I’ve been using the PENTAX K-01 for a couple of weeks now and despite what many may think of its looks, this is one camera that should not be judged by that alone. In fact, if you were to do that, you’d be missing out on quite a great shooter that has excellent image quality. Considering that the PENTAX K-01 is more DSLR-like than most other mirrorless system cameras, it’s really no surprise that image quality would be superb.
All these sample photos were shot using the insanely small 40mm f/2.8 lens that can be purchased with the K-01 instead of your standard kit lens. Not everyone however is going to like this lens as the lens might now be as wide as most people would want it to be and it’s really more suited for portraits, food photography, and outdoor scenes. At f/2.8, you can see that it has a pretty shallow depth of field which I really enjoy, especially when photographing people.
Speaking of food, you can see here how detailed everything is. The K-01 does a fantastic job rendering colors and even when used without the flash, there is little to no noise at all present. Like I said above, the K-01 does a great job photographing food while keeping the colors nice and natural looking. Again, notice the depth of field and how blurred the foreground and background are which helps draw your attention to the focused area.
Here’s another photo to show you how shallow the depth of field is. What I really like about the K-01 is how easy it is to manually focus the lens using focus peaking to select what you want to focus on. Again, great color rendering with lots of detail.
Below you’ll find the rest of the photo samples. Many of them were shot wide open at f/2.8. I don’t like shooting with the flash all the much which is why I usually have it set at the widest setting. You’ll notice with the rest of the shots again how much detail there is and how very little noise there is even in dimly lit rooms. I’m having a lot of fun shooting with the PENTAX K-01, although using a 40mm lens is forcing me to shoot a bit differently then I would normally shoot as I need to stand a bit farther from my subject to get the same type of shots I would have with a much wider lens.
Check back later for a full review of the PENTAX K-01 soon.
