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Pentax *ist-D Pentax's first d-SLR is a winner, with good color, low noise, and excellent "hand feel," all in a compact body. Select a topic Reference: Datasheet ISTD Photo Gallery! ISTD Sample Images --------------------------------- 1. Intro and Highlights 2. Executive Overview 3. Design 4. Viewfinder 5. Optics 6. Exposure & Flash 7. Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests 8. Operation & User Interface 9. Camera Modes & Menus 10. Image Storage & Interface 11. Video, Power, Software 12. Test Results & Conclusion --------------------------------- Print-Friendly Review Version Additional Resources and Other Links Reader Comments on ISTD Review --------------------------------- Digital Camera Comparometer (TM) --------------------------------- <-- Digital Cameras (Home) <-- Digital Camera Reviews Index <<Video, Power, Software :(Previous) | (Next): Reference: Datasheet>> Page 12:Test Results & Conclusion Review First Posted: 03/30/2004

Test Results
In keeping with my standard test policy, the comments given here summarize only my key findings. For a full commentary on each of the test images, see the Pentax *ist D's "pictures" page.

Not sure which camera to buy? Let your eyes be the ultimate judge! Visit our Comparometer(tm) to compare images from the *ist D with those from other cameras you may be considering. The proof is in the pictures, so let your own eyes decide which you like best!

As with all Imaging Resource product tests, I encourage you to let your own eyes be the judge of how well the camera performed. Explore the images on the pictures page, to see how the *ist D's images compare to other cameras you may be considering.

We also have a "Gallery" of random, more pictorial images available for your perusal, showing off the *ist D's capabilities with a broader range of subjects.

• Color: Generally good color, with accurate hue and saturation. A slight tendency to undersaturate flesh tones though. Indoors, good handling of incandescent lighting with the right WB settings. The *ist D produced pretty accurate color in most cases, though I often noticed a slight warm or cool cast, depending on the white balance setting. I typically chose the Auto white balance, though the Manual setting did a good job as well. Outdoors, the always-difficult blue flowers came out a little darker than in real life, and with a bit more purple in them, common problems with that subject. I also felt that Marti's skin tones there were a bit more pale than they should have been. Indoors, the camera's Manual and Incandescent white balance settings produced good results under incandescent lighting, but it's Auto setting failed miserably. Overall, I found the *ist D's color very pleasing.
  
  
• Exposure: A slight tendency toward overexposure, but generally consistent behavior overall. The *ist D's exposure system seemed a bit biased toward brighter exposures than those of most cameras I test. It required less positive exposure compensation on the Outdoor Portrait shot than most cameras do (a good thing), but the Davebox studio shot and the outdoor house shot in the Far Field test were a little washed out with the default exposure setting. In contrast, the Indoor Portrait test required a lot more positive exposure compensation than is the norm. Apart from the troubling indoor shot though, the *ist D's exposure behavior seemed pretty predictable, so it was easy to learn to allow for its quirks. (The large histogram display was also helpful in seeing whether it had gotten the exposure right or not.) Like most digicams, the *ist D responded to the deliberately harsh lighting of the Outdoor Portrait shot with a high-contrast image, but I found that its contrast adjustment control worked exactly as it should, knocking down the strongest highlights and opening the shadows a fair bit at the same time. I'd like to see a greater range of adjustment, with five steps instead of three, but overall, the Pentax engineers have got a good handle on contrast adjustment.
  
  
• Resolution/Sharpness: High resolution but a somewhat soft image, 1,350 lines of "strong detail." Average barrel distortion. The *ist D performed well on the "laboratory" resolution test chart, with clean detail (e.g., no artifacts) even as far as 1,000-1,200 lines per picture height. I found "strong detail" out to at least 1,350 lines (although some less conservative judges might argue for 1,400 lines). "Extinction" of the target patterns didn't occur until about 1,600 lines. With the *ist D though, Pentax has adopted a very conservative approach to in-camera sharpening, as its images as a whole came out fairly soft-looking. This is actually a preferable approach to over-sharpening as seen in many cameras, and as a result, the images do respond well to strong unsharp masking in Photoshop(tm) (try 250% at an 0.4 pixel radius or 300% at 0.3 pixel on any of my samples). This is arguably the best approach because as it avoids the introduction of any irreversible artifacts from the sharpening process, but many prospective users might pass over the camera if they don't take the time to play with its images a little in an image editor. That'd be a shame, because its images actually do contain quite a bit of usable detail, they just need a little more attention to extract all of it. (It's important to note that reviewer Phil Askey of www.dpreview.com found that the *ist D's images looked a fair bit sharper when processed from its RAW format files, vs what the camera produces on its own in the JPEGs.)
  
