K5 - is it all I want for Christmas, please?

I mainly take wildlife photos, and have been driven mad on many occasions due to my K10D & K20D taking forever to focus, hunting endlessly in low light or back-focusing, even with the DA* lenses, leading to missed shots of unrepeatable sightings. Having tried other brands of cameras belonging to friends and seeing the speed and accuracy of autofocus, I have come close to turning to the dark side to get my wildlife shots (I'm sorry!!), but now the K5 claims better autofocus....

Please tell me, have Pentax answered my dreams and produced a camera that will genuinely focus quickly and accurately?

Having read many comments and viewed videos etc opinion seems to be split and there are suggestions that speed of AF in the K5 can only be achieved by setting for speed over accuracy. If you set the camera to require accurate focus lock, is the speed to achieve focus any faster than the K20D? How does it compare to Nikon or Canon AF for speed and accuracy?

The K5 is faster than the K20D. It is about the same as all the other cameras I've looked at recently. To be honest there hasn't been much of a problem with any of them. It's possible that the Sony A33 was slightly slower than the Pentaxes.

In terms of wildlife i found the K-5 to be significantly faster than previous models.

All these comments refer to the standard focus-priority setting, so I presume that if required it could be faster still.

I had the k5 for about 3 weeks and it is faster than my k20d.I also own a Nikon d300 and in my opinion they are pretty much equal in AF.I hope this helps.Regards Walter

I haven't used any long lenses since getting the K5, but my screwdrive Tamron 17-50 focusses considerably quicker on the K5 than it did on my K20D. I haven't done any formal testing but if I had to put a figure on it I'd say something close to twice as quick (from pressing the AF button to the confirmation beep). I have mine on focus priority.

In terms of low light I have found the K5 focus performance very good. Perhaps the best thing would be to demo one at a shop so you can see for yourself.

The K-5 AF is much improved over the K10D/K20D and slightly better than the K-7. Focus speed wise it is now pretty good, especially with a fast lens. Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 and 100-300mm f4 are particularly good but I have to say the camera is still lacking in the focus tracking department when compared to the 7D (and presumably D300S).

My K5 focusses more quickly with the 50-135mm f2.8 zoom than the K10.
David

If you would compare sharpness and details of a picture taken by K20D and K5 (same lens, etc), taking into account slightly different resolution - is K5 an improvement over K20 ?

At lower ISO's I wouldn't think so, but the better noise reduction at higher ISO's will make for cleaner images, and thereby increase the shooting opportunities.

Not at lower ISO .. infact I prefer my K10D over anything more recent for pictures taken at ISO 100/200. If all you are concerned about between the K20D and K-5 is sharpness and detail then imo it is not worth upgrading. The posts on the other forum saying the K-5 produces softer photos than the K-7/K20D is utter rubbish though.

Let me start by saying that the focus of other marques isn't all its cracked up to be, I've sat in plenty of bird hides along with other photographers and heard their curses as their AF systems fail to lock on and they miss the shot, in fact you would be amazed at how many will use pre-focus and stop the lens down.

Now onto the K5.
Yes it focuses much fast than my K10 or 20D with any of my SDM lenses, the Bigma on the other hand while faster still seems to take forever, perhaps its the sound of the screw drive turning the lens that makes it more obvious.

As for quality I have just posted two bird shots in my gallery, these are both approx. half frame crops, I've just printed both off on A3 paper ready for club competitions next year, and the IQ is amazing.

I can also say I never had problems with hunting with my SDM lenses on either my K10 or 20D, screw drive lenses yes.

That's interesting, Mike. Would that be true even in the case of shots where there was a very wide dynamic range? Shouldn't the K5 cope better here?

I should imagine the differences would become noticeable as soon as you start trying to lift the shadow areas in PP....

Thanks for all the comments and information. Looks like Santa will be visiting SRS to get my present then... Can't wait!