Originally posted by wiseman I was seriously looking at the K100D. Is the lack of an ISO 100 setting of any significance? I was curious why Pentax would not include that ISO setting on this camera. The K10D (which is very tempting!) has the 100 setting but it is rather expensive. I also like the smaller size of the 100D.
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
The issue of ISO range on the camera, and this is for all 6MP pentax cameras is that ISO200 was set as the slowest because there was no additional image quality gain for settings slower than ISO200.
What some people failed to think about is not just an issue of image quality, but the fact that some people may have specific reasons for slower ISO settings other than from the bad old days of fiim, the better quality of slower films.
1) if you want very shallow depth of field, you want a lens wide open, but you may also want specific (slow) shutter speeds so that only stationary things are frozen in the image and moving things are blurred. in this case, you would want perhaps ISO100 or even slower.
2) Also you might have a fixed apature lens, like a 500-1000mm mirror, and the only exposure controls yoou have are ISO and shutter.
3) You may also have specific lighting arrangements that you made for shooting slow film, and now have to re-work for the same effect using iso200 as the slowest setting.
I asked pentax about this when I bought my *istD, but they did not move on the issue.
I like the K10D not so much for the ISO 100 setting but that you can set it in 1/3 EV increments, where as the *istD was in 1 EV increments, BUT I bought the K10D for 10 megapixles not ISO100