Pentax K100D – The only digital camera that I have any affection for

I’ve never really been enthusiastic about digital cameras, seeing them as an necessary inconvenience, I just use them when I need colour photos these days. I do get restless with cameras, needing a regular change, so nothing seems to stay for very long. I’ve owed a lot of film and digital cameras over the years! After using digital cameras by makers such as Sony, Canon, Lumix, Kodak, Fuji and Leica the only digital camera that I have any affection for is the Pentax K100D.

Sensor development in the early 2000’s was moving apace with more pixels and larger sensors become available every 6 months or so, the pixel race was on. I had quite a few of the compact digital cameras since they became widely available around 2003, changing them as the quality and pixel count increased.

The Pentax K100D was my first digital SLR bought in 2007, when I thought 6 megapixel APC size sensors had come of age, with offerings from Pentax, Nikon and Canon vying for customers with similar specs and image quality. Unusually the camera was powered by four AA batteries, NiMh rechargeable batteries are recommended by Pentax but not supplied. Back in 2007 I had two sets of NiMh batteries, Nikon and Canon were using rechargeable lithium batteries which would have been better. I bought the K100D simply because I had the Pentax Spotmatic as my film camera and a low price offer also helped the purchase.

Some photos taken in 2007.

My partner asked me what I would like for a birthday present this year. I had difficulty in thinking of anything until it occurred to me to have a look on an auction site for K100Ds. The usual selection from rubbish to overpriced was on offer, however a boxed nearly complete example for just £60 seemed to fit the bill. Really not a lot of money.

This Pentax K100D does not seem to have been used very much and is in very nice condition. A wipe over of the body, dusting the mirror and focusing screen, cleaning the front and back lens elements was all that was needed. The non slip rubber backing on the neck strap was rubbing off and was easy to remove. I mounted a 1gb SD card, enough for 345 images in jpeg! Image size is just 3008 x 2000 pixels, this gives a maximum size of A4 when printing at 300ppi, which back in 2007 was all I wanted. I popped in the AA batteries and took some photos in the garden, the processing is quite slow around 4 seconds before you can chimp. Straight out of the camera the photos were in focus and well exposed.

So what’s the Pentax K100D like to shoot these days? It’s quite a big chunk but fits in the hand well. The shutter gives a good loud clonk when it fires. The viewfinder is fine even when wearing glasses although the shooting information at the bottom of the viewfinder is hard to see but you do have a clear lcd top screen near the shutter button with all the info you need. The adjustment controls are easy to use, allowing you to adjust aperture, shutter and ISO quickly. Back in 2007 Pentax suggested that if you use alkaline batteries you could only expect 80 shots out of the batteries. This time I loaded Energiser Max Plus alkaline and after 200 or so shots they are still showing full. The colour of the images always impressed me, very life like. Rich deep red however can present a problem to the CCD sensor with high saturation and loss of detail. The detail can quite easily be recovered by reducing red saturation.

ISO noise, 200 & 400 are clear of noise, 800 it’s just noticeable, 1600 more obvious, 3200iso very obvious but still useable if you don’t crop and your struggling for light. You could use ISO 200 to 800 without any worries. RAW and JPEG are offered but the results are very similar so I stuck to JPEG to make life easy.

The kit lens is a PENTAX-DA L 18-55mm F3.5-5.6AL. This can produce excellent photos if the extreme wide of the zoom is avoided and you keep to between f8 to f16. Focusing is quick. Camera shake can be reduced with the built in shake reduction system which uses a moving sensor rather than a lens element. This is useful as a lot of the older Pentax-F lenses can all benefit. Back in 2007 I also had a used Pentax-F 80-200mm f4.7-5.6 lens, these F lenses were cheap to buy and still are, my bandstand sunset photo was taken with this lens.

One unadvertised feature of the K100D is the ability to shoot Infra Red images with the appropriate IR filter. It’s CCD sensor is very sensitive to IR. This image was shot in colour then converted to B/W.

Some photos taken recently at our local steam railway, the East Lancashire Railway.
ISO is 400 and 800.

The Pentax K100D is as much fun to shoot now as I remember it was in 2007. Pentax brought out a slightly updated K100D called the K100D Super, the only difference I can find is the ability to use SDHC memory cards and you can set the sensor to shake itself every time you turn on the camera to help with dust removal off the sensor. The K100D does the job with ease and in it’s day it was well up to the quality of the Canon and Nikon offerings.

Thanks for reading and perhaps these photos will generate your interest in trying out ‘vintage’ digital cameras.

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