K30 best price

With the K30 beginning to ship it would be good if forum members would update this thread with the K30 best price.
I am almost certain that I saw the body for £549 at Mathers but the site is down so cannot confirm.
Probably best if we keep to UK stock rather than the ebay grey import stuff.

Best price found so far,
K30 with 18-55mm DA-L for £559 at Mathers of Lancashire. £699 with 18 -55 DA-L and 55-300mm DA-L.

Their website is currently down but a call will confirm these prices, cameras are UK stock with two year warranty and they are a Pentax Pro Centre.

As things stand SRS have the K30 with 18-55 WR for £679 or, interestingly, the K5 for cheaper at £645 with the same lens! (with £80 cashback).
K30 with 18-55 DAL is £649.
Well this autofocus improvement must be very good else the K5 looks like a bargain to me.

Quite agree .. the K-5 must be in the last few months of it's life I would guess.

Agreed, if the initial price if the K30 is more than the K-5, I would get the K-5.

If the K30 was around £450, I would be interested. So wait a few months.

I can't see it being £450 in a few months to be honest. Maybe £550. Also I think if the price gets too low it could damage its image as a fairly sophisticated camera to being seen as a budget one. (Not that we'd mind :wink

Unless you are a video fan OR the AF really is noticably better (jury out on that) then buy the K5. It is already clear that the K5 has the higher frame rate, quieter shutter and mirror still, better range of sockets and controls including the top LCD, better casing,better battery etc

Or you use manual lenses and want focus peaking.

I thought that was the point of a nice bright focus screen through a real pentaprism. Certain cameras only have electronic or indeed no viewfinder so need focus assist trickery on their screen. i guess it doesn't hurt to be greedy and have both!

Sometimes what looks in focus through the stock OVF screen, isn't quite in focus, when you are using certain lenses with narrow dof. Peaking ought to help a lot.

Surely lenses with a narrow DOF are the very fast ones so the full aperture preview is the brightest of all those in your camera bag? The fastest I have is a Sigma 50mm macro at f2.8 which is excellent to manually focus even with my old eyes(as it has to be for macro) I bet the 1.4 etc ones are excellent to look through.

As I say nice to have such extra gimmicks for marketing reasons even if a good DSLR doesn't really need them.

It is always appreciated if we could avoid the temptation to quote spam - that adds yet another post to remove.....posts about the spam duly removed!

Mmmm, kind of. I've struggled with my 50/1.7 and 135/2.5 wide open, personally, although I love the effect when the focus is dead on. With some subjects the dof is narrower than appears through the viewfinder. Hard to describe. Resorting to magnified live view increases the keeper-rate from a focus point of view, but often the framing suffers when you can't see the whole image!

Why is "best price" your main criteria? Does "best after sales service" have no importance?

It will when/if you have any problems with it.

You have to ask yourself how much is an extra year warranty worth? A pentax pro dealer will give a two year warranty.

IMHO SRS have always been spot on even if they are a few pounds more expensive, they will also give free delivery if you give them your pentax user details.