| Pros | yes |
| Cons | yes |
| Rating | 7 |
| Price (U.S. Dollars) | 500 |
| Years Owned | 5 |
I can recommend this camera: Yes
Value, Features, Performance & Size
yes
Camera Review
The Pentax *ist DS2 was built on 2003 technology and released in 2005, over five years ago. A DS2 purchased in early 2006 was my first DSLR. Nothing introduced earlier appealed to me. Either they were too large and heavy and expensive; or the viewfinders were unacceptable dark little tunnels. The DS2 has a pentaprism. Five years on, it is still among the brightest and largest APS-C viewfinders available. And five years on, it is still nearly the smallest and lightest DSLR available. It has a top-body LCD and a 2.5” rear LCD screen, a bit undersized by today’s standards, but not so much as to seem outdated and small (although the 210,000 dots is a bit shy).
Beyond the small and light is the shape; smoothly curved and nonprotuberey. It slides easily to and from the pocket and hangs comfortably one-handed.
Build quality has proven to be excellent, in this example. Five years of use and still going strong. Granted, the shutter count is still under 10,000.
I find the AA batteries to be an advantage. Sony 2800mah NiMH rechargables in the DS2 seem to last as long as the Li-ion batteries in my K7 or Canon 5D. Yet the AA’s are much less expensive and much more easily available than proprietary batteries.
Auto-focusing is slow compared to modern expectations, but is accurate. I find it usually usable in daylight, iffy in low light. I like to focus with my right thumb or my left hand and have the shutter release be just a shutter release. The DS2 allows the user to place the autofocus function on the “OK” button.
Having only a single control wheel is a drawback, but not a fatal one. The one wheel it does have is well-placed for the thumb. The camera has a total of only 5 shooting-control buttons on the right side of the body: shutter release, exposure compensation, exposure lock, an “OK” button in the center of the 4-way controller, and a “Function” button. All are well and widely placed.
Lack of a one-touch dedicated button for ISO or white balance is a drawback, fortunately it is still fairly easy and quick to access control using the “function” button which calls up a nicely functional short cut menu for ISO, shutter behavior, flash, and white balance.
The camera will collect RAW or JPEG files, but not both. This is doubly unfortunate, because one must use the MENU button and then repeatedly pushy-pushy through menus to get to the right place to change the file type. Perhaps it is triply unfortunate because jpegs straight from the camera, while not evil, can be considerably less nice than post-processed RAW files of the same scene. Writing RAW files to the SD card can be slow.
High ISO low light performance is middling; high ISO is 6200.
The advantages of this camera that have stood the test of (accelerated digital) time are: good viewfinder, solid build, good shape, small size and weight, very nicely laid out (albeit limited) controls, and the ability to use both legacy film lenses and the small modern Pentax primes. Although it is what it is - 6mp and ancient - the sensor is good enough to take advantage of the quality of the best lens I have; the 77mm limited.
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