Also, just checking: are you clamping the lens collar rather than the camera to the tripod? are you using a cable release (or equivalent) or alternatively the camera's timer? As you obviously know judging from your questions about the tripod, the lens at its further reach will be intolerant of the slightest vibration. Another no-no of course is (if the Velbon has one) to extend the central column.

Lovely shot. The movement in the water just right, the dark clouds nicely atmospheric, and the driftwood does sterling service in the composition. I prefer the colour to the b&w on this occasion.

Mmmn, well a birthday is a birthday -- and there a few better excuses in the year for indulgence. But I'd counsel waiting six months. Not because of any price drop but to give time for any teething troubles to be sorted out. I recall the problems with the K5 when it first came out. Most manufacturers have form. Nikon has made glitches discovered by early adopters so predictable that a bookie would be crazy to lay odds.

I always felt a slight niggle with my 17-70, and on reflection I think that was mainly down to the fact that it was my workhorse, my everyday lens ... and no one expects more from a workhorse than just dependability, right? I took the lens for granted and while I was pretty content with its results, that was the most I'd stretch to.

But, on reflection, I was unfair to the lens. I have taken (slightly) technically better photos using other lenses, but the shots that are my favourites are almost invariably from the 17-70. The photo below was taken using a 17-70, and I reckon it shows the quality this lens is capable of delivering.

link

The first part of your second paragraph is accurate (I'd not be sure, even so, that it'd have the monopoly you expect); but your first paragraph is a caricature.

'Worry' is overstating it a bit. It would just be good for Pentax to show the level of commitment to their lens programme that we see elsewhere. I cannot say Pentax don't have it - time will tell - just indicating that it would be a wise strategy to have. The focus could then be on lenses particularly suited to the new FF K1, rather than hearing the legitimate but inevitably defensive-sounding mantra about the value of Pentax's legacy glass.

There are certainly plenty of legacy lenses, some of them almost legendary. But that doesn't really address the point that they were optimised for a different medium and use (comparatively) noisy, slow, screw-driven focusing. I have used the FA31 over the years on digital and it is a favourite, but, for all its qualities, it is by virtue of its age no longer at the cutting edge of lens design. Nor will it have quite the same edge-to-edge magic I'm accustomed to seeing on a crop sensor when it returns to FF use.

It seems unexceptionable (at least to me) to muse that the apparent qualities of the K1 deserve to be matched in the near and medium terms by similar signs of development and innovation in the lens area. The rebadged Tamron lenses issued to coincide with the launch of the K1 could plausibly suggest that there is something of a (forgive the term, used in relation to lenses!) bottleneck there.

The oft-heard reference to the quantity of Pentax 'legacy glass' should not obscure the need for an enhanced range of modern lenses in production.

The K1 looks about as good as it could, both aesthetically and in its list of features. If it proves reliable, it should be a winner. Its Achilles' heel, surely, is the paucity of matched lenses (I would be pleasantly surprised if many of the legacy lenses quite cut the mustard). Sony was in a similar - though not identical - position on the launch of the A7 a few years back (unlike Pentax, it was able to accommodate other makes' lenses via adapters), but has made considerable efforts to remedy the deficiencies in its own lens line-up. Provided Pentax lenses come through at better speed than has been managed in recent history, all should be well.

I have to smile at the reigniting of this ancient controversy. It's perhaps the photographic equivalent of asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. There will be no consensus, no 'right' or 'wrong', unless the question is drawn so narrowly as to be scarcely worth the asking. The perceived sharpness of a final result, whether on screen or in the form of a print, comes from so many different inputs - of which the sensor and presence or absence of an anti-aliasing filter are but a starting point - that the simple assertion that the K5iis is sharper than the K5, however true, doesn't say much at all.

Some of my K5 images, after processing, using particular lenses, compare commendably well for sharpness with prints achieved on a full-frame camera with over double the pixels and no filter over the sensor. The bigger camera has a native advantage of course, but as I was saying ....

... and very 3D. Nice shot.