I wouldn’t rely on the SD cards as a backup or long term storage solution. There is a time limit to how long the data on them is saved without becoming corrupted. From what I’ve seen on the web suggests 5 years is typical

Same here – I have placed a lot of orders with SRS via their website over the last few years and always got the free postage.

I have three DA* lenses 16-50mm, 50-135mm and 300mm – I guess of the three the 16-50mm is the one I’d be most worried about simply due to the barrel extension when zooming. I have used all of them without any problem in very heavy rain for extended periods (I will have to check them for dust as no seal is perfect).

I also use a 35mm Limited and the old none WR DA 100mm macro and a smc 400mm f4.5 (before the DA* I used 16-45mm and 24-90mm Pentax zooms) in fairly rainy conditions with having any problems, but I don’t think I would subject them to the sort of downpours that I do with the DA* lenses.

I guess the best thing is to be careful not to allow water to pool in large drops around the focusing rings and such.

I think it’s more likely that water/dust would be drawn in as the focusing or zoom ring is turned – especially if the lens barrel moves in or out a lot. The WR lenses have seals at these points to prevent this.

Happy New Year everyone – and here’s hoping for some better weather next year – my camera and lenses maybe weather sealed but I’m not.

Short answer – for me I very much doubt it would.

I still miss the viewfinder on my LX, both the image size, brightness and especially the flexibility. The first two I expect would be rectified with a FF, as for flexibility like the wonderful LX ‘Action finder’ there is no reason why interchangeable viewfinders couldn’t be implemented on an APS-C DSLR. But I expect even a FF would not have an interchangeable viewfinder so it’s a moot point anyway. With the improving AF performance improved manual focusing is becoming less of an issue anyway (being somewhat older than in my LX heyday my eyesight isn’t what it was).

As I’m mostly interested in wildlife photography I’m not a big user of wide angle lenses and a narrower depth of field would be a disadvantage rather than an advantage. I guess I would also miss the extra reach of my long lenses so would end up cropping the images more – defeating the object of a FF anyway.

With the excellent low light capabilities of my K5-IIs it’s hard to see any advantage for me to go FF.

What I would have really liked to see from Pentax was something more affordable than the upcoming 560mm lens.

I went from a K-5 to a K-5IIs and don’t regret it. The low light AF is much better – which in my case was, I think, reason enough to upgrade. I haven’t so far seen any big difference due to the missing AA filter (good or bad), but I think you would only really see a difference in a small percentage of photos anyway. My K-5 was a very early model and after asking SRS what the likely trade-in would be (this was at the end of October just before they first got the K-5II/IIs in stock) I decided to keep my K-5 as a backup.

Although it is hard to pin down (and it could just be wishful thinking) my K-5IIs seems to perform better than my old K-5 apart from the advertised improved low light AF etc. It makes me think like the unannounced firmware tweaks there may have been improvements in the mark II that they haven’t announced for whatever reason.

There is bound to be some variation is noise from sensor to sensor even between sensors on the same wafer, and bigger variation between processing batches so a small change is not going to indicate anything significant.
Also as with all semiconductors noise is very temperature dependent, getting worse at higher temperatures, so a change in ambient temperature or the possibility the camera was in ‘Live View’ just before the measurements were made will change the noise levels. It would be interesting if they published the camera temperature – which is available from the EIF information.

It could juts be sample to sample variation, but although it’s hard to pin down (and it could just be wishful thinking) my K-5IIs seems to perform better than my old early model K-5. Apart from the as advertised improved low light AF the images do appear less noisy at high ISO than the K-5.

Started with a Zenit-E in the 70s and then a Chinon, next a Pentax LX and at that point there was no turning back Built up a big collection of K series lenses – then a long long long …. very long wait until Pentax finally went digital and re-discovered the Pentax bug with a *istD. I guess there is no cure.