SRS Open Day - 9th October

That IS an idea

It seems the reason for the delay (1st week in November it seems) is that the final firmware is not finished yet. As soon as it is finished, stock should be in the stores 2 weeks later.

Would rather they did that than rush it to be honest.

Ruddy programmers

Well my daughter and family were there for the day and in a moment of vindictive maliciousness MMS'd me a photo of my granddaughter holding a K5

Kids know how to screw up their parents.
Greg

The K5 is a lie... it's just a K7 with a new number plate

Ha, they should have sent a picture of her holding a 645D.

Actually, thinking about it, the only thing I didn't take a picture of with the 645D and the K5 this morning was myself. Accidental reflections excluded, of course. Hmmm...maybe I should do some pixel-peeping to see...

p.s.
Big thanks to SRS for their efforts today, and their generosity in letting a complete stranger come in off a street and straight away say "would you like to try this" and hand me a £10k 645D...

I've got a ton of pictures to go through, but initial impressions from the rear LCD were that :

- K5 high-iso is better than the Kx (!), it looked good at 6400, anything higher was clearly noisey.

- the DA* 50-135 still focuses slowly, clearly lens-limited not body.

- I could find some occasions where the 50-135 would hunt (to be fair, a ceiling light is quite 3-dimensional...), but the 12-24 was much more stable at focusing than it is on the Kx.

- Didn't look at K-r or the new lens(es), or the DFS question. Sorry. Had enough trouble with getting the camera back to semi-normal with because someone had put the K5 on machine-gun mode and -1.0 EV, and probably some other annoying choices that I'll find-out when I develop the pictures. Grr.

- Firmware was still the pre-production version (for which they were very apologetic) in fact I'd suggest the cameras had probably come straight from Photokina!

- Free cakes and drinkies (photographed, didn't try)

- Big pentax sign outside!

- More friendly staff than you can shake a stick at.

That isn't so important how many times would you shoot at those settings, how was it at ISO200 and lower!
Better than the K20D/K7?

That lens has a huge focus throw, around 270 degree maybe?
That lens will never be fast, but it's nice to use though and also good with manual focusing.
I wished they make a geared system like Nikon does.

I was assessing the camera for how I would use it (I'm sure there will be a boat-load of detailed general-purpose reviews hitting the web very soon). I rarely shoot my "proper" shots at anything under 800 - and I was taking a load at 3200 only last week (such as this one).

p.s.
I might have some ISO 80/100 shots for you though. I won't have time to properly sort-through until monday, sorry.

Beautiful image Flossie, i like the lights in the distance.

I myself almost never shoot over ISO400 and most of my shots are at ISO100, so very different use then what you do.
It would be great if you can post those full sized later, but because it's a CMOS sensor i doubt it can replace the K10D at those settings. It does give me a reason to keep the K10D though. =]

thankyou.

I've just quickly looked at one of my SD cards on the laptop - yes I have got some ISO 100 shots, I'll do a comparison series if it works, and its no problem to upload full-size / RAW files as well.

Thank you!
A raw file please, and i would be interesting in your comparison.

What is your first impression of how the camera handle?

I went this morning as well, thanks to SRS and Pentax for allowing us to have a play with some of the new kit

The K-5 does seem like it might be a worthy upgrade to my K-7, I noticed a few changes to the menu system, for example 5 user modes which could be useful.

It's the last airshow of the season tomorrow at Duxford then that's it until May next year so there's no need for me to upgrade just yet. I think I'll hire a K-5 for the start of next season and see how well it performs before I commit to buying one.

Just to update - I'm having trouble with the pictures from the K5, Lightroom is refusing to recognise them (error message, won't deal with the RAW), and Pentax DCU will let me look at them but is refusing to save them (as DNG or JPG)...

Have updated both to latest version, very puzzled. maybe I'll figure-it out tomorrow.

Flossie have you shot the RAW in PEF or DNG?
The K5 uses a new PEF just like the PEF from the K7 is different so it isn't so strange no program would be able to open those yet.

See if Irfanview can open them. Probably not, but worth a try.

No one has updated for the K5 or K-r PEF yet.