Pentax K20D Preview

Having risked being left behind by the speed at which the 'affordable' DSLR market developed, Pentax showed how serious its intentions were with the K10D, a semi-pro-level DSLR with a features list to humble the competition at a very attractive price. Having added so many bells and whistles to the K10D, it's not much of a surprise to find that its successor, the K20D, is essentially a refinement of the same design. But, even though it can't quite boast the same novel-feature-count as its predecessor, the K20D still finds room for some interesting changes.

The stand-out feature of the K20D is undoubtedly its 14.6MP CMOS sensor, co-developed with the giant South-Korean conglomerate Samsung. The companies claim the design reduces the amount of circuitry around each photosite, offering a similar light-sensitive area, per pixel, to a 12MP chip of conventional design. The other major change is the addition of a live-view mode that provides a zoomable, live preview directly from the imaging sensor.

Pentax has also tweaked the default settings of the camera's JPEG output (our biggest gripe about the K10D), so does the K20D offer enough to play with the big boys?

Key feature changes

The feature changes between the K10D and K20D are subtle but this is mainly because there was little that the K10D needed adding to its pretty formidable features list. The changes that have been made are:

• 14.6 megapixel CMOS sensor
• Live view mode
• 2.7 inch 230,000 dot LCD (up from 2.5 in. 210,000)
• Burst mode, allows 21fps shooting at 1.6MP resolution (up to 115 frames)
• Dynamic range expansion mode
• X-sync flash socket
• Image parameter settings (Custom image), enhanced
• Color adjustable LCD monitor
• Compare mode in playback
• 32x zoom in playback
• Adjustable levels of High ISO noise reduction
• Up to ISO 3200 (extendable to 6400), rather than ISO 1600
• Dust alert for locating particles on the sensor
• Pixel mapping to identify and correct for dead pixels
• AF fine-tuning (for all lenses or up to 20 chosen lenses)
• Additional shooting modes (interval shooting and focus trap modes)

source dpreview