Gadgetory

Rico's been plugging away in the consumer DSLR space even using flashing lights tons of colors to lure first-time and family buyers away from more staid Nikon's and cannons with the chaos - the company goes for a slightly more conventional design combined with the weather sealed body large viewfinder and solid photo quality that have long been the hallmarks of pen taxes entry-level cameras the result is a really nice alternative with unfortunately middling video quality I'm Laurie grinning for CNET and this is the Pentax KS to the camera feels sturdily built and comfortable to hold and use without the usual plasticky feel of low-priced DSLRs and the color accents are relatively subtle it also uses lights a little more judiciously than its sibling the KS one with indicators for movie versus still mode when automatic self portrait mode is turned on and briefly at power on my only issue with the design is the flat navigation buttons which are easy to miss hit the new kit lens is disappointing though it uses the same collapsible design that companies like Olympus have already used and discarded with a button you press to expand the lens and a tough turn to fully collapse it the size advantage you gain isn't really worth what you lose over a standard 18 to 55 millimeter lens the photo quality and performance are quite good for the price it renders relatively neutral white balance and colors though you have plenty of options for making them less neutral if you want for instance Pentax offers something called color temperature enhancement mode that pushes the white balance to emphasize dominant colors in the lighting JPEGs are reasonably good through ISO 1600 and usable through ISO 6400 it's also fast enough for most kids pets and travel photography with solid auto focus performance and a sustained burst rate of about 4.5 frames per second the video is pretty disappointing though with Shake Reduction on the movies have a bad case of the wobbles if you turn off the shake reduction the wobbles go away but then it gets the shakes those issues aside the video also suffers from serious moiré plus it lacks continuous autofocus in movie mode otherwise it has tons of useful features including two of pen taxes own semi automatic exposure modes sensitivity priority and the mouthful shutter an aperture priority auto exposure mode it also has built-in Wi-Fi with a nice remote shooting app Astro tracer which works in conjunction with an optional GPS to shoot long exposures without star trails there's also a typical interval movie record which produces in camera time lapses and horizon correction which straightens out slightly tilted photos automatically as a camera for the family photographer or step up from a point-and-shoot the Pentax chaos 2 is a solid option provided that the video issues really aren't a deal killer for you I'm Lori grunion and this is the Pentax KST