Short Report: Pentax K100D

Several camera manufacturers offer lenses featuring built-in image-stabilizing mechanisms that counteract camera shake, and these work extremely well. But you enjoy those stabilizing benefits only when using those particular lenses. More recently, other manufacturers have introduced D-SLRs with in-camera anti-shake mechanisms, which provide shake reduction with all lenses. The lowest priced of these is the new K100D from Pentax.

Aptly dubbed “Shake Reduction” by Pentax, the mechanism rapidly oscillates the image sensor in proportion to the amount of camera shake in order to keep the image in one spot on the sensor. You can turn the feature on and off at will via a switch on the back of the camera. The “price” you pay for getting stabilization with any lens that can be mounted on the camera is that you can’t see the stabilizing effect in the viewfinder; unlike lens-based stabilization, Shake Reduction stabilizes only the recorded image.

Because I do most of my shooting with a pro image-stabilized lens, I was eager to see how well Shake Reduction would work. I wasn’t disappointed, getting some sharp images at shutter speeds as slow as 1⁄8 to 1⁄10 sec., with a zoom lens at 180mm—four shutter speeds slower than the handholding rule of thumb calls for (more, actually, because 180mm on the K100D is equivalent to 270mm on a 35mm SLR, due to the APS-C-sized image sensor’s 1.5x magnification factor).