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Got my Pentax k-5... quick impressions...

raist3d

Well-known member
  • awesome interface
  • jpeg engine looks better than I was expecting
  • lots of customizability
  • DA 70 F2.4 is pretty awesome, nice and neat. Didn't expect a little bag with it.
  • smaller than I remember, this is effectively a pro-specced Olympus 620 with the spirit of the Olympus E-1
  • so far fast AF and accurate. Haven't stressed it yet though.
  • movie mode is crisp, clear with detail. Quite the surprise.

But Pentax oh no Pentax, I have the curse of the dirty sensor thingie. UGH. Talk about a way to spoil the excitement, this camera has to go back. I'll probably keep it a week or so to test it anyway to see if it was to my liking, but ugh. The spots are visible at F11 and up. At F8 they are muted but they are still there. Depending on the photo they will matter or not.

I am sorry but I didn't pay $1,600 USD for this. This has to be fixed. I'll probably send it back to amazon rather than fix it with Pentax, but depends on how strongly I feel. I am not in the mood of waiting 1-2 months for a replacement so if Pentax can guarantee me a quick turn around it's a deal, if not, then I have to conclude they don't have the network to provide service at a more pro level.

(talking about USA here).
 

Terry

New member
What are you talking about in spots? problems on the sensor? cover glass? or just dust?
 

sagar

Member
I have seen many threads on PentaxForums about dust on the K5 and Kr sensors, where people got clean body after after 1-2 exchanges. You are right brand new camera out of the box has dust particles on the snesors. Probably QC is still an issue with Pentax
 

raist3d

Well-known member
Many people have reported what seems to be a black "spotch" or even like a piece of "thread/little hair" a bit black. Showed on on view finder, shows up at high F's. Apparently it's a manufacturing defect where oil or something else got trapped between the AA filter of the sensor and the sensor surface. Maybe it's not there and it can be cleaned.'

SAGAR- what's your experience in general with Pentax's QC- sounds like you have some experience and I would like to know about it. Thanks.
 

raist3d

Well-known member
Interface/ergonomics: superb!

Terry maybe you are more right than I gave you credit for. Pentax's interface makes Olympus look a bit messy... it really is much cleaner. This camera has *tons* of features and I am picking it up fastest than any other camera I have ever picked up.
 

raist3d

Well-known member
JPEG engine- promising.. very customizable...

much more customizable then Olympus... including tone range, and with the high contrast filter which also works in color, I may be able to do a closer look to the Olympus JPEG if I set it mildy (still experimenting).

Can't do much until battery charges. I am going to wait 2 hours because a full charge from zero is 6.5 hours!!!!!!

At least once charges it seems to last forever (CIPA 1,100+ shots. Not using flash that probably goes to 1400-1500 which is a lot).

- Raist
 

redrockcoulee

New member
From Pentax USA response to a customer on Pentax Forum it is a problem to a batch or maybe it is several batches of cameras they only stated a batch (whatever size that may be)
 

jonoslack

Active member
HI Ricardo
Glad it arrived . . . sorry about your sensor spots. I have them as well, but only when I shoot a white target at > f16 and then do a radical levels. I've checked blue sky up to f16, and it's not noticeable, so I'll leave it as it is.

Terry - it seems that it's spots trapped between AA filter and sensor - sometimes a little trail of them , with kind of halos around them. mine just has a couple of very faint spots - I can live with it (which sensor doesn't have one or two faint spots).

all the best
 

raist3d

Well-known member
HI Ricardo
Glad it arrived . . . sorry about your sensor spots. I have them as well, but only when I shoot a white target at > f16 and then do a radical levels. I've checked blue sky up to f16, and it's not noticeable, so I'll leave it as it is.

Terry - it seems that it's spots trapped between AA filter and sensor - sometimes a little trail of them , with kind of halos around them. mine just has a couple of very faint spots - I can live with it (which sensor doesn't have one or two faint spots).

all the best
Well unfortunately I can see some blur on the spots at F8, and I don't feel that paying $1,600 USD for this is in any way ok. So my plan is play with the camera for a week and use it in a real life situation (company Christmas party)- that will answer the "will I want a k-5 or not." Then call Pentax and see how they want to deal with this. If they can't tell me they have a replacement body ready to go with quick turn around then it goes back to amazon, and maybe I'll pick up one later.

