Pentax has clearly gone for a consumer-friendly approach with its default image processing. The saturation, contrast and sharpness are set relatively high, which has produced a slightly unreal result. Of course you may personally like this approach but it’s also possible to reduce the settings if preferred.

Either way, close examination at 100% reveals lots of clean detail and sharp performance from the 18-250mm.

There’s a small amount of coloured fringing visible along the mountain ridge in this shot, but otherwise the 18-250mm performs very well with sharp details across the frame.

Once again the K200D has delivered a vibrant image with its default settings.

The steamship was taking its annual break, so we don’t have a shot in motion for you.

The K200D often underexposes, so faced with this bright white hull in direct sunlight we applied +1EV of compensation.

There’s no detriment to the higher sensitivity and the crops are packed with sharp, clean details.

The DA 18-250mm has delivered a nicely blurred background at its maximum aperture and you can increase this effect at longer focal lengths.

The crops of the subject are again very sharp and detailed.

We shot this in Program mode, but a larger depth of field could have been achieved in Aperture Priority.

The increase to 400 ISO hasn’t had any detrimental effect on this particular composition, with the crops again showing lots of detail and no undesirable artefacts.

The K200D, like other Pentax DSLRs, has a tendency to underexpose. Here we applied +0.3EV compensation and it’s still arguably too dark.

On the upside, the crops are still showing a decent amount of detail and the default disabling of noise reduction ensures there’s no smearing to worry about.

The slightly soft crop of the eye is due to it being slightly out of the plane of focus in this shot.

Here you can see Pentax’s noise reduction strategy in action. It’s off by default, so you’ll see noise speckles at high sensitivities. But by eliminating any smearing, you’ll also retain plenty of detail. An impressive 800 ISO result here.

The crops reveal a significant increase in noise speckles, but again the lack of noise reduction means any detail is held onto. It’s an unusual strategy in the current noise-averse climate, but one which serves the K200D well.