Solidly Built, Good performer, Unbelievable Price,.

I swore off Pentax years ago for reasons i can no longer remember. I also swore off digital SLRs following my mediocre experience with Canon D300. An OK camera but not worth the price.

Now along comes Pentax with the K100D, Sony, and Panasonic and my mouth started watering. The Panasonic was not even close when it came to pricing and I am not a fan of Sony so what to do. The K100D would not be available for several months but then the ads and impressions of people who owned the *1st DL started appearing and except for a couple of things, one major, one minor it was temptation heaven. I could buy the DL and even lots of lenses and other goodies and trade up to the K100D without much of a penalty. I might even decide having both cameras was a good idea.

The DL is so reminiscent of all the good things about film photography. A sturdy nice feeling camera body, a zoom lens you turn for zooming, a readout on both the top of the camera and in the viewfinder, superb response to all commands, a pretty good menu system although it might be improved a little by moving flash options to a button, and did I say, a price that is well under $500, even under $400 (when you consider the free 1Gb card, printer, full size real tripod, and a camera bag, plus 300 digital pictures) and that is with the Pentax 18-55 lens.

The image quality is great but I must admit that I have yet to try RAW. It can only get better when i go that route.

The construction and build quality is great as are the little tings like a lock on the memory card door, a variety of scene modes that seem to do what they say, You can normally overlook a lot of problems when the price is right, but here there is nothing to overlook.

And oh yes, one more thing, I buy about 3 or 4 digital cameras a year for the class i teach to senior citizens at the local college in Santa monica, CA. I have tried and used a lot of cameras during the last 3 years. As a rule, they all are getting better, more responsive, less shutter lag. The only thing I have also noticed is a decrease in quality on some of these cameras, but NOT on the Pentax *1st DL.