Originally posted by FastPhotography You do actually use all of those 14mp, and doing magazine covers and jobs on assignment that demand A++ IQ, so I don't even question why you use the K20D. And if I had your job, your assignments, and such, I'd get the K20D without hesitation. I just thought I'd throw in another opinion to the forum.
So it's unquestionably a superior camera for a pro like Ben, but overrated and not worth the money for - well, for who exactly?
I own both the K10D and the K20D and have shot thousands of photos with both of 'em. My thoughts.
The best thing about the K20D is how similar it is to the K10D. The K10D wasn't "revolutionary" in any useful sense of that word but it certainly was a big jump forward. The K20D is (thank goodness) a more incremental upgrade. All of these facts should give comfort to K10D owners who can't afford to upgrade or who could afford but aren't sure they want to spend the money. Should anybody upgrade? I never advise, in fact, my advice about buying cameras and computers is the same as my advice about joining the priesthood: If you don't feel that you MUST, then you probably shouldn't.
On the other hand, the K20D has everything that the K10D had, and then some. So the K20D is unquestionably and absolutely a better camera. If both were available and the price difference between the two was truly negligible, then anybody who bought a K10D would be a fool.* So the argument boils down simply to whether the superiority of the K20D is worth the price difference. Different people will have different answers. I don't question those who say no. However, I don't think it's good form for people who answer no, to criticize those who answer yes by suggesting that they've been duped.
After agonizing a bit (a personal trait of mine not necessarily related to the difficulty of the decision) I decided that I had to upgrade. What sold me on the K20D wasn't the higher res in itself, certainly wasn't live view, it was the camera's performance at higher ISOs.
With the K20D I have occasionally gone higher than 1600, but most of the time I stop at 1600. I find that the resulting photos are indeed less noisy than those produced by the K10D, and I have grounds for comparison because I'm often shooting with both cameras around my neck. Now I'm not sure whether the difference is really due to the K20D's superior sensor or to the K20D's having so many more pixels. I suspect it's a bit of both. But I don't care. I can run a K20D shot through Noise Ninja and clean it up quite nicely, yet retain sharpness; with the K10D's shots (which by the way I never thought were as noisy as K100D owners here alleged) I have to tolerate a bit more noise to keep the same level of sharpness.
In most normal circumstances (say, when light is reasonably good), the Image quality of the K20D is not spectacularly, head-slappingly better than that of the K10D. In fact, aside from the K20D's noise handling, I find it difficult to tell at a glance whether a shot was taken with the K10D or the K20D. I think there are differences, but the K10D was already a really fine camera, so you have to look really hard to see where the K20D has improved basic image quality. Those who haven't upgraded and continue to post outstanding pictures here taken with their K10Ds remind me that, in the end, the camera matters less than the photographer.
Still, I'm very happy to have my K20D and, for myself, consider it worth the cost.
Will
*(note) I said above that - price aside - the K20D is unquestionably and absolutely better than the K10D. I want to acknowledge the one possible objection to that claim: the K20D's raw files are significantly larger than those produced by the K10D. So you get fewer images per SD card with the K20D and you'll fill up your hard drive faster. But this seems to me a trivial complaint. If you're really that concerned about storage, you should be looking at something altogether different - or shooting jpeg.