removed the phase detect autofocus while in live view mode. I had found this very useful on the K-r and cannot understand why they missed it in the K-30. I think it should be only a software thing so I am hoping they might introduce it in some firmware update. - the user interface in some cases is a step backwards from the K-r, such as switching between display modes in playback and LV requires various keypresses unlike K-r where you just repeatedly press the info button to cycle through - video and live view drain the battery very quickly (with normal shooting battery life is very good) - the only use for which I would not recommend it is shooting video, and not just because of excessive battery consumption. Just keep in mind that this camera is intended to shoot great still pictures and consider video as just something incidental. To summarise: Unless you want to shoot video I don't think you can get a camera as capable as this one, let alone better, without spending much more.Read full review
With this camera you get a lot for your money. Build quality is excellent and the camera body is weather sealed so you can even use it in the rain or damp places without worrying about it getting ruined - obviously you'll need a Pentax WR lens to keep it 100 percent weatherproof. Image quality is excellent and digital noise is virtually non existent at 6400 iso and quite acceptable even at 12800 iso. I decided to get this camera mainly for the glass pentaprism 100 percent view finder (eases manual focusing), focus peaking in live view to also aid manual focusing, low digital noise levels, weather sealed body, in-built shake reduction, twin control dials and excellent image quality. I think it would be difficult to find another camera with the same high specification in the same price range. Perhaps the others have better video options but if you're looking for a great photographic tool, look no further!Read full review