Full Review

I bought the Pentax *ist DS wanting a digital SLR compatible with my existing selection of K, KA and KAF lenses. With this model now discontinued in the USA, it can be bought for around $500 with the 18-55 mm kit lens - I paid about $530.

Overall I am very pleased with this purchase. The camera is easy to use and menus are pretty intuitive. The standard kit lens is pretty good, especially for the price.

The pentaprism viewfinder is bright and makes manual focusing a lot easier than in other competitive models - a definite benefit for my use. The viewscreen is replaceable and there are aftermarket screens that reportedly offer even better performance.

Operating speed is good, although not as fast as one or two competitors. Autofocus seems to be the slowest component here.

The *ist DS provides full support for KAF lenses with auto exposure and focusing as well as exposure control with KA lenses with manual focusing. Aperture-priority exposure control with Pentax K lenses is supported in manual mode, but only as a two-step process - not as seamless as in the 35mm cameras such as the old Pentax ME I still use.

Some users have complained about the quality of JPEGs produced by the in-camera processing. With a few tweaks to the standard settings, I have not found this to be an issue. Shooting in RAW mode does produce excellent images, far better than you might imagine for a 6.1 megapixel sensor.

One non-Pentax lens jammed in the camera and took some work to remove. This is apparently more common with lenses also compatible with the Ricoh mount that have a spring-loaded grounding pin not present on other lenses. Prior warning of this issue would have been appreciated!