I would recommend most strongly that you go out with some more experienced photographers and learn from being with people who know their equipment and can give you some gentle guidance in a real world situation. Also it may help to go along to a local meet, not necessarily a club, but you might be able to find a group of enthusiasts who would only be too pleased to help you.

I think you would learn far more this way than by reading literature and guides, but I'm not saying that the guides aren't useful too.

Whereabouts are you located?

Regards
David

I love you too Dr O!

Regards
David

What about this? The reason Paul is holding down my camera is to stop it blowing over in the gale force winds!




Cheers
David

Hi Tony, thanks for your comments. None of these shots are HDR, all are a single exposure processed in a single workflow. I pay a lot of attention to ensuring I don't blow the skies in the original image, this is why I use the ND Grads, although it does introduce a couple of things to deal with, i.e. some increase to blue / cyan in skies and also a darker look to things like trees that are near the top of the image. In the image above there is a tiny amount of blow-out, but I think it's just about acceptable to me!

I also find that the K-5, and even more so the K-5IIs, are particularly good for revealing shadow detail without much image noise, so I'm not afraid to underexpose a tad and recover this later.

Regards
David

Hi Jules, my understanding is that everything is identical on the Samsung version, even the lens coatings. I think the only difference is external cosmetics.

Short answer on the colours is 'yes', I find it every bit as good. I know some have commented that the 12-24 doesn't have the same 'typical Pentax colours' as say the 17-70, but I haven't really found this to be the case so far. Take a look at a recent thread I posted: link; I think the colours from the 12-24 on these shots are pretty good.

Regards
David

Just one more image to show you, the reason for posting this one is that I think it illustrates a couple of things about the K-5IIs.

1. It captures a ridiculous amount of fine details, distant objects in particular are much clearer

2. It ruthlessly exposes poorer performing lenses and areas of the image on even good lenses that are not quite up to scratch. On the full res version of this image shot with the 12-24, the edge resolution is clearly demonstrated to be nowhere near as good as the central portion. I've noticed this previously with other lenses and some shots with the K-5, but with the IIs it is more pronounced.

Since taking the IIs out on a landscape trip, my K-5 has been relegated firmly to a backup only as the IIs comprehensively outperforms it for this type of work. I don't think this is anything to do with focussing, as focussing is not really much of a factor on this type of shot.




The full resolution version is on my Flickr stream if you want to have a look at this; you will see better what I mean.

Regards
David

Hi Nadeem, welcome to the site.

You have opened a can of worms with your question about better lenses! The simple answer is 'yes', but I would recommend that you keep the 18-55 and learn to use it and the camera fully before buying anything as a step up. When you do upgrade, depending on how serious you are, you could spend a fair amount of money! Possible alternatives are the 16-45, better than the kit lens and great value for money on the used market, 17-70, much better than the kit lens but a lot more money, then the 12-24 which is the best of the lot IMO, but even more expensive!

There are third party makes but I don't own any of these for landscape shooting, so I can't advise. I would however recommend an older prime which can be bought for very little cash, my favourite is the Pentax-M 28mm F3.5.

Regarding your issue with the 18-55, I'm a little puzzled by your explanation of the problem. I've never known a lens to revert to a previous focus position, unless it has 'lens creep', i.e. the focussing has very little resistance and when you hold the lens in a vertical position the focus moves. The 18-55 is not particularly prone to this, unless it is very worn.

Regards
David

I've just bought the Samsung version of the Pentax 12-24 and to say I'm impressed would be an under statement. Now I have this, I am not going to bother with any of the Limiteds.

I don't really do 'lightweight' as I usually go out with two cameras and a bag full of lenses, but if I had to go lighter I would take the 12-24, the K-5IIs and possibly the 16-45. Now I have the K-5IIs, my K-5 is relegated to be a bit part player I'm afraid. I actually prefer the 16-45 over the 17-70 for landscapes, it's not as sharp but it is lighter and less prone to distortions and vignetting.

For more general work, I would replace the 16-45 with the 17-70 and add the 55-300, keeping the 12-24 in the bag.

For a wildlife trip I would take the Siggy 150-500, I like this far better than the 50-500; I've had both and the 50-500 was nowhere near as sharp, in fact it was quite soft at anything over 150mm.

Regards
David

Thank you Sebastiano, I agree with you but we can't post the images in full resolution here and we have to live with the limitations of the Forum and Gallery in terms of the resolution it allows. I always reduce the size of my images to 1000px on the longest side so that they are not reduced any further when I upload them to this site, but for some reason they still look quite a bit softer on here than even my 1000px reduced images do on my PC. I might be doing something wrong, but I suspect that further compression is being applied during upload.

If you want to see some of the images in full resolution, please click on my Flickr link below.

Best wishes
David

I do like them all, but the first shot is tremendously good.

Regards
David