subject: Review Pentax K x 18 55mm 55 300mm Kit [print this page] After many years of Point and Shoot compacts (Minolta S414, Canon S400, S410, Fuji F10, F30) and Ultra Zooms (Panasonic FZ18) I finally bit the bullet and bought the Pentax K-x Dual lens kit DLSR from Amazon. After a couple of weeks of wait, it was delivered much ahead of the original 1 month delivery period and at a great price too! Initially I was using the camera on the Auto mode as that is what I usually used in the P&S cameras. And was I terribly disappointed! For several weeks, I even thought that perhaps the particular one I had possibly was a defective unit - pictures were blurred and soft and much inteferior to my P&S camera! And then I decided to stop being lazy and started using the Program, Shutter priority etc. modes. What a world of difference! The photo quality never ceased to wow me from then on! If you are aware of shutter speeds, aperture settings and iso etc. and have used a Film SLR in the good old days, then it is a breeze to move to a DSLR. In my case, I did learn photography on a Pentax ME Super film camera, so these settings were not new to me. Used in the correct modes with the right lenses, the K-x can give serious competition to even professional APS-C frame DSLRS. The level of picture clarity and depth of colors is simply amazing! If you like low light photography and are on a budget i.e. cannot invest in the Full Frame DSLRS, then just go for this camera - it has amazing low light clarity and you can easily use it through 3200 iso without problems. Finally, compared to other DSLR's, the K-x is much smaller and lighter - both these aspects were very important to me as I did not wish to lug around a tank on my neck! Go for it - you cannot go wrong with this one!
I have had my Kx for about 3 weeks now and taken about 200 shots. As most reviewers have stated for the money it's a great value. The one and only flaw that was a shocker are the sounds it makes when in "auto foucs" and shutter noise. If you can live with manual focus or the noise isn't an issue this camera is a great buy. I am realy impressed with the low light pictures. Read the other reviews I have nothing more to add. They were my deciding factor before I got mine.
