It’s immediately apparent the default processing on the K20D is delivering a much more vibrant and consumer friendly image than the subdued default output from the K10D. The new **** JPEG setting also has mild compression, delivering fairly large files.

The crops reveal a high degree of detail and impressively for the range of the DA 18-250mm lens, minimal fringing in high contrast areas.

As before it’s a vibrant image with a large file size, and one that’s packed with detail.

The DA 18-250mm also keeps the details sharp up to the corners.

Look closely and you may spot a very small amount of fringing in high contrast areas, but only at the extremes of the frame.

The K20D’s continuous AF system tracked the approaching boat without difficulty.

Pixel-peeping reveals the increase in sensitivity hasn’t had a detrimental effect on quality, unlike the same shot from our Sony A350 gallery which exhibits a faint smattering of noise and evidence of smearing.

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 sharp and detailed, again unlike those from the A350 which can already look soft at 200 ISO.

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 K20D’s Achilles’ heel, like the K10D before it is a tendency to underexpose. Here we applied +1EV 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 is ensuring 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 K20D well.

So the K20D delivers good results across its sensitivity range, along with vibrant images by default and large files at the **** setting.