Sounds like you have a faulty specimen then. My K-5 focuses fine in less than a second in such conditions (and with only 120 watts of tungsten illumination, in a dark corner of the room as just tested, EV is 5). Newspaper print is pin sharp handheld at 100%, slightly sharper than using Live View and much sharper than I can get using manual focus.

100mm F2.8 DFA WR, handheld at 3200 ISO, 1/100 wide open, AF fine adjust set at -10.

Yes I remember that, including the Panasonic DMR BS-750 and 850 blu-ray/freesat recorders. I got one for almost half price and when, after a few months, the replacement models popped up they were a bit cheaper than the old models, with a few minor feature changes but the guts was the same and of course a lot more expensive than the one I got (they ended up at less than half price in some places). An extra model with similar specs was added, but for Freeview.

So Ricoh could be doing this, as you say, it's been done before in low-volume up-market consumer electronics.

Sent off my £90 K5 cashback claim form on 15th November, got the cash in my bank on 6th December, not bad.

I also received a £17 discount voucher for my next purchase over £130 at SRS (55-300 lens which I bought on their Pentax 'specials' weekend last month, at a £24 discount).

So £131 of discounts/cashbacks on top of the nearly £300 K5 body price reduction this year, it must be Christmas!

Oh... it nearly is!

Still is - SRS on Ebay, +free 8gig class 10 card+free camera bag+free postage.

I ordered a 55-300 from them late last Saturday during their weekend price cut, and received it today. They had plenty then. Incidentally, they also had well over 50 K5s, just arrived. Sorry but I didn't ask about KRs.

I hope so, I ordered one on Saturday in the SRS weekend sale (£245 post free and with my £17 discount coupon it will be £228 ). It is a replacement for my broken 50-200 kit lens.

I'm not at the moment concerned about the lack of WR as I can't envisage using that particular lens out in the rain - and hopefully it will still work OK in the deep midwinter cold, on my K5.

Helpful threads like this one gave me the confidence to go ahead.

I'm sure Alan will confirm that, as coincidentally, I discovered it for myself last night while taking some test shots of the moon in RAW+jpeg (using the Pentax Silkypix utility). I was able to undo the jpeg settings embedded in the RAW file and then, try out different settings to compare with the original jpegs.

I can now see why so many people with the time and inclination to do post processing often shoot RAW.

Have just tested this with my brand spanking new K5, photos are tilted between 1 and 1.6 degrees to the right when level according to the camera indicator (by hand not on a tripod, hence the variations). I checked against horizontal kitchen worktops and a flat polystyrene object floating on water, so they really were horizontal.

I can do better by eye by ignoring the level indicator on the camera screen, this is unacceptable (but is the first problem I've encountered so far).

EDIT On a tripod, it shows three bars when actually level, one bar being dead level so it's out by two bars, or 1.2 degrees in Paint Shop Pro. Shake reduction was on for the hand held shots, off for the tripod, so it's not that, it seems.

I agree with this, and I've been checking AF accuracy with my old 18-55 AL kit lens, and my far older 200M/F4 manual focus lens, on my new K5. The autofocus for both (using the hexagon on the manual) seemed to be accurate on my 100DS but that could simply be because of its lower sensor resolution compared to K5.

On the K5, the 18-55 is hard to evaluate but is just about in focus or perhaps has a slight front focus bias, fine adjustment would be 0 to -5 after further testing, if any. The 200M manual lens needs -10 to be set on AF fine adjustment "apply all", to get the focus hexagon anywhere near the truth, else it 'front focuses' badly. Ideally, it would need at least -12 but that's out of the adjustment range so I'll have to live with that.

Can you (or anyone) confirm that if I leave -10 set on "apply all", and subsequently set -5 on the "apply one" for the 18-55AF lens, the K5 will use -10 for the manual lens(es) and -5 for the 18-55 autofocus lens? The manual explains that setting "apply all" overrides "apply one", but doesn't mention what happens if you then reapply "apply one". If I still had my 50-200 AF I could test it easier, but I broke it...

Well I would have saved £270 if I'd bought a K-R body instead of a K-5 this week (after cashback) so yes, that's about the price of the 55-300 zoom. But when I looked at the complete system price i.e. including lenses I have and will have and use, that extra £270 seemed much less daunting.

I probably wouldn't have upgraded from a K-R but the step up from my K-100DS is already very noticeable in several important respects, and I've only had it for a day. Indoor photos without flash (even under some evil CFLs) are a sight for sore eyes.