Pentax K-500 review

Last month we were bowled over by the Pentax K-50. Its big optical viewfinder, 6fps continuous performance, sublime controls with dual command dials and weather-sealed body are all features we’d expect to pay a lot more than £600 for. It doesn’t have most up-to-date features, with no autofocus while recording videos, no HDMI and a screen that doesn’t rotate and isn’t touch-sensitive, but it’s a superb camera for people who takes a more traditional approach to photography.

The K-500 is the entry-level model in the range, available for around £350 with a 18-55mm kit lens. That’s the second lowest price of any SLR currently on the market, just behind the Canon EOS 1100D launched back in 2011.

That would be remarkable in itself for a newly launched SLR, but what makes the K-500 truly astonishing is that it’s barely distinguishable from the K-50. It uses the same viewfinder with a 0.92x magnification, 100% field of view. To get a similarly sized viewfinder in a new Canon on Nikon SLR you’d have to fork out about £900 for the Canon 70D or Nikon D7100. It has the same elegant controls, including dual command dials for direct access to exposure settings, plus lots of smart touches such as the ability to save a RAW image after capturing a JPEG. Its performance in our tests was identical, capturing a photo every 0.2 seconds in normal use. Continuous shooting was at 5.8fps, slowing to 2.8fps after 37 JPEG frames, or to 2.4fps after eight RAW frames.

With the same sensor and image-processing pipeline and a very similar lens, image quality is indistinguishable from the K-50. You can read our full breakdown of its image quality over in our Pentax K-50 review.

The only difference between the two kit lenses is that this one isn’t weather sealed, and nor is the camera body. Holding them side by side, we can’t see any evidence of the K-50 having additional weather-sealing components, but we’d still heed Pentax’s advice and keep the K-500 out of the rain. Weather sealing is rare to find in a £600 SLR so we have no qualms about not having it in a £350 one. It also lacks the K-50’s array of colour options – though that’s hardly disastrous.

The other differences are subtler, and odder. We can forgive the lack of a virtual horizon function, but we’d like to have a simpler internal sensor that can tell which orientation the camera is being held in. Without one, portrait-shaped photos must be rotated manually after copying to a PC.

The area below the viewfinder shows the same detailed information as on the K-50, including shutter and ISO speeds, aperture, exposure compensation and icons to show when the flash, manual focus and bracketing are enabled. Meanwhile, the viewfinder image itself has an overlay to show where the autofocus points are – except, actually, it doesn’t. There are a few lines that give a rough indication of where the 11 points are, but no red illuminated dots that, on the K-50, show which point or points are selected. You can check by looking at the LCD screen, but even then it takes a certain amount of guesswork as to exactly where the selected point is located in the composed image. It’s a bizarre thing to omit from an SLR, where the depth of field can be very shallow so precise autofocus placement is critical to the success of a shot.

Live view provides a clearer display of the autofocus point’s location, and it can be placed in any of 81 locations across the frame. However, considering how the K-500’s big viewfinder is such a major selling point, it’s hard to imagine anyone choosing this camera and wanting to use it routinely in live view.

So where does this leave the K-500, and its potential buyers? Do its superb controls and performance and incredibly low price outweigh this drawback? It’s hard to say with any objectivity. It’s a bit like finding a £600 TV for £350 but discovering there’s no remote control. Some people will embrace the incredible value for money and cope with the inconvenience. Others will decide that it’s worth spending almost twice as much for the full package. Will others still will make do with a more basic model with all the usual features.

Our inclination would be to go for options two or three. If you have the cash then you should get the excellent K-50 or a Canon EOS 700D. If those are too rich for your blood, then we recommend the Sony A58, which is currently available for around £340. It’s not strictly speaking an SLR as it uses an electronic rather than an optical viewfinder, but there are various benefits to this approach. It has its share of foibles but none are particularly serious, and its consistency appeals more than the K-500’s combination of brilliant and annoying features.