Got my K-5 in early November, had a rude awakening during the first week at a gig where I took 700 shots and 95% were out of focus
I put that down to horrific lighting and my not having bonded with the camera. Anyway I did a bit of testing and found that the af wider than f/2.8 was shall we say a bit inconsistant. Got onto Chris @ SRS and we organised a painless swap and a shop visit which I have to say went extremely well for me at least, dunno about Chris
The replacement K-5 was a lot better, more so with the 1.03 patch and I felt reasonably confident with the AF but still I was not taking it out as much as I had done with my previous K20D. Button (re)placement was annoying me and I was having to slow down a bit too much when using my manual primes. I could focus but it was not as instinctive focusing as I remembered with the K20D so I bit the bullet and ordered a Katzeye a couple of weeks ago. That arrived early last week but I only fitted it yesterday and WOW what a transformation.
I am back in the game, K-5 and I had a bonding session yesterday and I can not put it down or wipe the smile off my face.
3 from yesterday with a K50 f/1.2 @ f/1.2, ISO80, all straight jpgs from in camera, cropped one on smugmug.










I am still of the view that the K20D is a more forgiving camera but if you get hooked up the K-5 will deliver massive shots.

Thats where Chris and the team at SRS do so well. I think I was 10 mins doing my swap over and another hour gossiping and bantering over various other items.

Because its completely under priced?
Bit of a bargain for a legend here Ladies / Gentlemen. This lens demolishes any other Pentax 50...
Filter and hood setup alone would be the best part of £30 - £40 if you went looking.

Pm sent with interest and offer!

My mistake all, its for the website only, not mentioned on their magazine, no doubt it will appear in next weeks news section of the magazine though.

Amateur Photographer have found out about the sensor issue now, front page news
Chris @ SRS (great shop, even though I think I might have got myself banned after finding a couple of nice bargins) sorted me out on Friday with a replacement, their reputation is fully deserved.

Gig hosted by Hotpress in Cork a few weeks ago. Biggest mistake I made was starting @ ISO1600! K-5 is an animal in low light! PP is limited to B/W conversion, cropping and some fill light using LR 3.2

FA77, ISO1600, f/3.2, 1/100s



FA43, ISO1600, f/2, 1/40s



FA43, ISO1600, f/1.9, 1/40s



FA77, ISO3200, f/2, 1/15s



FA77, ISO3200, F/4, 1/80s

I am so happy with mine that I treated it to a old style leather strap all the way from Italy. Looks pretty cool I must say. 2 stops are a given maybe a bit more if you have some pp skills.

Stands to reason I suppose, Pentax has the widest range of AF primes wheras the others are more into their zooms. For your typical consumer faced with the question of picking DA*55 f/1.4 (AF, Silent, Weather sealed) verses say a Voightlander 58 f/1.4 (MF, Silent, Not officially weather sealed) which way would they go? Its a pity though, these Cosina lenses (be it in Zeiss or Voightlander format) are generally all very very good and we have lost a bit more choice. Maybe Pentax have a lot of new designs coming out and they are bailing first or perhaps Hoya had a word in their ear and suggested that if they wanted nice glass then they should concentrate elsewhere

AVG used to be brilliant upto maybe 3 years ago. Small foot print and low memory usage. My Anti Virus / Malware defense consisted of AVG for Virus, Outpost Pro for Firewall and Lavasoft for the Malware bit and it worked pretty well, never got stung with anything. Then all these companies started to addon bits, AVG got into the Malware / Privacy area, Outpost tacked on Anti Virus and Lavasoft expanded into another 'Security Suite' and each was lesser for it. I've looked hard at most of the Anti Virus programs out there and settled on Avira, it does all of above and has the smallest footprint memory wise and services wise. It does cost £25 a year or so but if I have to recommend one nowadays thats what I say. Microsoft Security Essentials has its place but I would trust Avira that little bit extra