Labs

The Pentax K100D has been around for a while now and is a well-built, easy-to-use DSLR that has clearly been designed with the user in mind. It does only have a 6.1-megapixel sensor but remember that restriction doesn't make a huge difference to the print sizes you'll be able to achieve.

Using the Pentax is a breeze, with well laid-out buttons and dials. The LCD menu does look a little less polished than the Nikon and Canon offerings. The 2.5in screen is bright and clear, though. The K100D has an in-built shake reduction feature, too, which adds to the overall value of the kit. In comparison to the Nikons and Canons of this world, the

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Pentax is noisy and heavy but it does feel well constructed.

It's fair to say that the K100D was let down by its white balance evaluation in our colour test. It is a tricky test with a mixture of daylight and electric bulb but the wall behind our subjects was white, and under these harsh conditions the Pentax rendered it a rather muddy yellow. Of course, you could fix this with software but we wanted a camera that needs as little post-processing as possible from the outset.

The punchy saturated green of our Kermit The Frog toy was made a drab and lifeless shade and the other whites in our images not the pure brilliant tone that exists in real life. Skin tones were natural and well produced with very pleasing levels of detail but the K100D found its files more towards the 'could do better' end of the scale than the 'gold star' end.

The K100D is a camera with much going for it, but its performance here is less than perfect and cheaper compacts have outdone it. It is easy to use - of that there's no doubt - and it does have an anti-shake feature built in, but it's heavy, and noisy when focusing. In isolation we could probably get to like the Pentax K100D but up against this stiff competition it loses out.