K-5 in my hands...

[Niresangwa]

...and it really is everything it's touted to be.

Threw on the 200/2.8 and wandered around the house. Shooting in dim bedroom light (sun is on the other side of the house) AF has zero problems locking on low contrast subjects...freaky fast... ISO1600 looks absolutely gorgeous, havent really done much with the extended ISOs but will tonight..

coming from someone who works with gripped k10s and k20s, this thing is TINY. Menu's are much easier to navigate, no scrolling, and are just as intuitive as the other pentax menus.. button placements though different to the 10/20 are right where you want them... build quality is great...dont feel like any of the doors, knobs, dials etc are going to be problematic..

no front/back focusing issues with the lens i tried out...the shutter is slick and silent compared to the slappy sound i'm used to..

...cute little feature i'm not used to having is the ability to convert the last image you shot (if youre shooting jpg) and save the RAW file just incase you balls something up..having that available after the fact is a good guarantee if the histogram shows you're a little off...

too many little bells and whistles i havent had a chance to evaluate yet... all in all, i was just really excited to tell someone, even if it was a forum board...

[scootermcq]

Congrats Steve!!! Can't wait to see some of your images....

[Mr Guy]

I'm extremely jealous.

I'm exceedingly happy with my K-7, but that K-5 sure is pretty.

Wish I didn't need to save for an engagement ring. That's true love there, I think; putting something unimportant and trivial like a diamond ring above a beautiful camera like that...

[scootermcq]

Originally Posted by Mr Guy

I'm exceedingly happy with my K-7, but that K-5 sure is pretty.

I was thinking about getting the K-9, but I heard it was a real dog....

[Niresangwa]

Originally Posted by scootermcq

I was thinking about getting the K-9, but I heard it was a real dog....

smirk.

so after a weekend of 3 shoots to play with it, i'm even more emphatic about how great this thing is...

...i hadn't intended to shoot that much with it, and mainly work with the usual 2 bodies, but i hardly used the k20 and only the k10 because it has the 10-17 FE on it.

Having put it through its paces, it's nothing short of amazing. Everything from the obvious factors like the new AF system down to the small details like the sharpness and vivid LCD. Even though a few of the buttons aren't where I'm used to them being, they were intuitively where I needed them... between this body and the DA*50-135 it was fantastic. At this point I'm absolutely psyched for this candle-lit wedding I have in a couple of weeks which previously I was a little apprehensive about...

Pentax really have delivered with this camera. Some fo the features may have been on the K-7 but having skipped that body, straight from the stalwart 20 and 10, this was mindblowing. Truly astounding.

Its nice to have my fanboi fire ignited again!

[Mr Guy]

I'm really drooling over here. After I picked up my K-7 and used it, the "rightness" of it was overwhelming. There's only two things I use my K20 for now, except as a back up body with a different lens handy.

1) I got a split prism for my K20, and haven't yet for the K-7, so manual focus glass is much easier

2) My girlfriend MUCH prefers the K-7, so when she wants a camera to shoot with, she gets the K-7 in green mode.

How much difference can you perceive in the autofocus? The K-7 has better autofocus, but MUCH of that is accomplished through the assist lamp. I'm wondering if the K-5 is just obviously better, even before the assist.

[Niresangwa]

Originally Posted by Mr Guy

I'm really drooling over here. After I picked up my K-7 and used it, the "rightness" of it was overwhelming. There's only two things I use my K20 for now, except as a back up body with a different lens handy.

1) I got a split prism for my K20, and haven't yet for the K-7, so manual focus glass is much easier

2) My girlfriend MUCH prefers the K-7, so when she wants a camera to shoot with, she gets the K-7 in green mode.

How much difference can you perceive in the autofocus? The K-7 has better autofocus, but MUCH of that is accomplished through the assist lamp. I'm wondering if the K-5 is just obviously better, even before the assist.

The autofocus, well, I can only compare it to the k20's, and obviously it's a massive improvement over that... having said that, in terms of its performance without being compared to older systems, I can say with authority that I can recall it hunting only twice since I've been using it... and that was when I was testing 1600 and 3200 ISO in a dark room. When it did lock, it was correct. I'm noting that because I keep waiting for it to have issues, and it hasn't had any.

It's fast and most of all is decisive and accurate. I was expecting to have to work through some backfocusing issues per some comments on the pentaxforums boards, but had none. If I had access to other platforms, I'd love to see it go up against Canikon now... i'm sure someone will at some point...and to see the resulting images from that dark-room AF test... that would be kickass.

The AF lamp has only kicked in a couple of times, actually the first night when i was outside on the deck shooting at high ISO's. I have only done a little poking around with AF-C mode, and more than happy with the fps and associated accuracy with a car driving by at about 15mph...

i'm getting into the nitty gritty and the small features right now, and again, havent found anything disappointing. even features i'll never seriously use like the in-camera HDR is simple and actually produced very nice results (you can select from 4 settings related to the intensity of the tonemapping, and it autobrackets at -3,0 and 3 EV) it processes in camera, does auto-alignment and spits out a nice jpg... so at three-digit shutter speeds with a nice wide angle (21mm ltd) i could handhold, which was great... a little bump in levels in CS5 and I had a very delicate HDR image... definitely going to be something I want to play with more... and though the bracketing quick-button is no longer present on the K5, you can set one fo the 5 user programmable modes to bracket however you want to do it and do it from the wheel...

blah, sorry... like i said, easy to get carried away raving it up!

I'd say that this anecdotal evidence is also bourne out by other personal experiences being shared online... given the doom and gloom associated with its impending release, it seems that people have absolutely nothing but good stuff to say about it. Supposedly the big reviews are going to be out in a couple of weeks... at this rate, i'd say expect big thumbs up...

..the downside to this is probably that the sticker price will be upheld rather than the usual drop. However, holy sh!t was this ever the most exciting purchase I can remember in a long time.. no buyers remorse whatsoever.

[Mr Guy]

Question: Have you played with live view contrast and face detection AF modes? I didn't realize they'd added those back in after they were deemed too slow for the K-7. I'm hoping they got it right this time, because it's one of those "Green mode hand to my girlfriend" features I really like.