Well, I've only actually seen photos of the latest build of it, courtesy of my Pentax rep, but at least I've got a little more information for you to chew on. The photos were taken this week, so this is about as current as it gets.
First off, the magic press-release date is September 13th. There's still so much I haven't been able to pry from my rep that I'm dying for this date to hurry up and get here! Body + 18-55 lens should be $899. A bit more than I expected, but still a damn good price. The name is definitely K10D (it was stamped on the body). Any remaining doubters can relax now. Remember in the PMA photos (http://www.dpreview.com/articles/pma2006/Pentax/), that unmarked button that was above the AF switch on the front of the camera? It's now marked RAW, and I'm told it allows you to switch the camera to RAW mode from jpg mode by pressing and holding the RAW button. I think I would have preferred a custom white balance button, but I'm sure this function will be useful for people who shoot in jpg mode most of the time. The LCD screen is the same as on the K100D: 2.5 ", 210,000 pixels The battery grip has the same features as the grip for the *istD, though I can't say whether or not it connects to the body in the same way. The body is slightly different than the one shown at PMA, though not by much. I'd be more specific, but I didn't have much time to really study the new images. The mode dial on the camera's shoulder now has a lot more on it than at PMA. I couldn't see much detail in the images, but the new stuff looked like the same sort of preset shooting modes you see on consumer cameras (sports, portrait, night scene, etc). DOF-preview now functions in a very interesting manner (apparently it does this on the K100D, but I didn't know that). Straight out of the box, when you use the DOF-preview function, it actually takes a photo and displays it on the screen until you press halfway on the shutter button (no, the photo is not saved on your memory card). If you want the more standard thru-the-lens DOF- preview, you can change that in a custom function menu. That's all I can remember. Have fun! John Celio -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
