Originally posted by Erik It's quite rare. It's a pretty and very small camera but the feature set is not all that appealing compared to some other Pentax SLR cameras. The most glaring flaw is that, like the entire DSLR range, it has the "crippled" K-mount which means it will only do stop-down metering with M lenses. I wouldn't want that feature missing on a film SLR when there are so many good options. Viewfinder specs look pretty bad for a full-frame SLR. (0.7x, 90%)
This sounds a little over-critical. Other than the crippled mount, the camera has an excellent feature set bettered by few Pentax film SLRS. Depth-of-field preview, 1/4000 shutter, P-TTL/TTL, support, hard switches for AF points, AF mode, & metering mode. IR remote, multiple exposure, bracketing, 1/2EV metering/comp/shutter, and available battery grip with some portrait shooting controls...16-segment metering, 11 individually selectable AF points.
The viewfinder spec appears close to the MZ-6/ZX-L; on the small side but fairly bright, about the same as the pentaprism-equipped D-SLRs to my eye. Some of the larger autofocus viewfinders on other bodies seem darker.
To me the main issue with the *ist film camera is that the price remains a little high and it might not be the best choice for use with pre-A lenses. But if you use >= A-glass (or even better, autofocus glass) it's a really good choice. Pretty much every Pentax film SLR has at least one achilles heel--on this one it's the crippled mount...but it has just about everything else.