Why Pentax?

First thing I would like to say is that you do not really need a professional (D)SLR to take good pictures. Of course it might help but you can learn a lot with your current camera. If you do not know how to use your camera you can have the most expensive gear and it will be just a waste of time.

I used to take pictures for years with point & shoot cameras from Olympus. I cannot blame them because they always served me well, taken a hell of a beating all around on my travels or work, were easy to carry and the pictures were great straight from the camera!

A couple years ago I thought it might be quite good to upgrade to DSLR and hopefully open a door to a different level of photography.

I think every photographer went through the process of choosing the right brand and the right gear for their needs. There is really a huge portfolio of affordable products these days and it might be quite difficult to look all the gear and make the decision on a system one wants to use for next number of years.

This took me around 6 months of research and deciding…

For me, Nikon was my favourite, it made it to my finals just because there is something about their IQ and the rendering of the pictures straight from a camera.

So why did I go for Pentax then? Well, for a number of reasons:

1.    They came up with advanced K-x model with good IQ and the right form of marketing

2.    Wide portfolio of cheap and quality glass (lenses) – with their PKA mount you can in theory to mount any old Pentax lenses on your DSLR what is pretty unique compared to other brands. You will get usually only manual focus and you need to set aperture manually but I do not really mind as I am always on a budget when buing stuff. J At the end of the day after all the research I understood that the camera itself is only capturing the moments coming through the good or bad lenses, so lens is the key here. The reason why I upgraded to DSLR is that you can change the optics and get a different view or feel to the pictures. Of course, camera does not take pictures – people do, so you have to use it the right way and put your own “signature” on it.

3.    Image stabilization in camera – now this is bad and good thing at the same time. If you want to use non-stabilized (old) lenses it is quite handy to have in-camera stabilization system instead – that makes sense. Although after a couple of hundreds of shots I worked out how Pentax SR actually works and how to use properly. And even then it is not as effective as I wish it could be… But everything comes with a price, right?

4.    Supporting the poor. :) Not sure why but I have a tendency to support a weaker or smaller party (I am not saying that Hoya or Pentax are poor brands) but I just kinda liked Pentax quirky approach and their market strategy.

5.    Price for a combo with lenses

So Nikon has lost the battle only because of stabilized and a bit more expensive lenses and the price in general. It would be probably even harder these days with new Nikon models launching and offers on DSLR bodies and lenses but still – choose whatever you like to put your hands on, go to the store, try how it feels and then make the decision!

So the gear in my backpack currently includes Pentax K-x with 18-55 and 55-300mm zooms, Sigma 10-20, A50mm f1.7mm and Cosina 100mm macro. That should keep the fun coming for a while.