On autofocusing and lower light- it does allright. Better than the e-620 which is what I am trying to get away from on that end. But I bet the Olympus E-5 will do better as the lights go out and faster too. I get the impression the E-5 is more sensitive to low light AF without any light assist. The light assist of the Pentax is handy, but it won't help you much say on a wedding where people are walking/coming in... but hopefully the light there won't be *that low*.

I have a christmas party next week and that should be "real life enough" of a situation to provide me with all the data I need.

In all honesty, I still like the output I am seeing from the E-5 as far as JPEGS, but I just know the highlight recovery/depth in shadows it's just not there. But hey, that uses all my lenses.. and the lenses I have are pretty good.
 

jonoslack

Active member
Well unfortunately I can see some blur on the spots at F8, and I don't feel that paying $1,600 USD for this is in any way ok.
I quite agree - I might see about mine later, but it's tiny, and really un-noticeable, even when you know where to look.
On autofocusing and lower light- it does allright. Better than the e-620 which is what I am trying to get away from on that end. But I bet the Olympus E-5 will do better as the lights go out and faster too. I get the impression the E-5 is more sensitive to low light AF without any light assist. The light assist of the Pentax is handy, but it won't help you much say on a wedding where people are walking/coming in... but hopefully the light there won't be *that low*.

I have a christmas party next week and that should be "real life enough" of a situation to provide me with all the data I need.

In all honesty, I still like the output I am seeing from the E-5 as far as JPEGS, but I just know the highlight recovery/depth in shadows it's just not there. But hey, that uses all my lenses.. and the lenses I have are pretty good.
Well, not having the E5 I couldn't possibly comment on this, but shooting over dinner last night, in our dark kitchen, I had no hunting, and almost 100% keepers (with the 100 WR) - this was up to 6400 ISO.

The first thing I did when I got the K5 was to turn the focus assist OFF - it may work, but it scares and horrifies punters (why have a lovely quiet shutter if you're going to scare everybody off!).

This is pretty much straight out of the camera at 6400 ISO - the real attraction for me is the colour (untouched). If the E5 is this good I'll be very impressed.



f2.8 1/125 second 100mm WR macro ISO 6400
 

raist3d

Well-known member
I think the E-5 will go in that direction at that picture size, but not that good. If we are talking about the image quality at high ISO that is.

Auto focus- barring E-3 back focusing issues, should be faster. I did a test that I remember my E-3 passing (though it had the back focus issue, but the e-30 also passes it).

But it's better than the 620 for sure. I Will be checking this again as the night falls, going out (and hopefully with more of that battery charged :) ).

On the spots- looks like also this varies per camera so some may have gotten the spots in a very easy to ignore way. I have one right close to center a bit up and in the upper left quadrant.
 

jonoslack

Active member
BTW is that image a JPEG or RAW?
The thousand dollar question eh! :ROTFL:
It's RaW, because that's what I shoot ( no overhead in time using Aperture, and I like the WB flexibility.) but I'm sure the jpg would have been as good.

Incidentally, it would make a perfectly good 12x16" print as it is, with care and a little work (and possibly some of that noise reduction stuff I never use!) I think you could go larger.

As for the spots: I only found mine because I read the thread, and as I can't see them in any 'real' pictures I'm going to be grown-up about it. At least for now!
 

raist3d

Well-known member
The thousand dollar question eh! :ROTFL:
It's RaW, because that's what I shoot ( no overhead in time using Aperture, and I like the WB flexibility.) but I'm sure the jpg would have been as good.
Haha, no worries, I am just asking to gauge more data on the capabilities of the JPEG engine / DNG, etc.

Incidentally, it would make a perfectly good 12x16" print as it is, with care and a little work (and possibly some of that noise reduction stuff I never use!) I think you could go larger.

