Described as the “heir to the K-3 legacy”, Ricoh have announced the PENTAX KP, a tough little mid-range camera. With some reasonably impressive features, it’s being pitched as a reliable APS-C for those in need of a good travel camera.
“We designed the PENTAX KP to appeal to the world’s most discerning outdoor photographers, who will appreciate its rich and powerful feature set and rugged, compact design, whether they are shooting a landscape on a trek in Patagonia or capturing an eclipse,” said Kaz Eguchi, president, Ricoh Imaging Americas.
As a sign of this anywhere at any time impression, there are a couple of major (but very welcome) surprises. The KP has been given an absolutely phenomenal boost in the ISO department; up from the K-3’s 51,200 all the way to a whopping 819,200. Along with a very respectable 24MP resolution and a highly sensitive CMOS sensor to play with, low light and night shoots should be a doddle to undertake.
/Ricoh
Further opening up your potential lighting options, the KP’s top shutter speed has also improved on the K-3’s 1/8000; going all the way up 1/24000. When combined with a large aperture lens it should provide some excellent shallow depths of field when in the contrasting blistering sunshine.
Using the KP on the move in unusual environments or on the move will supposedly cause a lot less problems than previous models. Ricoh is making much of the fact that this is the first PENTAX APS-C DSLR equipped with its new Shake Reduction (SR) II system. This means that the effects of shift, roll pitch and yaw will be minimized. Likewise, faulty focus can also be fixed, since the KP comes with Pixel Shift Resolution which combines four separate images into a single high-definition image.
/Ricoh
Going hand in hand with this tolerance for being bounced around, the KP will be resistant to getting beaten as it’s dustproof and weather sealed. It even has a GPS module for tracking shots. The grip can also be switched out with a range from PENTAX so you can choose to mount one that won’t slip out your hand on some clifftop. The LCD monitor can also be tilted to a comfortable position.
Video isn’t top of the line but respectable. Recording at full HD (1920x1080) is available at up to 60i FPS. 4K is sadly reserved on this for individual image capture that can be shot at a rapid fire rate to make a slideshow-style “Interval Movie”. It’s still a little surprising for a camera aimed at the lifestyle market.
/Ricoh
Still this announcement is a small breath of fresh air. Usually we focus on the big guns at DigitalRev so it was nice to see some development for mid-range models like the PENTAX KP. It definitely doesn’t seem like a major game changer but for the backpacker with a budding taste for photography it will do the trick. Plus with a very reasonable purchase price of US$1,099. 95 it won’t utterly break the bank when it's released sometime in February. You can view the full specs here.
. digitalrev.com2017-1-26 03:00