The K-30 also offers a shutter designed for 100,000 releases, top shutter speed of 1/6000th second, optical viewfinder with nearly 100% frame coverage, 77-segment matrix meter, 3-inch LCD monitor with 920k dots, built-in dust removal and shake-reduction systems, Live View with Face Recognition AF, automatic compensation of lens distortion and lateral chromatic aberrations with DA and DFA lenses and a choice of lithium-ion or AA batteries.

Secondly, the K-30 offers a Hyper Program function which instantly switches to either the Shutter-Priority or Aperture-Priority mode from the Program mode, simply by turning either of the control dials on the grip.

I originally went to a local Inkley's to buy this camera but the white Pentax K-30 was over $1,200 with the 300mm lens, Once I told them I found the camera on Amazon for $880 with the lens they warned me about purchasing the camera online because the vendor would short the box (Sell the charger etc. separately) and give me a non-weather proof 18-55mm lens, they couldn't be more wrong.

The Pentax K-30 is a great alternative to similar offerings from the likes of Nikon, Canon and Sony, proving that Pentax can continue to deliver the goods in their core business, despite recent misfires in the world of compact system cameras.

I bought the K-30 a few months ago, and have used it for portraits.

If you've got a collection of K-mount lenses and want a full-featured camera for still lifes and landscapes, then the K-01 is well worth looking at.

At around £679 with the sealed 18-55mm DA WR zoom lens, the K-30 isn’t the cheapest mid-range DSLR on the market and would certainly benefit from some high street discounting – something that generally tends to happen within a couple of months of release.

The Pentax K-30 is available in three colours, white, blue and black, priced at $849.95 / £599.99 for the body only, and $899.95 / £649.99 for the kit including the DA L 18-55mm zoom lens.

Speaking of enthusiasts, they'll find full manual controls on the K-01, including those for exposure (with bulb mode), white balance, focus (with handy focus peaking feature), plus support for the RAW (DNG) format.

Consequently it feels well-matched to the K-30, although it's a rather slow lens at both ends of the focal length (f3.5-5).

The Pentax K-30 has a shooting mode dial on the top-right of the camera which allows you to select either one of the advanced mode like Aperture-priority, Shutter-Priority and Manual, or the more point-and-shoot Auto and Program modes.

Whether I was flipping through menu systems or scrolling through aperture stops, the K-30 always kept up.

The K-30 is basically the Pentax K-01 in a larger, more rugged body.

The K-30's rugged body protects solid internals, too: it shares its 16-megapixel APS-C sensor and Prime M processor with the K-01, promises six frames per second shooting, and can recording 1080p video at 30 frames per second.

There's a fine line between feeling rugged and cheap The elements have nothing on the K-30 You can't beat an optical viewfinder Great for the basics, terrible for the harder stuff Why can't anyone fix the camera menu?