I think that is a slightly odd analogy! Brake components on cars are safety critical and could threaten your life if they fail. A battery failing in a camera would not be a life and death situation!

Also, even if you do not buy your brake components from ebay, you could take your car to a dealer in good faith, only for the dealer to fit aftermarket parts and not manufacturer genuine items. For my whole life I have worked in or around the Retail Motor Industry, not in parts or service though but I do know only too well what goes on.

When it comes to 3rd party batteries, I have 6 of these for my K-01/K-5iis and K-3. I have only ever bought one that didn't perform well and as it only cost £5 it is not a big loss. I tend to carry the non genuine ones as spares and use the Pentax ones in the cameras as the main battery, except for the K-01 which has a non-genuine battery fitted all the time. I haven't noticed any problems charging or any performance differences, apart from with a Hama battery which I got free from SRS and is rated at a lower output, but still performs well.

We all pay our money and take our choice, we all have our own opinions. Mine is that I cannot understand for the life of me why anyone would pay £60 for an item when you can buy one for between £5 and £10 that does an equivalent or better job!

Regards
David

As others have commented, these are beautifully done. I particularly like the second image and I'm looking forward to seeing some more of your pictures when you get back to the English Coastline permanently.

Regards
David

The silver one does look good and is my favourite K-01 colour (I may be a bit biased because mine is this colour too). Great choice of lenses to go with it, for me the biggest advantages of the K-01 are its superb low light performance and the focus peaking which makes using old lenses a breeze.

I don't have any pictures of the camera, but here's one taken with it:




Regards
David

I agree with Cabstar and Fletcher8 - P-TTL is not worth bothering with on the K-5 as the implementation on this camera is so poor. If you had a K-3 it would be a different matter - the K-3 is spot-on for P-TTL flash exposures.

Buy a manual flash - Yongnuo are well liked and good VFM. For a cheaper alternative there is the Neewer 560 Speedlight - I have two of these and they are superb for the money (around £30 each, available from Amazon). They are well made, simple to operate, powerful and fast on the recharge. They also come with a soft pouch and a little 'foot' on which they can be used 'free standing', which can be useful if you can't attach them to a tripod.

Regards
David

Very nice shots George. I think there is mounting evidence that the K-3 is a good tool for wildlife photography and produces very sharp and detailed results, particularly with the DA*300. I can't wait until I have a bit of time off from house renovations to do a bit of wildlife stuff with mine.

Regards
David

What an interesting thread again, the K-5iis has certainly given us value for money on here since it was released!

We can argue, dispute, disagree, agree and debate until the cows come home. My thoughts are that there is a discernible difference between K-5II and K-5IIs shots, even at the miniscule resolutions in this Forum. The differences would become more apparent when viewing images in full resolution or when printing them. Also, whether or not the undoubted extra native detail that the K-5iis provides is important or not depends on lots of different factors:

- What type of photography? - e.g. for landscapes or wildlife I consider it more important than it is for street or portraiture (this is also relevant if considering K-3 which shows another level of detail again and is particularly good at rendering distant details in a landscape that the K-5 and to a lesser extent the K-5iis would gloss over)

- What lenses? - sharper lenses make the most of the extra resolution, with the kit 18-55 it's probably not worth bothering about

- RAW or JPEG? - It's more relevant when shooting RAW

For me, the K-5iis was a big step up from my K-5 Mk1, I can't say whether it would have been a big step up from a K-5 Mk2 as I've never owned or used one.

For what it's worth, I do think that it is daft to say that there is no discernible difference, there clearly is (personal opinion only, not intended to be an attack on anyone). The debate should be about whether the discernible difference is a positive or a negative one, where it can be used to best advantage and whether it is worth paying extra for. It is interesting that the K-5iis seems to be held in particular esteem by photographers who favour landscapes and seems to be dismissed more by those who favour other genres where the extra detail maybe doesn't matter so much. BTW, I am not a 'Pixel Peeper', this doesn't interest me at all. I am interested in how my 'real world' images look on my screen and on my wall when printed and framed.

Finally, Nigel (McGregNi) stated earlier in the thread:

Well meaning, but quite invalid (personal opinion again), simply because Nigel cannot state that the images were in 'completely controlled conditions' because he didn't take the shots, had no control over the exposures or the focussing used or any other factors that could possibly have differed. It is virtually impossible to take shots in completely controlled conditions - there are too many variables. Even if the same shots were taken with two cameras of the same make and model the results could come out different due to manufacturing tolerances that inevitably exist (cue debate on AF Adjustments?)

So, net result is we will all continue to argue, dispute, disagree, agree and debate!

Regards
David

No, not really a preference Barrie, but it certainly does take nice shots, it has a warm colour balance and very nice bokeh at wide apertures. It seems to me to have quality glass and a character that is quite different from the Pentaxes, but appealing nonetheless.

Regards
David

Just as a matter of interest, has anyone got any thoughts on the K-01 in the sharpness / detail department? I have always suspected that this model has a very weak AA filter as it produces sharper images than my K-5mk1 ever did and seems to come quite close to the K-5iis. Also, I've seen it producing moire, which I've never seen on my K-5iis!

Regards
David

I did this, but with a K-5 Mk1 vs K-5iis, so maybe not a fair comparison. There was a discernible difference when I did this, but I don't have the images any more and it would be difficult to tell anyway at the image sizes on this Forum. It's more apparent on prints.

What I have found since acquiring the K-5iis and later the K-3 is that I use a lot less sharpening on my images than I did with earlier bodies, up to the K-5 mk1.

Regards
David

Hi Barrie, not sure I fully understand the reason for your question, but I've always had a couple of Chinon F1.9 50mm lenses that are a legacy of film SLR's I once owned. I've kept them as I like them, but they don't get much use nowadays. They are worth next to nothing, so not worth selling and they are also good video lenses that my son likes to use on his K-01.

Regards
David