I live in Yorkshire but hail from Gateshead originally. I enjoy travel photography, mainly cityscapes, landscapes, and anything that includes the sea.
I started with a Ricoh KR10 back in the late 70's and only switched to digital 7 years ago. I plugged away with an Olympus e500 for a couple of years, got some reasonable results but never felt truly comfortable with the controls. I have also been using a Panasonic TZ6 and then a TZ30 that gave quite a lot of manual control which i have to say gives some really good results. I found my enthusiasm to move back up to a decent SLR earlier this year and looked around for a suitable upgrade to the e500. Checked out the canons and nikons but was unimpressed with the level of discontent from users ( including friends at work) and did not want to make a costly mistake. I looked further and checked out the Pentax K5 and K5 ii, liked what I was seeing, plus my old lenses could be recycled, so bought The K5 ii. First impression when I picked it up was one of relief. The dial controls front and back fell immediately to hand and felt comfortable in the same way my KR10 felt comfortable. I could now look through the viewfinder and still make adjustments. No more drilling through menus either! Well happy with my choice, just working my way through the various settings and trying different things out at the moment.
I'm starting to add to my gear slowly and my next purchase will be a dedicated flash, I just need to get advice on the best compatible unit that complements the abilities of the K5ii. I'm glad I found this forum, it's just what I need, full of people who want to get better at their at photography, irrespective of level
I live in Yorkshire but hail from Gateshead originally. I enjoy travel photography, mainly cityscapes, landscapes, and anything that includes the sea.
I started with a Ricoh KR10 back in the late 70's and only switched to digital 7 years ago. I plugged away with an Olympus e500 for a couple of years, got some reasonable results but never felt truly comfortable with the controls. I have also been using a Panasonic TZ6 and then a TZ30 that gave quite a lot of manual control which i have to say gives some really good results. I found my enthusiasm to move back up to a decent SLR earlier this year and looked around for a suitable upgrade to the e500. Checked out the canons and nikons but was unimpressed with the level of discontent from users ( including friends at work) and did not want to make a costly mistake. I looked further and checked out the Pentax K5 and K5 ii, liked what I was seeing, plus my old lenses could be recycled, so bought The K5 ii. First impression when I picked it up was one of relief. The dial controls front and back fell immediately to hand and felt comfortable in the same way my KR10 felt comfortable. I could now look through the viewfinder and still make adjustments. No more drilling through menus either! Well happy with my choice, just working my way through the various settings and trying different things out at the moment.
I'm starting to add to my gear slowly and my next purchase will be a dedicated flash, I just need to get advice on the best compatible unit that complements the abilities of the K5ii. I'm glad I found this forum, it's just what I need, full of people who want to get better at their at photography, irrespective of level