Anyone with Pentax K5
theprincereturns
Registered Users Posts: 132 Major grins
Anyone have the Pentax K5? Curious about your expirience with it and what you upgraded from. I have the K20d at the moment and have gotten a ton of great use out of it. I really love the functionaly, ergonomics, and utility (price was good too, and i enjoy having IS in the camera vs having to pay $100s extra on each lens). Anyway, the low light performance, autofocus, and HD video, are the thing i would like most to upgrade. I really don't like shooting at ISO 800 at the moment on the K20D if i can help it, but i have seen reviews saying up to ISO 1600 is really good on the K5, and that the auto focus is a lot better.
Anyone move up to the K5 and willing to share their expirience?
Anyone move up to the K5 and willing to share their expirience?
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I love it. Ergonomically I believe it to be slightly superior to the K20d. Although the camera is slightly smaller, the buttons are all in the right places, and I rarely have to take my eye away from the viewfinder.
Autofocus, once I upgraded to the latest firmware, is near instantaneous in bright light. It no longer seems to do that "Pentax double check", making the focus feel more confident. It still sometimes hunts in dim/dark light, however. Some people complain about misfocusing in certain types of tungsten light. I haven't really seen that.
The shutter is a lot quieter too.
As someone who can't hold a camera straight to save my life, I'm really jazzing on the automatic level, and the fact that I can use it through the viewfinder. It's my favorite new feature, and how sad is that? :lol
Low light? ISO 800 is exceptionally clean. And as noise starts to show up, it's very "clean" noise, by which I mean that it tends to be evenly distributed throughout the image, which makes it easier to clean up.
Dynamic range, if you shoot raw, is amazing. And at low ISOs shadow noise is nearly non-existant, so you can push/pull images and create very high dynamic range pictures with just a single shot.
(note the level horizon!) Picture edited in Lightroom 3 only to bring out DR.
Here's the SOOC raw so you can see how much range we were able to extract:
I haven't played with movie mode much. One thing that's lamented in reviews is that you can't change autofocus when in movie mode. I have used Live view, and it seems to work well. I find it very useful for manually focusing due to the ability to digitally zoom into your subject.
Mark - Thanks for the info and sharing the pictures. I do shot RAW so expanded Dynamic Range is always great as well. I haven't had too much trouble with the Range on the K20D, but i would take a couple more stops for sure :-)
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I went through the whole K-range top bodies (K10, K20, K7 -with Kx for the wife-), and each one plagued me with at least one nagging point...
But the K5 is really sweet... I finally found back the pleasure I had shooting negs, not really bothering about absurd technical subtleties like limited DR (all previous DSLRs), shutter speeds to be avoided (shutter blur on K7 & Kx), low AF (K10 & K20), chroma noise (all except Kx), and so on...
But if you are well used to the K20 layout, you'll have a rough time with the K5, as controls have been quite moved around... I'm still a little lost, after 20 months of K7/K5, although I only spent one year with the K10/k20 bodies...
I'm going to disagree with the last statement, slightly. Although buttons did move, they did so in ways that made things vastly more logical. (Although I still sometimes hit Info button when I mean to hit Play.)
For example: the ISO and +/- button, right behind the shutter makes adjusting those features much easier, and you don't have to take your eye from the viewfinder to do so. And being able to quickly reset these features via the green button is great-- no more accidently wandering around at the wrong iso, or with -3 EV dialed in from this morning.
Moving the Play and Trash buttons to the upper left hand corner makes a lot of sense-- these are not buttons you need when the action is fast and furious, but you sometimes need quick access to the Info and Menu buttons.
Some people are upset that the SR switch became a menu item, but I kept knocking it on or off by accident so often on my K20d that I'm relieved that it's someplace that can't be switched by accident.
Hummmm, well, you had the same level of control with the Ok button + front wheel on the K20, and OK + green button did the same as ISO + GB (as the +/- & Green button combo), so the K7/K5 brought nothing new in term of controls, except by clearly labeling one button "ISO" for the dumb reviewers that were not able to find this by themselves...
The K10 got pretty bashed for not having a dedicated ISO button, so they added this feature in the v1.10 FW, and the K20 kept this feature, but the reviewers were still as dumb and said that the K20 lacked a dedicated ISO button... So Pentax surely felt the need to finally put a nice "ISO" button to satisfy the masses...
So, in the end, they removed the Fn button and moved its function to the OK button, and moved the ISO selection from Ok to its own dedicated button. Fine, but now we have Af point selection AND the Fn equivalent on the same button, and I find this vastly irritating, as I often end up in some WB or Flash menu when I want to move the AF point around, and the only hint about the current mode is the tiny four-arrows icon in the viewfinder...
With the K10/K20, these two different and essential functions were clearly separated, and there was absolutely no way to tangle things.
Moreover, I still find the K20 layout more logical, as you always select the variable to change with your thumb (ISO, EvComp, AF point, menus), and use your index to either scroll the front wheel to adjust the variable, or press the Green button to reset the variable...
Now, using the K5, you have to swap the controlling finger between your thumb and your index, depending on the variable you want to change... Not so logical and quick in my book...
Did you use the focus point selection on the k20? I use this one all the time as well, as i like the control of where the camera is actually focusing. Everyone seems to say that the k7/k5 are a lot better with focus though.
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But the K5 is so much more of everything (not just AF) compared to the K20 that this little quirk is frankly the only downside I can find to it...
I proposed a better handling of this back in my K7 days (and again when I bought the K5), but I guess we're stuck with this behavior now...
If they transformed the long push on OK into a real Fn-like feature (with the K20-like clover menu), with cancellation on shutter half-press (or any other camera control, as the ISO or +/- buttons), it would solve the problem and not let you stranded in some menu, blindly changing settings, while you try to quickly move the AF point around...
I really don't understand why they made it a latch-like behavior between AF point selection and the Fn menu...
Metering is also a huge improvement, BTW... Flash is no more fooled by reflections and is quite constant, and general metering is predictable...
For instance, I know that in full sun I have to underexpose by -1Ev if I want to prevent highlights blowing (and I know I'll be able to push the shadows quite a lot in PP, so it doesn't bother me), and in shadows/cloudy situations, I can push exposure by +1Ev...