As an on-and-off pro photographer, I needed a professional camera that I could use in places like the Kashmir or Khazakstan, taking professional quality pictures without risking a five to ten thousand dollar piece of equipment. The Pentax K20D works for me, expecially thanks to certain key elements:

1. Size

Since I'm not a studio photographer, and the fieldwork I'm into these days is in some pretty rough places, I wanted a camera that was sturdy and compact and easy to carry. The K20d is significantly smaller than any other pro or semi-pro camera on the market, and it makes a big difference because I can carry it in a shoulder bag along with a sweater and notebook, rather than having to carry a separate camera bag.

2. Control (Features)

The camera has all the shooting control of a Pro Camera. Especially cool is that almost every adjustment has a convenient on-body toggle, meaning I can set up my shots without having to navigate menus.

3. Control (Image quality)

I'm a nuts-and-bolts kind of guy, so I don't like it when a camera thinks its smarter than me. Although a lot of people complain about its lack of noise reduction, that's one of the big reasons I bought it. You see, every digital picture has noise. Cameras designed for shooting pictures of your kids on vacation smear the details away to try to hide it. They don't have less noise, they just make the picture fuzzy until you can't notice the pixels. Once this is done, there is a permanent loss of detail.

The K20D preserves the original image and lets you manually adjust noise reduction, which can be done in most image editing programs like Adobe Photoshop. I understand that not everyone knows how to do this, but don't blame Pentax. If you don't know how to manually edit your photos, then why on earth are you spending a thousand dollars on a camera body? This is not a point and shoot camera. Good point and shoot cameras with SLR-like features are widely available for less than half the price, so think twice if you really need this camera before investing in it.

4. Manual Features and Battery Life

Virtually everything in this camera can be set to manual mode. Manual focus is a toggle switch, so it won't constantly reset itself. Devoted dials on the body adjust the aperture and exposure time. Rather than automatically popping up at random times, the flash will not pop up unless you manually activate it. In full manual mode, it allows you to set up each shot just like with an old SLR. Since that's the only way I shoot, and use the lcd screen sparingly if at all, there is virtually no drain on the battery. Set like this, I have used the camera for up to four weeks, shooting more than a thousand photos without having to charge the battery. I doubled that time by buying the back-up battery extension. The Lithium Ion batteries are awesome.

5. Mirror-up LCD viewfinder

You can lock the mirror up and use the LCD screen on the back as a viewfinder, which is really helpful in framing shots where you can't check the viewfinder. It also reduces body-shake in multi-second exposures, which is handy if you shoot at night.

Now I have heard one, and only one complaint (other than noise reduction) which is that its burst mode is kind of slow at 21fps. I'm not a burst mode photographer, so I wouldn't know. In my opinion, if you want a camera that shoots more than 21fps, then buy a video camera. Apparently this makes a difference for sports photographers - another thing I don't do.

The main reason, though that I bought this camera is to be able to use the Pentax lenses, which I love. But it should be important to remember, as a digital camera, it's sensor is big, but not 35mm big, and this changes the proportions and angles from what a film camera shoots. Thus a 50mm lens from your film Pentax takes photos like a 75m lens - a factor of 1.5, so if you want a normal shot, shoot at around 35mm, and wide angle around 19, etc. A 100mm lense will actually shoot like a 150. This can be handy for using wider lenses with less distortion. I have a fish eye lense that is a little too wide on film but perfect on the Pentax. Also, it only takes auto-exposure compatible lenses, ie, modern ones, so you can't use your golden oldies, like an f1 from the 1960s.

On the whole, if the camera fits your needs, it's worth way more than the price. Hands down my favorite camera in the field of DSLRs.

Very cool camera.

I've shot with a 35mm pentax SuperME since 1988. Then in 2006 made the leap to digital SLR with a Canon Rebel XT (350d). I had great fun with the XT, and still use it as my backup camera.

I've got more serious with my photography and decided to purchase the K20D from a Nikon guy that won it in a photo contest and had no use for it.

WOW- this camera is light years ahead of the 350D! Only thing I am working hard to get around is that I miss canon's warmer colors. The XT takes pictures that are a lot warmer.. and that suits my style very well.

I could of course use Photosho/Lightroom to add some warmth.. but that is besides the point.

I'm very happy with the low light performance, and the 14.6 MP effective range... good stuff!

This is my first DSLR (though by no means my first digital camera: I've had a Powershot G1, Olympus C8080WZ & a Lumix LX-2). I've been refusing to buy a DSLR mostly because I've been annoyed with Canon & Nikon (they seem mostly to be about defining and farming market niches) and Olympus isn't there yet (limitations with Dynamic Range and viewfinder size). I've never owned a Pentax before but the more I read about it, the more I liked it on paper. Now that I've got it, I like it even better. The camera offers tremendous flexibility and control in a very straightforward way. If you're an enthusiastic amateur, want to take beautiful pictures, and don't want to have to spend an arm and a leg to do it, you should absolutely consider buying the K20D.

disclaimer - going to write this in an almost bullet'ed fashion to save time.

reasons why i bought this: -already have old pentax lenses. (work fine with it. 2 lens from 1960)

-14.6 megapixel. i read that its comparable to the 35mm negative in enlargement. that's true. after scanning and old negative at 1200 dpi, the lens captured the same amount of detail. it's pretty amazing.

