Canon t2i, pentax k-r or nikon d3100?
I've been doing tons of research on dslr cameras and have decided that it's down to these three. But I honestly can't decide which one I want to get. Video isn't really very important to me but it would be a nice extra feature to have. I'm mostly interested in travel photos and indoor photos. I might be shooting some action photos as well but not very often. Will the major difference in megapixels between the t2i and the pentax affect the photo quality much? Any advice on which I should choose if they are all basically in my price range?
Get the Canon or Nikon. They have a wider selection of good lenses to choose from.
Megapixels aren't important, all of these have enough. Go to a shop and handle all three, see which one feels nicest to hold and use.
You can pretty much forget pixel counts
http://www.kenrockwell.com/...mpmyth.htm
Pick the camera which you like the best after you have held them in your hands.
The Nikon D3100 costs $700. The Canon T2i costs $900 The Pentax K-r costs $800
Being a Canon guy I'll always recommend what I own and know. I have the Rebel XS and the
eos t1i - both are excellent so I can recommend the t2i as well. You may want to consider the
t1i because it's very sharp in both stills and video.
The Pentax Kr has the most up to date sensor of the three with a greater dynamic range and lower noise in low light, great for low light interiors, on a par with the Nikon D3, but much much cheaper to buy. Canon particularly are old sensors and are currently lagging behind any other manufacturer, this one advantage is worth more than all the others advantages of the Pentax system, the new Sony sensor in the Pentax is a ground breaking innovation, you can now get the same low noise from an APS sized sensor that you had to go for a full frame sensor to get in the past with all the weight, bulk and cost (particularly in lenses) that full frame sensors mean.
Image stabilization is in camera so any lens you fit is image stabilized, there's no extra to pay on every lens you buy.
Pentax has the best backwards compatibility with older lenses than any other DSLR (some 346 lenses at the last count and that's just Pentax own lenses) all will be image stabilized of course. Loads of high quality older lens available, if you buy Pentax A series all you are missing is auto focus, 100's available cheaply.
The fastest frames per second of the three 7 fps. Twice as fast as the Nikon.
It has All the functions you will ever need some, such as multiframe in one picture and Tva mode where you set the aperture and shutter speed and the camera alters the ISO are only available on Pentax.
More Mp just means you can print bigger, that's all, other than that it's all downsides. 12Mp means it can print at 16" X 20" and not need any interpolation, (padding out the file with 'invented' pixels to print larger).
Brightest viewfinder (important this one).
Faster maximum shutter speed 1/6000th
Highest ISO range (as you'd expect from the higher spec sensor) up to 25600.
Here are the specs side by side.
I recently went through the same process as you, and narrowed it down to these same cameras. T2i is very nice, don't think you'd go wrong there. D3100… Hated the LCD screen; it's lower resolution and grainy… And the fps are slow. Also, I just didn't like the feel of it either. I ended up buying with K-r with the 18-55mm and 55-300mm kit lenses and am extremely happy with this camera. The only thing I wish it had was as HDMI port, but besides that it's great. 6 fps is crazy fast! Love all the flexibility it has as well, and the low light performance is outstanding. Very solid build quality as well.