Pentax K2000

Color (12.86)

The Pentax K2000 reproduced color less accurately than the other cameras in our comparison group, but the results still fall within an acceptable range. Our test images were slightly oversaturated, and while flesh tone reproduction was very good, blue shades were noticeably off-color, with yellows and oranges also problematic.

What we’re testing here is color accuracy, not color attractiveness. The K2000, like many SLRs, offers a variety of color modes to let the user match color reproduction to the tones he or she finds most pleasing. For our lab testing purposes, though, we shoot the standard X-Rite ColorChecker chart and use Imatest to determine which of these modes produces the least color error. That’s the one we use all of our color accuracy testing. More on how we test color.

For the Pentax, there are five color modes plus monochrome, and the one called Natural produced the best results, with a mean color error of 2.88 and a mean saturation of nearly 108%. It’s interesting to note that Natural is not the default setting for the camera. It’s set to shoot in Bright mode out of the box, which produces even more intense shades.

It’s important to note here that the group of cameras chosen for comparison here is based on the models we’ve tested under the updated review procedures we instituted in January 2009. For this reason, several inexpensive cameras which compete directly with the Pentax K2000 aren’t included.

Camera Color Comparisons					Expand
	Ideal	Pentax K2000	Nikon D90	Canon EOS 50D	Canon EOS Rebel XS	Olympus E-30
Dark Skin
Light Skin
Blue Sky
Foliage
Blue Flower
Bluish Green
	Ideal	Pentax K2000	Nikon D90	Canon EOS 50D	Canon EOS Rebel XS	Olympus E-30
Orange
Purplish Blue
Moderate Red
Purple
Yellow Green
Orange Yellow
	Ideal	Pentax K2000	Nikon D90	Canon EOS 50D	Canon EOS Rebel XS	Olympus E-30
Blue
Green
Red
Yellow
Magenta
Cyan

NOTE: Because of the way computer monitors reproduce colors, the images above do not exactly match the originals found on the chart or in the captured images. The chart should be used to judge the relative color shift, not the absolute captured colors.

The K2000 comes up short of the competition here, but not so much that it poses a significant problem. It’s interesting to note that camera price and color accuracy don’t go hand in hand. The Rebel XS, which sells for roughly the same price as the Pentax, beats the far more expensive Nikon D90 and its brandmate Canon 50D here.

Color Modes (4.00)

The Pentax K2000 provides six Image Finishing Tones, which are roughly equivalent to choosing different film stocks in the old days to provide the color and image quality characteristics you’re after for a given subject. The available settings are Bright, Natural, Portrait, Landscape, Vibrant and Monochrome. Each of these settings can be fine-tuned for saturation, hue, contrast and sharpness, as explained in the Picture Effects section below. For the purposes of color comparison, we shot the X-Rite ColorChecker chart in all five color modes and grabbed actual-size crops for each patch, which are presented below.

While it’s clearly targeted at a consumer-level audience, the K2000 supports both the sRGB color space used by most shooters and the AdobeRGB color space which is used primarily for commercial printing.

Color Mode Comparisons						Expand
	Ideal	Natural	Bright	Portrait	Landscape	Vibrant
Dark Skin
Light Skin
Blue Sky
Foliage
Blue Flower
Bluish Green
	Ideal	Natural	Bright	Portrait	Landscape	Vibrant
Orange
Purplish Blue
Moderate Red
Purple
Yellow Green
Orange Yellow
	Ideal	Natural	Bright	Portrait	Landscape	Vibrant
Blue
Green
Red
Yellow
Magenta
Cyan

NOTE: Because of the way computer monitors reproduce colors, the images above do not exactly match the originals found on the chart or in the captured images. The chart should be used to judge the relative color shift, not the absolute captured colors.

White Balance (13.83)

We tested the Pentax K2000 white balance performance in three of its preset modes and also by taking a manual white balance reading, and overall the results were quite good. We test white balance using a Judge II light box from X-Rite, which produces carefully calibrated illumination recreating the color temperature of a variety of light sources. The resulting images are analyzed using Imatest. More on how we test color.

Automatic White Balance (17.18)

The automatic white balance system did an excellent job compensating for color shifts caused by fluorescent and daylight illumination. Like most of the SLRs we test, it was common incandescent fixtures that gave the K2000 trouble, producing an unnaturally warm result. At least there’s a potential environmental benefit to this effect, since it will encourage Pentax owners to make the shift to compact fluorescents.

Custom White Balance (10.47)

We expect a high level of precision from the manual white balance system in a digital SLR, and rarely find serious flaws in this area. The Pentax K2000 is no exception, producing minimal levels of color error under each tested source of illumination.

Looking at our group of test cameras, we see the automatic white balance system on the K2000 handled daylight illumination nicely, producing inconsequentially cooler results than the ideal.

Under that demanding incandescent lighting, everybody shifted toward the warm side, with the Pentax falling in the middle of the pack.

Between the flicker and the greenish tinge, fluorescent bulbs can be troublesome for an automatic white balance system (witness the Olympus E-30 and Nikon D90 above), but the K2000 produced only minimal color shift.

The overall white balance score combines the results of our preset and custom white balance testing. The K2000 showed some significant muscle here, outperforming both the Nikon D90 and Olympus E-30 to a significant degree, and bested only by the exceptionally accurate Canon 50D.

White Balance Options (8.75)

The K2000 offers ten white balance options in all, including 3 fluorescent settings.

The procedure for setting a manual white balance is a bit unusual. After selecting the custom setting, you take a photo of a white surface under available light. The image you shoot is displayed, and you can choose whether to base the custom reading on the entire image area, or just the spot metering area. And if you choose the spot metering area, it can be moved around the image using the four-way controller). It’s a slightly slower system than the usual one-step process, but it does let you base the white balance reading on a section of the scene in front of you, in case you don’t have a handy white surface to hold in front of the lens.

A handy feature of the Pentax K2000 white balance system is the image preview displayed while choosing an exposure. When you bring up the white balance adjustment screen, the last photo you took is displayed in the background, and as you change the white balance settings, the effects are previewed using that image (no changes are made to the actual file). If what you’re about to shoot is different from what you last shot, no problem: just press the exposure compensation button (there’s a reminder of this non-standard button usage on screen) and the camera takes a temporary shot you can use for preview purposes.

White balance settings, both presets and manual, can be fine-tuned along the green-magenta and blue-amber axes, each in 15 steps. This capability is turned off by default, but can be enabled through the custom settings menu. What makes this genuinely useful for demanding applications is the ability to see the effect of your adjustments on-screen as you make them.

When shooting in Auto Pict mode, the Auto white balance setting is used, and can’t be changed.

Long Exposure (8.44)

Our long exposure test combines two significant factors when shooting in low-light environments at slow shutter speeds: color accuracy and image noise. Based on its so-so performance on our color test conducted under bright lights, it comes as no surprise that the K2000 lagged the competition in this aspect of our long-exposure test as welll. When it comes to image noise, though, the Pentax did very well here, maintaining image noise well below 1.5% across all five shutter speeds we test: 1 second, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds and 30 seconds. More on how we test long exposure.

As we often find, long exposure noise reduction proved ineffective, and even slightly harmful, in our tests. Noise is inherently random, but long exposure noise reduction systems are designed to take two consecutive shots and remove the noise patterns found in the second (taken with the shutter closed) from the first. With random patterns, this approach is understandably ineffective.

As with our core color accuracy testing, the Canon Rebel XS leads even its more expensive rivals in our long exposure testing, though the Pentax delivered respectable performance.