As for the spots: I only found mine because I read the thread, and as I can't see them in any 'real' pictures I'm going to be grown-up about it. At least for now!
I agree with you that the camera is entirely usable in an aperture range I can use it for. I just want it repaired if I am going to keep it because again the money spent, this shouldn't happen (this for me, looks like different K-5's got different severities of the problem).

Here's something I tried to night- in bad fluorescent light, 70 mm DA Limited, ISO 12800. Used DNG/Mac OS X preview to convert, this was a very quick conversion (oh btw, I also use Aperture).

Oh tried Pentax's own software. ugh no, horrible. I applaud them for trying to recreate the camera settings using Silky Pix's engine but really, it was dog slow and crashed on me easily.

1600x1060, ISO 12800:



And a 100% crop - not edited much at all. You can even see me in the eyes.



- Raist
 

raist3d

Well-known member
Oh I never thought the E-5 could do this. What the E-5 does very well is at lower ISO keep tons of detail. Someone posted a shot with the F2.0 50mm macro and it was quite stunning in detail, the per pixel detail approaching the Sigma Foveon. This because the AA filter has been weakened further. Update: and because the F2.0 50mm macro is truly a 4/3rds jewel of a lens, but from what I am seeing the Pentax 100 Macro FA WR F2.8 (or whatever it was) is its spiritual equivalent except that the Olympus is a close up macro and the Pentax is a telephoto macro - a lens Olympus had in the 4/3rds roadmap since forever and they finally canned it officially.

But I just checked the pictures of the neocamera review (which has E-5 and K-5 reviews) and in lower light, it reminds me oh so much of my e-620. And with this I have to say, score +20 points more to me keeping the K-5. I wasn't too happy seeing those shots.

The color is right, it's just that there's only so much Olympus can do with a Panasonic sensor of three years back. AS it is they do great, but outside of daylight, at night the noise just creeps in. I even saw it at ISO 200 (better than the 620 class of course, still there). Then ISo 400 and by 800 there was some detail loss- so much for a weaker AA filter then.

To the E-5 credit, maybe the review left the noise filter on "standard" but still.

Anyway, Olympus still has the secret sauce to do great color out of the JPEG, but the sensor puts a cap on what they do, so yeah. I think I am going to be happier with the K-5 for many reasons. As a side note I will say Olympus lenses are really good and this is part of image quality. Have had to look a bit hard for the Pentaxes.

Anyway, hope that answers.. I typed back way way way too much LOL ;-)

Ah Terry I had a chance to try out the GH2 briefly today. The AF is definitively fast. I didn't do any extensive tests but the RAW files I downloaded the other week proved it's definitively an improvement over E-5/GH1/G1/GF1/Pens sensors. I thought it may be able to autofocus the old 4/3rd Olympus lenses fast but no dice- does it at super slow speeds.

That's another thing that surprised me about the K-5- for being a DSLR the live view auto focus is actually pretty fast. I would even rank it as fast or very close to Pen Version 1.0 firmware which for a DSLR is pretty fast. Makes it usable.

- Raist
 
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raist3d

Well-known member
You know as I stare more and more at my cat shot at 1600x1060.... I think.... I am starting to realize.. I will probably switch... we'll see how the week goes.

I still think the AF of the E-5 will probably be better but if the K-5's is "good enough" I rather take the extra DR/noise performance/pancakes and awesome filters like Toy camera/Cross processing of the K-5 which prove to be more flexible than the E-5's.
 
P

photogerald

Guest
That's another thing that surprised me about the K-5- for being a DSLR the live view auto focus is actually pretty fast. I would even rank it as fast or very close to Pen Version 1.0 firmware which for a DSLR is pretty fast. Makes it usable.
I think this is one of the improvements that has been somewhat overlooked or underrated by Pentax users. The LV AF performance is much improved over the K-7, and an even bigger leap over my K20D which does not even have contrast detect AF - the mirror needs to drop down to take a phase detect AF reading (you can imagine how cumbersome this is). I think many of us got so used to the bad LV that we don't even bother paying attention to this feature anymore. So it's interesting hearing your good impressions of the LV AF on the K-5.
 
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