It feels so great to have a SLR in my hands again, but it also feels great to have a Pentax back in my hands, too. AF is fast and accurate, ISO noise is low, the optical viewfinder is fantastic, and ergonomics is great.

Easy To Use; Fast / Accurate Auto-Focus; Fast Shutter Speed; Good Image Quality; Good Image Stabilization; High ISO Performance; Large Clear LCD

A LITTLE LOUD

Pentax has a knack of making its cameras stand out from the crowd, and from the all-white K-30 to the colourful compact Q range, they always catch the eye; the latest K-50 D-SLR - its most advanced entry-level model yet - keeps this tradition going.

Features like the in-body Shake Reduction and weather resistance give the K-50's similarly priced rivals a real run for their money. The fast write times and speedy AF performance really impressed us and the only minor gripes we could find were the rather pedestrian user interface, slightly slippery...

Steve's SnapShot Cons Bottom Line Pick This Up If...

High image quality; Customizable buttons; Two well-placed dials; Good high ISO performance; Burst modes perform well; Sensor-shift shake and dust reduction; Big pentaprism viewfinder; Live view on high-resolution LCD; Rugged; weather-sealed body; Can run on AA batteries; Comes in 120 different...

Auto focus is slow when using Live View; No continuous auto focus in video mode; Li-ion battery life could be better; LCD does not tilt or swivel; No HDMI port; No external microphone jack

Pentax's cameras are always hard to compare to those from other manufacturers; it opts for more rugged designs and often eschews the trendy features du jour. With the K-50, Pentax neither pushes the limit on pixel count nor jams in as many video capabilities as possible.

The Pentax K-30 was our favourite SLR of 2012. Its large optical viewfinder, dual command dials, weather-sealed body and 6fps burst mode are features that Canon and Nikon charge considerably more than £600 for. Our only serious reservation was that its angular, sporty design wasn't easy on the eye.

Essentially a K-30 with a less-sculpted body and a wide variety of color combinations, the new Pentax K-50 offers a lot at an entry-level price.

This is my second DSLR, upgraded from a Nikon D50. Chose it over the Nikon and Canons based on tech reviews and am having no regrets. Just recently received the camera from costco and am amazed with the photo quality and the apparent quality of the unit itself. Huge upgrade over what I was using.

amazing photos weather proof simple to learn the basics of

none that i have seen yet

The Pentax K-50 is, in its basic specifications, identical with the company's new K-500 model. Both cameras offer a 16MP sensor, a built-in stabilizer system (based on sensor shift technology), all standard exposure modes of a modern SLR system and a very large and bright optical SLR viewfinder.

+ Compact SLR system with sealed body, + Professional handling; however, a battery grip with additional shutter release button for portrait shots and an X-sync jack for a studio flash system are missing

- Missing swivel monitor; - Missing WLAN features (Eye-Fi cards are supported

The Pentax K-50 was announced in June 2013 as a replacement for the popular K-30, which we reviewed in August 2012 . It has a similar, weather-sealed, dust-resistant body but improved versions of the 16.3-megapixel APS-C sensor and PRIME M processor, which have been tweaked to reduce noise and...