When I saw an 'open box" offer for $730 at amazon last week I could not resist and had to get it! I have it since a few days now and here are some impressions:
High iso performance:
very impressive! What I did not figure before is that the high resolution makes the noise much less visible since it produces a finer grain. I can get good images up to iso 1600. My DS was usable till iso 800.
Live view:
in contrast to some reviews I find it very useful. Especially when shooting portraits, since I can now look at the person myself I do not get this someone-takes-my-picture expression. For some reason the live view does not come back for several seconds after taking a picture (I guess till the picture is saved), but the picture is taken very fast nearly instantly when pressing the shutter.
BUT: My god! who designed this camera! the live view shares its button with the depth of field (DOF) preview, it can be either programmed for live view or DOF. To change from one to the other you have to find your way into the custom menu and go all the way to line number 30! There are so many other less useful buttons they could have shared, like the AF of raw button. Please Pentax, give me a firmware upgrade already.
Other button and wheels:
2 wheels! great! I immediately set all program settings to have iso adjustability on the front wheel- very useful.
The knob: the program shift is great so is the sensitivity priority (iso on the front wheel makes it redundant, though). But who needs a green setting on a 'pro-sumer' camera? And I have no idea what the user setting is for. I am still missing a setting on the knob for having a full program mode with emphasis on DOF and one for speed (as my old film canon eos had). This exists in the customs menu now but than P is set to one mode.
The raw button: I take all my pictures in RAW, but I can not switch from RAW to jpeg with this button for a longer burst mode, one can only switch from RAW to RAW+.
AF button, I use it to cancel the AF for manual focus- very useful!
The green button: What exactly is this for? So far I did not need it. Another one were live view could be. On the DS the exposure compensation is in this position.
Customs settings: strangely enough I have nearly none for which I left the Pentax default- tons of customization possible.
Handling: what a beast compared to the DS. Very comfortable, though. The hand grip is less deep than at the DS making it a bit harder to hold with my large hands. Does not feel like plastic in any way.
The pictures: Maybe this has something to do with light room, but pixel beeping looks very different, with the DS it was one pixel per point, while the K20D gives a fuzzy pattern. Is this a CMOS feature?
To much rant? - sorry than you got me wrong- you should see the smile on my face!
Here are some iso 1600 pictures: