As a happy K-30 owner I'd say if the K-5 and the K-30 were the same price when I bought I'd have gone for the K-5. A couple of reasons which may only be important to me and there are a few other less important reasons that would put the K-30 ahead,
1. the K-5 shutter is wonderfully soft/quiet, the K-30 is harsher (not bad like the K100D though)
2. 1/180's flash sync is available in all modes with the K-5, the K-30 forces lower sync dependant on lens/light levels in all modes except for manual (at least for inbuilt flash and my old pentax external flash)
Live view is pretty good in the K-30 though, although I haven't tested the K-5 live view in more recent firmware, and the K-30 is a little lighter and smaller (that's important to me but may not matter to you). However it's a great problem to have 2 very good pentax cameras at such low prices in the end I think I'd have been happy with either.

Yeah, I've been using it for birds and dragonflies in flight. I can't make my mind up if it helps, I go thru' centre point only, expanded af, 5 point auto, 11 point auto.... sometimes one setting works great and I think I've got it, then the next day something else work better....
Great shot, a southern hawker?
I wouldn't mind a setting that would allow me to tell it to focus on the closest thing though, as the amount of times I have the dragonfly as an out of focus blur smack over the centre point and the camera is stubbornly focusing on the background.....

I went for other, as I just don't think the sensor in my K30 is lacking, it has enough resolution, dynamic range, noise is fine... I think pentax will have a hard time selling me a camera based on sensor improvements. For me it's things like improved af-c with customisation, such as closest focus priority, or better hand-off between af points etc, or body improvements such as articulated screen or ...hmmm... can't think of anything else at the moment...

Thanks, a lot of my use is Birds in flight so your comments are very appropriate.

Thanks Paul very helpful, I know from personal experience that reflections from water will show up purple fringing pretty fast if it exists in the lens, so I suspect your sailing use would probably be one of the more extreme tests for the tamron. FYI mine was used on a gx-10 for years before my upgrade to the K30.

I wonder if you could expand on this saying why the 55-300 is better? I struggle with this choice on a weekly basis as I have owned the Sigma 70-300 APO version with film and it was naff on digital, so tried the 55-300 and the tamron 70-300 LD Di at srs and went for the tamron (2nd hand). Then the tamron broke on me so I went thru' the dilemma again and this time srs was selling the tamron for £109 with a 5 year warranty and the pentax 55-300 for £299 with a 2 year warranty.... Again I went for the tamron, and it is a better one than previous, with very little purple fringing and AF is spot on and very quick with the K-30. The reason I've been put off the pentax is that almost every thread I've ever read about it on other sites mention slow af and problems with hunting (which I can say I almost never experience with the tamron). Also the min focus is not very good on the pentax but the tamron goes to 1:2 (very important to me).
As jessops have it at £239 I'm going thru' my usual dilemma (and perhaps srs would price match......). Even though I have a Pentax FA*300 4.5 I still use the tamron a lot as my wildlife walkround lens and I would like to make sure that I'm getting the best out of that focal length and if need be would add the pentax to my collection. Bird/wildlife and macro/closeup are the 2 manin things I use this lens for.
Thanks

I thought that at the time but was lucky and was passing a hardware shop in Andorra and spotted the pentax version at £56 (equivalent) brand new box unopened and snapped it up.

I've got one, had it since the late 80's (I think), it's a big well made lens, lovely manual focus feel, push pull zoom with a compact tripod mount. Suffers a bit purple fringing wide open but mainly goes by F5.6. A bit softer wide open but improves in sharpness and contrast by F5.6. Here's a mtf graph from the late 80's for it


and one from the same magazine of the pentax smc A 70-210 F4 for comparison


and one of the better 80-200 F2.8's of the day

I'd say the raynox DCR-150 would be a very good intro to macro photography on your 55-300, it will clip on and off in seconds and does a very good job. I don't have the 55-300 but a while back I asked about the raynox on it and was told it does vignette a bit at mid focal length settings. I've used the 150 and 250 very happily on a number of lenses, it works best on telephoto zoom lenses not standard zooms. They seem to be around £48 at the moment. The other option is the canon 250D or 500D achromatic close up lenses that screw on the front of the 55-300 lens, they are very good, the 500D being half the magnification strength of the 250D and the 250D being similar to the raynox dcr-150. They seem to be going around £74-78 new at the moment for 58mm thread that should match your 55-300. I use a sigma +1.6 dioptre achromat (the 250D is +4 and the 500D is +2) as well as the raynox's and I use macro lenses or extension tubes or reversing rings. My gallery at link has some examples in the butterflies, insects and dragonfly galleries if your interested.
The other good source of info on achromatic close up lenses is link
For a low cost good quality macro and closeup I think achromats are perfect.

Great shots, one and all. I assume the arctic tern was attempting to draw blood from your head? Hard to pick a favourite but the guillemot coming in for landing might just pip it for me.
Walt