Pentax and Samsung enjoy a 'technology partnership' in the digital SLR market, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise to discover that there are plenty of similarities between their cameras.

With the Samsung GX20, though, it goes a little further than that. It clearly has the same body, lens, sensor and exterior controls as the Pentax K20D (albeit with a few minor cosmetic tweaks) and, really, it's more or less the same camera.

Samsung or Pentax?

Although Samsung distributes its own branded lenses, for example, these are clearly duplicates of Pentax optics - just as the 18-55mm kit lens on the GX20 is the same as the 18-55mm zoom supplied with the K20D. Indeed, in the Samsung manual it specifies the lens mount as 'Pentax KAF2'.

So who's going to buy a Samsung when they can get a Pentax instead? That's the question most traditional photographers will ask, but it's important to remember that there's a whole new generation of users reared on consumer electronics brands rather than the hidebound world of conventional photographic tradition and, for these users, the Samsung name is likely to be a much more familiar one than Pentax.

Spot the difference

So is the GX20 really the same as the K20D? Not quite. Apart from the badges, the design of the buttons and the look of the menu system (which does actually look a bit smarter than the Pentax's), there are a couple of other more significant differences.

Interestingly, Samsung does claim a longer battery life - 800 shots in the GX20 versus 530 in the K20D. Apart from that, though, the sensor is the same, and so is the overall 'look' of the images.

But while Samsung's promotional literature makes much of the sensor's dynamic range, there was no sign of the expanded dynamic range option that's included on the K20D, either on the ISO screen, in the menus or in the manual.

A pity, because that's one of the K20D's strong points. The list of picture styles on the GX20 is shorter and, surprisingly, there seems to be no Mono mode - on the K20D, you can shoot in black and white and apply different 'digital filters' to simulate a yellow filter, orange filter, blue filter, green filter and so on.