19 October 2010

It's All Good With the Pentax K-5

If ever there was a time to make a snap decision this was it. Do I hold on to the workhorse Pentax K-7 or do I make the switch to the newly announced K-5? A question that raged in my mind for a few days when news broke of the new camera. The K-7 handled well, actually very well and it didn't seem clear how much of an improvement the new K-5 would offer. After a few thousand shots with the K-7 I had a better picture of it and it, a fine camera but it didn't seem like the complete package even after several firmware upgrades. Image quality was good but noise begins to intrude as the ISO goes up. While that can be countered by noise reduction during post processing, it still couldn't compete with even the entry level Pentax K-x. To compound the issue, I paid a tidy sum for it and the camera still had plenty of life left in it.

That debate on whether to go with the K-5 thankfully got resolved when I looked at a few sample images from the Pentax Japan website. The apparent dynamic range from the few samples were impressive, pointing to the 14-bit RAW files offering quite a lot more information than the 12-bit RAW files from previous Pentax DSLRs. Reports from Photokina where the cameras were first unveiled also pointed to improvements in AF and in Live View, which was promising. The sweetener to all this was my local Pentax agent offering the K-5 at a launch price that was even lower than the launch price of the K-7. It just made the decision to switch a lot easier.

1 comment:

Patrick Dinneen said...

I 'upgraded' from a K-X to a K-7 and love it (expect for the ISO).

I guess one day I'll upgrade to a K-5 but want a macro, really wide angle lens first.