-weatherproofing. in the past, i've always used very old manual cameras -because they're built like a tank, and will never break. and usually don't need a battery. this is about as close as you can get for under 1500$ i believe. and if i'm spending money, i don't want to buy another for many a year.

-2 knobs. as someone who's never used a camera with "modes", this is perfect. the aperture and shutter are very easy to control, so the picture comes out how you'd like it. also as a plus, the only "modes" this has are useful. aperture priority, shutter priority, manual, hyper program, and sensor priority. no fireworks, portrait, sports.... etc.

-a few plusses i wasn't expecting. double and triple exposures are possible in camera. the anti shake is amazing. i can shoot down to 1/10th of a second with almost no problem.

-when shooting in black and white, you can use in camera "filter" effects. it has an ifra red filter that while isn't a true infra red look, it does have a very high contrast, and seems to pull more tones out of any available scene.

negatives: (kindof)

-at work we use a nikon, the buttons and meter are reversed. so i have to stay used to two setups.

-the preset white balances are close, but not dead-on. the transitions are very subtle, so i don't think anyone who wasn't there will know.. but at the same time i don't mind at all. if i don't adjust the white balance, some images kind of take on a weirdly enhanced look.

-in very low light, the autofocus has a challenge. again, not a problem because it has a manual focus.

- the weatherproofing. the camera is tough as hell, but unless you use a certain lens set (i read) that water could enter where the lens meets the body. (so far i've yet to shoot in a hard rain though)

I have been really happy with this Pentax K20d, and I am impressed with the 16-45 f.4 lens that I bought to go with it. I initially upgraded from a Canon Rebel 300D to a Canon 40D, it was a nice upgrade but the new Canon wasn't bringing me enough enjoyment to be worth the near thousand dollars I paid for it, and I knew it would lead me to buying lenses that would be too heavy and expensive. I sent it back and a moth later decided to buy the K20d. I was impressed with the low price and low weight of Pentax's mid-range lenses. I honestly thought that the camera itself wouldn't be as good as the 40D but I decided to follow the mantra that lenses are what matter and thought I could sell my Canon lenses and get some great Pentax prime lenses, and a wide zoom lens.

I have had the K20d for a over a month, and it is a great camera. It takes the pictures that I want it to take. This is the first digital camera I've been really excited about using and I think it is because it allows me to get the exact exposure I want. The metering won't produce as many decent pictures on full auto as a Canon, because it will always preserve bright highlights. The reviews say that it underexposes, because if you take a picture of a person with the sky behind them, it will consistently keep the sky from blowing out - making the person too dark. At first this means more missed and underexposed shots, but it exposes the same way all the time, and after a week with the camera I found that I always knew how the camera was metering and I now get the exact exposure I want on the first shot far more often than I used to.

The camera also makes manual mode far more useable. I like finding a good exposure for the light and then sticking to that as long as I know I am in similar light. If my photos are looking a little bright or a little dark on the histogram, I change the shutter speed or aperture a click. With the green button, I can be in manual mode but have an automatic resetting any time the light changes, from full sun to shade. Anytime I know that there is a big change in light I hit the green button and get the automatic exposure setting, instead of having to spin the dials.

I like the ability to change what the dials and buttons do in many of the modes. I can customize what the control wheels do in each picture mode. Also note that many reviews say the K20d does not show ISO in the viewfinder (which was a big detractor for me since it was one feature I really liked about the 40D upgrade) but actually you can customize this and show ISO in the viewfinder instead of the number of remaining shots. You can also change ISO in any mode by holding OK while turning the finger wheel.

Negatives: The K20d does produce more noise over ISO 800 than the Canon, but I like that it keeps more detail and I like the grain of the noise far better. However sometimes in very high ISO shots there can be too much chroma noise (colored noise) to do anything but convert to BW, and in two or three pictures I have seen banding in high ISO pictures when I try to push them a stop in my raw converter. Also the auto-focus sometimes hunts in single shot mode in light that the 40D would handle, although I have found that if I put it on AF-Continuous (AI Servo in Canon) it usually finds focus. My understanding is that the Pentax AF system attempts to be more exact, and I think I have noticed that when I am in good light I have less missed pictures due to focus than with the Canon.

This was quite an upgrade from the Samsung GX-1S (clone of *ist DS2) I used previously . Pentax have always put out nice products but haven't really been pushing the envelope until now.

The bad:

Auto white balance is still pretty poor. This has been the case with the other Pentax DSLRs. Certainly not a huge concern--especially if you shoot RAW--but a little annoying considering other manufacturers seem to manage it much better.

It has a tendency to underexpose. Normally I find myself shooting with +0.7EV compensation and rarely do I run into situations where it blows out the highlights with that setting.

The good:

Absolutely outstanding image quality. I have shot everything from 110 to large format in film, and the first thing that struck me looking at some of the K20D shots was that it looks like medium format film: the ultra-smooth gradations and gorgeous tones.