  
• Closeups: The power of interchangeable lenses: A very tiny macro area with the 100mm macro lens. This is a test I don't commonly perform for d-SLRs, as the results are entirely dependent on the lens employed. In the case of the *ist D though, I couldn't resist the lure of the Pentax 100mm f/2.8 macro lens. As you'd expect, it did an excellent job, capturing a very tiny minimum area of only 0.94 x 0.63 inches (24 x 16 millimeters). Resolution was very high, with a lot of fine detail visible in the dollar bill. However, details were again soft throughout the frame. The camera's flash was pretty completely blocked by the lens when shooting this close, so you'll need a macro ring or alternative lighting for shooting at this close range.
  
  
• Night Shots: Excellent low-light performance, with good color at even the darkest light levels. Excellent low-light focusing ability as well. The *ist D offers full manual exposure control, with adjustable ISO and a maximum shutter time of 30 seconds. Thus, the camera can capture bright images in very low lighting. The *ist D produced clear, bright, usable images down to the 1/16 foot-candle (0.67 lux) limit of my test, with good color at all five ISO settings. However, some slight color shifts occurred depending on the brightness level. The *ist D's optional Noise Reduction system has a fairly subtle effect on noise levels, but the noise wasn't as bad as I imagined it would be, even at the ISO 3,200 setting. Even though it has no autofocus-assist light, the *ist D can achieve focus lock at very low light levels. While the AF speed slowed significantly at low light levels, I found that my test unit of the *ist D could routinely focus at light levels as low as 1/4 foot-candle, and sometimes focus as dark as 1/8 foot-candle, without using its focus-assist illuminator, and with a lens with a maximum aperture of f/4.0. (This is a pretty impressive performance, 1/4 foot-candle corresponds to an exposure time of 8 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 100.)
  
  
• Viewfinder Accuracy: A pretty accurate digital SLR. The *ist D features a digital SLR (single lens reflex) viewfinder design, which shows about 96 percent of the final frame. I like to see SLR viewfinders that are 100 percent accurate, so the *ist D has a little room for improvement. Still, these results are pretty good, as "95%" viewfinders seem to be the norm on d-SLRs.
  
  
• Optical Distortion: Distortion will be entirely a function of the lens used... Optical distortion on the *ist D will vary with the lens in use. With the 100mm f/2.8 macro lens I used to shoot the res target with showed essentially zero distortion. The 16-35 mm zoom showed about 0.7 percent barrel distortion at its wide angle end. Chromatic aberration was quite low with both lenses, showing only a single pixel of fairly faint coloration around the target lines, and the 16-36mm about three to four pixels of color, also fairly faint. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.)
  
  
• Battery Life: Very good to excellent battery life. Overall, the *ist D has pretty good battery life. Some d-SLRs do a good bit better, but the *ist D will run for nearly 12 hours in capture mode on a set of 1600 mAh NiMH batteries. Even in playback mode, it will run for nearly 3.5 hours. Using the latest cells with true capacities over 2000 mAh, will give run times of 15 and 4.4 hours respectively. I still recommend at least two sets of rechargeable AA cells and a good charger, but this is very good battery life indeed.

 

Conclusion

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In a d-SLR field that's becoming increasingly crowded, the Pentax *ist D holds its own quite nicely. With "street" prices hovering around $1250 as of this writing in late March, 2004, it faces some very stiff competition from the less-expensive Canon Digital Rebel and the newly announced Nikon D70, but for anyone owning a complement of Pentax K-mount lenses, the *ist D is a camera that offers pretty much anything you might want from a d-SLR. I liked its color rendition, found its metering to generally be more accurate than most (albeit with a slight bias toward overexposure), and felt that a number of its user-interface and exposures were unusually well thought-out. It also has a very nice "feel" in the hand, with excellent build quality and a pleasant heft. - All in the most compact body of any d-SLR out there. Image noise up to about ISO 800 is also lower than average. On the down side, its images straight from the camera are rather soft, requiring sharpening in an image-editing program to extract the full amount of detail that's present there. As I noted in the body of this review though, a conservative approach to in-camera sharpening like this is actually desirable, as it avoids introducing sharpening-related artifacts that would be impossible to remove later. All in all, the *ist D is an excellent little d-SLR, easily earning "Dave's Pick" status.