The bulky K10D has more in common with Nikon's D80 than the other sub-£500 digital SLRs. It bristles with buttons and a pair of command dials, and has a backlit passive LCD for settings. The ISO speed takes a couple of button pushes to reach, but a sensitivity-priority mode places this on one of the command dials for direct access.
Image stabilisation is built
ADVERTISEMENT
into the sensor, a feature that Canon and Nikon's digital SLRs have yet to offer. Continuous mode is the fastest here, with a high-capacity buffer enabling it to shoot 59 top-quality JPEGs at 3fps before our SD card slowed it down to 2fps. The 11-point auto-focus was a little slow in low light but produced very few out-of-focus shots.
Our image quality tests failed to reproduce the lack of crisp detail we saw when we first reviewed the K10D (What's New, Shopper 237). Understated noise reduction meant that ISO 1600 shots were a bit noisier than those from the Canon and Nikon cameras but tended to be sharper. However, JPEG compression artefacts were sometimes visible in complex textures, so it's worth shooting in RAW mode. Colours were rich on automatic settings but the dynamic range was disappointing, clipping highlights in high-contrast scenes. Ultimately, none of these image quality issues makes a serious impact on this extremely capable camera.
