On Sep 19, 2011, at 6:17 AM, Christine Nielsen wrote: > So... I've been thinking more & more about stepping up to the k-5 > recently. In the interests of research, I wandered over to Pentax > Forums, just to see if there was any buzz, any good gossip, that might > influence my decision, or at least, timing. > > Well, I think that was a mistake. > > Down the rabbit-hole I went, for more precious weekend hours than I > care to admit. I got totally sucked in to the hand-wringing & > rumor-mongering & back and forthing over k-5 "issues". And what about > the the k-5 vs d7000 vs d700? Will there ever be a ff pentax > offering? Will it be mirrorless? What will ricoh do? Is there a > roadmap? New products this fall? Maybe in Feb, then? How about fall > 2012? Should we wait? Should we buy? Should we sell it all & move > to nikon? Can I get Hello Kitty on my next camera???? >
I don't remember what you're shooting with now. A year and a half ago I picked up a K-x because I do a lot of low-light photography and the K20 just didn't cut it. The low light performance of the K-x blew me out of the water, especially for such an inexpensive camera. I found myself always carrying both the K20 and the K-x because sometimes I needed the performance of the K-x, and sometimes I needed the features of the K20. Last January, I shot with a K-r for a week or so. It has addressed many of the usability issues of the K-x, and slightly improved performance. It might be the best price/performance bargain on the market. A few months ago, I picked up my K-5, after 27,000 frames I'm still as happy as the day I got it. When I got the K-x the low light and high ISO performance blew me out of the water. The performance of the K-5 makes the K-x performance seem disappointing. A couple months ago I was looking at photos I'd taken at the same event using both cameras and noticed how noisy the K-x photos seemed in comparison, and when the K-x came out it basically blew everything that came before out of the water. I've done informal low-light side by sides of the K-5 with other cameras. At high ISO it makes the Cannon D5mkII look like a K20. Compared to a D700 at ISO3200, in relatively bright light the D700 was a little better, in really low light, the K-5 was noticeably better. Comparing with a D7000, which should be very close, in really low light, I got much better shots with my K-5 than I was able to with the Nikon. I suspect that a lot of that has to do with in-body stabilization at f/1.8. Downsides: Last Friday I had some weird glitch where it read every battery as dead for about half an hour, wouldn't take photos and I had to use the K-x in the meantime. There are some things I'd do differently in software. I'd like to be able to set the green button up, when shooting RAW to give me TAv mode. Things like that. It could have saved me a lot of money if it had come out three years sooner. Then again, without those three years of wrestling with mediocre sensors, the Pentax engineers might not have been able to get this level of performance out of this sensor. I tend to push the performance envelope of my gear pretty hard, the K-5 is the first camera from Pentax where I haven't *needed* better performance. Sure, I'd like better performance, but it don't feel a major need to upgrade based on performance. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