The lens focus adjustment! Both my Pentax SMCPDA 16-45mm Zoom f/4.0 ED/AL Lens for Pentax and Samsung Digital SLR Cameras and Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG Macro Telephoto Zoom Lens for Pentax and Samsung SLR Cameras required some adjustments to compensate for slight front and back focusing. Without this feature I would have been stuck with lenses that would not focus perfectly wide open.

The viewfinder. Large, bright, clear.

TAv mode. I spend 90% of my time shooting in this; Pentax treats ISO like a third variable in addition to shutter speed and aperture. Simple and brilliant. You just adjust the shutter speed and aperture with the wheels and it tells you the ISO so you can make a judgment call on a good compromise between all three.

Clever battery grip design that lets you store a spare SD card and remote.

Nice high ISO performance. I have shots at 5000 that look good, though 6400 is pretty noisy.

Hands-off noise reduction. Default is OFF, which lets you control it entirely in post-processing. Much rather have that than the water color paintings other cameras prefer to output.

Again, AMAZING image quality. I was worried that they were pushing the sensor too far with 14.6mp but they manage to control noise and retain wonderful detail. It does require good optics to get the most out of it, so I would recommend looking at some high quality glass. The 16-45/4 is one of the bargains out there; tack sharp, great color and contrast, and just around $300 new.

If Pentax could do a little better on the white balance and metering it would be absolutely perfect for me. As it stands, it is still an incredible bargain though!

I have been using this camera for several weeks now and I have found the camera to be outstanding. In many ways the camera keeps surprising me with its flexibility and with the resulting image quality. There is only one complaint that I have and that is that all of the information available through the viewer is not also available on the LCD. This is only a minor annoyance. On the other hand many other capabilities keep surprising me. Although the learning curve of this camera [and other cameras of this type] is clearly steeper than a "point & shoot", the flexibility is very much appreciated. [Let me note that "point & shoot" is also an option with this camera, but I usually use the manual modes except when shooting outdoor scenery.] Part of my positive reaction is probably also due to the excellent 18-250 mm ~14x zoom lens that I bought with the camera. This lens takes you all the way from moderate wide angle to long telephoto. This camera does not use a full 35 mm detector but uses a "C type" cmos processor which is approximately 25 x 16 mm and all lens focal lengths should be multiplied by 1.5x to determine the 35 mm equivalent, therefore this lens, combined with this camera, produces an effective focal length of 27-375 mm. The positive of this is that the resulting lenses can be MUCH smaller than for a full 35 mm SLR. One of the really pleasing characteristics is the ability of this camera to take high quality images at high equivalent asa ratings up to 800 asa and with tolerable noise levels at even 1600 or, in a pinch, 3200 asa. This is important to me since I almost never use a flash. Finally, note that the "body only" antishake enables this camera body to use most older model Pentax lenses.

I highly recommend this camera. After a year with the K10D, I recently upgraded to the K20D. The K10D was fabulous and I loved it. But I really wanted the LiveView mode and the higher resolution of the K20D. I was disappointed with LiveView though. It is mostly useless. It is nothing like a typical LiveView on most new compact digital cameras. On the K20D, you flip a lever to activate it, at which point auto-focus no longer works (without pressing the AF button and waiting several seconds while the screen goes black and it refocuses... on "something"). You can manually focus, but that can be a challenge based on the LiveView screen, especially in bright light (and the viewfinder is blank when LiveView is active). After taking a shot, there is a several second "blackout" period where the screen goes black. This is the #1 annoyance in my opinion, and it's the main reason I never use it. You can continue shooting while it's black, but you won't really know what you're shooting. So my use of LiveView is limited to the occasional self-portrait shot where I need to set the camera on the ground. It is sometimes "slightly" useful to frame a shot in that situation. (A flip-out screen would make it much more useful.) So aside from my complaints about LiveView, I do love everything else about this camera. The higher resolution and better quality image sensor is definitely an improvement over the K10D. At the highest resolution, pictures are much larger, of course. (I shoot in RAW, so I bought a 16GB SDHC card, which holds about 600 RAW images.) There are a few other "cool" new features (like a 21 fps low-res shooting mode), but I really haven't found any practical use for them. The picture processing engine on this K20D is faster than the K10D. In summary, if you want the higher resolution, buy the K20D. If 10MP is enough for you and you don't care about novelty features, buy the K10D. But you will be happy with either of these great new Pentax cameras. For the next model, I'm hoping for "real" always-on LiveView and a flip-out screen!

A much bigger jump from K10D than I expected; wonderful color and contrast; A little on the heavy side but very good balance.

I previously owned the Pentax istDl and liked the pictures it produced. The K20D has been a fantastic camera so far. I personally really like having the shake reduction in the body because now all my lenses can take advantage of this. The dust removal has already saved me once where I was shooting and was able to get the dust off immediately without getting out the blower and brush :)

One problem I had was on my Mac Leopard Mac Book Pro I could not get the software that comes with the camera to install. For me this is not a major problem because I use other software that I prefer. I did notice the previous Mac Software update had some patches for the K20D as well as several other cameras.

Here are some examples photos I have taken with the K20D and the older istDL. [...]