Pentax K-70 review. camera review

OUR VERDICT

Disappointing kit lens aside, the Pentax K-70 is a compact, solid and very well specified camera for enthusiasts that also delivers good value for money. It’s packed with innovative features, and there’s enough here to keep novices and even more experienced photographers occupied for a long time to come.

FOR

• Compact and rugged
• Hybrid live view autofocus
• Innovative anti-shake tech

AGAINST

• Poor kit lens performance
• Relatively few autofocus points
• Reliance on interactive display

Pentax is pitching the K-70 at the outdoor photography market, promising “new opportunities and discoveries in scenic photography”. It’s dustproof, weather-resistant and cold-resistant down to -10 degrees Celsius. There are 100 seals throughout the body, including the articulating LCD display, and the grip is designed to stay grippy even when you’re wearing gloves.

Despite all this the K-70 is still pretty compact for a fully-featured APS-C format DSLR, so it’s portable too.

And the K-70’s abilities go way beyond landscapes. Its specs and features mark it out as a rather good all-rounder, capable of taking on a much wider range of photographic subjects.

Features

• APS-C CMOS sensor, 24.2MP
• 3.0-inch, vari-angle screen, 921,000 dots
• 1080p video capture

Inside the body is a 24.2MP APS-C sensor, which is as high as APS-C format cameras go in terms of pixel count, and it has no anti-aliasing filter at the front, so the fine detail rendition should be enhanced even further.

Anti-aliasing filters are used to prevent the moiré interference patterns sometimes seen when photographing fine textures or patterns with a digital sensor’s rectangular array of photosites. These filters work by slightly blurring fine detail, and then leaving the camera to sharpen it up again digitally. When you take away the filter the fine detail should be sharper but you risk, moiré in some shots (although actually it doesn’t seem to be a problem in most real-life photography).

Pentax has a clever solution for this, with a unique ‘AA Filter Simulator’. This applies microscopic vibrations at a sub-pixel level during the exposure to simulate the effect of a ‘real’ anti-aliasing’ filter. You may not need it, but it’s there if you do.