[Jan-61]

No I stil have it!!

I bought mine in 2009 with the grip, Still a fine tool. Compact and yet solid -- as it should be to Pentax, IMO.

Here some shots at low light, high ISO with SMC Takumar 4/50 and SMC-K 1.8/85 on it. Indeed hand-shot!
I use a Katzeye focussing screen, and an enlarging eyepiece. Very worth while!









Jan.

[fourfivesix]

The k200d is my first and only dslr and I love it, I take most of my pictures outdoors so the low light issues dont really bother me that much. I won my first competition using the k200 and a smc a 50mm mf lens a few weeks back aswell. Its got me back into photography after a long break.

Heres my winning image

[Mohawk]

Came across this thread as I just sold my spare K100Ds with kit lens and bought a mint k200D body at the same price. I did consider a used k10D/k20D, but wanted a compact camera that is also weather sealed. I also looked at a k-7/k-5 but these were well beyond my budget.

The 200D now lives in my work messenger bag with my DA40. Wherever I am, the 200D+DA40 is. While I really liked the k100Ds, the build quality of its replacement is a notch above.

I now use the 200D as a third body in shoots. Not a bad return for zero outlay - sweet!

In terms of IQ... hard to put a finger on it, but it's got that 'lil bit of punchiness (micro contrast?) like the k100Ds at low ISO. But with more res. I'll get a bit more of a handle on it as I take more shots, I suppose.

[john5100]

Shot the Judas Priest show on Saturday night. Great show and the K200D and Da 12-24mm F4 performed great!

[KGH]

I still use my K200d almost everyday. As a portrait and wedding photographer I feel the color is fantastic, and the detail for the sensor size is awesome. My first dslr was the istDS, and was so impressed with the K200d, I sold the other to get the new camera and grip. My weekday job is volume photography and the company I work for has always had Canons, starting with 10d and all the replacements up to my current 50d. My wife sometimes assists me in weddings and she has to use my Canon while I selfishly keep my k200d. Lately I have noticed clients are noticing how much better the Pentax images look than the Canon, and sometimes they question the difference. Even this past week one lady mentioned as an aside "how the color in the church looked so different from one side than the other" which was from the two different cameras( and yes I did my best to match them in post). So I think my long term solution is to buy a second K200d, but only wish the sensitivity was extended, although after looking at some of the photos in this thread of push processing the iso, I might can get around this. I also wish the prices on the used market were lower. It means that my camera is well thought of though, since prices are over half the price I paid for it in 2008. Now I'm getting even more from my Pentax as I have invested in a Metz flash and am learning the ins and outs of wireless p-ttl. I just keep more and more excited about my almost perfect camera.

[Weber]

One of my friends still uses it every day. Does airplane photography with it.

He's one of the folks who truly live by the maxim "spend your money on the glass, not the body."
Still shooting with his K200D, but with DA* lenses.

[timh]

Agreed about colour, I've been shooting with the K-5 for well over a year now and although with some custom raw conversion presets I can get close to the vibrance of the old K200D images, I can't make it quite as good.

Interesting that you're shooting weddings with it, while elsewhere in the forum there are regularly threads with people insisting they need something even better (full frame, ten squillion point AF, etc) than a K-5 for weddings.

I think used prices are high because people like me can't quite bear to sell them - mine's been on loan to a friend for a few months.

[Belcik]

I miss the colour... I have passed it to my wife's sister. If it had better ISO performance and if there were Ni-MHs @ 1,5V - I would never gave it away. As it was mentioned, the colours in low iso are tremendeus.... Even if I used it occasionally, I still miss it - first DSLR.

[fg-one]

Agreed about colour, I've been shooting with the K-5 for well over a year now and although with some custom raw conversion presets I can get close to the vibrance of the old K200D images, I can't make it quite as good.

Same here. I struggled for a while in LR3 to get proper skin tone out of K5 raw files. I still find the K5 images need more tweaking than the ones from the K200D. They also need more sharpening applied to them.

Interesting that you're shooting weddings with it, while elsewhere in the forum there are regularly threads with people insisting they need something even better (full frame, ten squillion point AF, etc) than a K-5 for weddings.

Maybe they want to have the bride printed full-size.

I think used prices are high because people like me can't quite bear to sell them - mine's been on loan to a friend for a few months.

I bought mine second hand for 200 euros. It had 2200 clicks. I guess I was lucky. I will probably sell the K5 and keep the K200D whenever I buy a new camera, in a distant future.

[JohnBee]

No I stil have it!!

I bought mine in 2009 with the grip, Still a fine tool. Compact and yet solid -- as it should be to Pentax, IMO.

Here some shots at low light, high ISO with SMC Takumar 4/50 and SMC-K 1.8/85 on it. Indeed hand-shot!
I use a Katzeye focussing screen, and an enlarging eyepiece. Very worth while!

Nice shots!
Did you use Topaz Denoise on these by any chance?

I miss the colour... I have passed it to my wife's sister. If it had better ISO performance and if there were Ni-MHs @ 1,5V - I would never gave it away. As it was mentioned, the colours in low iso are tremendeus.... Even if I used it occasionally, I still miss it - first DSLR.

I'm willing to believe that there's a special something associated with someones first camera. I felt the same way about my K200D which I gave to my sister and my wife also feels the same way about her first K100.

Having said that, I had the chance to adjust my K20D colors, contrast curve and sharpening to match the K20D and carried that over to the K-5 in Camera Raw. Which has worked rather well for me. - However other people can accomplish the same using the RAW files from imaging resource also.

Hope this helps.

[Ron_Man]

I sold mine towards buying the K-7 and a K-x... I definitely miss it. I think the color settings out of the camera by default were very "Pentax like". For some reason I just can't say the same thing about my K-7 or K-5. Don't get me wrong, the K-5 has good color renditions... but the K200d was a little gem with colors that were very appealing.

I sometimes think about buying another one but I don't see myself needing a 3rd body at the moment. I definitely do not miss the questionable low light performance nor the hit-or-miss ISO performance neither. My K100ds even had better ISO performance lol.

[Marc Sabatella]

SInce this thread has been re-awakened, here are a few recentish shots:





And for those who continue to nit-pick that it's high ISO performance is some fraction of a stop worse than some other cameras', here is ISO 1600:



And here is a shot pushed to the equivalent of ISO 3200:



And this one is at the equivalent of ISO 6400:

[kkoether]

Nice shots Marc. It's amazing what you can do when you ignore what everyone says you can't do. I love my K200D also. It does everything I've wanted so far.

[Ron_Man]

It's amazing what you can do when you ignore what everyone says you can't do

Still doesn't excuse the low-light performance

[Marc Sabatella]

There's nothing to excuse. It was within a fraction of a stop of the top of the line in high ISO performance when it came out, and it remained within a fraction of a stop of the top of the line until the sensor in the K-5 became available.