Great deal for the person hunting down their first or backup DSLR

I've been hunting for a good DSLR for a while, being fed up with compacts and 'super zoom' cameras. In fact my last camera (and my secondary to this one) is a Kodak P850, which I was very happy with, but it has it's problems.

Jumping into the DSLR family has definatly fixed the problems I was having... more control, faster frames, clearer pictures, better flash, better expandibility.

The choice to go with the K100D was an easy one for me, and almost made considering I inherited my parents old Pentax MX SLR and many acompanying lens. Buying into the system instead of having to start a new system was the biggest thing...

However, for the price I would have gone with the Pentax anyways. With the K100D your getting a very good SLR for the hobbist. The Shake Reduction is a life saver, and the smaller size is great for portability. The flash has a great range, and the included lens (mine came with a 18-55mm) is not all that bad... I'm keepin mine in the box seeing as how I like my old Pentax 55mm lens better.

The K100D has backwards compatibility with all of Pentax's classic K-mount lenses. This includes thrid party lenes, like those from Vistek (did I spell that right?). With a slight modification (taking the black metal ring out of the mount of the lens) made these lens mount with ease.

The buffer is pretty large for this camera, seeing as how I'm using it @ 5mp high quality jpg mode, I can get a lot of shots on there quickly. I normally keep this thing in drive mode since I shoot a lot of Skateboarders and rock bands. its nice that the buffer allows me to get in about 20 shots before it starts jamming up. even then the buffer clears fast enough that frame rates are still better than my Kodak P850.

I find that running in 6mp mode/raw formats is a little much for me. As the higher resolution just makes it more frustrating to work with later on anyways... I find not many people can truley appreciate a 6mp file unless they got a big ass monitor with a decent vid card powering it.

So far my only complaint with this camera is the battery time. Off the initial batterys I got in about 30 shots before the camera died. Oh well...cruddy batteries. I then loaded in some Duracell batteries...but I only got 200 shots out of them.... wtf? I usually keep the camera in standby mode.

I found that by resetting the camera numerous times I could squeeze another ten shots out before it gave me the battery depeleted signal again...I could restart the camera 10 times before the camera actually died.

Since I got me some NiCD rechargeables.

Great photos, amazing sharpness, everything you want out of a camera. It won't fix lack of experiance, but it will definatly get you on your way!