Two design choices did bother me a little, though. The positions of the Playback and Live View buttons are transposed, as compared not only to other recent Pentax cameras, but also to just about every other camera I've used lately. Also, the Green button sits on the top deck, where the dedicated ISO sensitivity button is on the K-5; the back seems a more natural position to me. If you're considering picking up a K as a second body, though, you'll want to be aware of it because you'll need to consciously pay attention so as to prevent yourself starting live view every time you want to play back an image, and vice versa.
I'm more sensitive to this than most would be, just because I handle so many cameras in the process of reviewing them. User interface. In other areas, though, the Pentax K has some nice benefits over my K Among other changes, menus have a subtle halftoned background, while the status screen has more colorful graduated backgrounds and squared-off corners on some elements, where the K-5 and K-r had flatter backgrounds and rounded corners.
The difference isn't huge, but the net result is an interface that feels a bit less dated. Still not as modern as on some rivals, sure, but it's mostly an improvement. More importantly, menu options have been significantly reorganized in a much more sensible manner, making it easier to find the items you're looking for. Perhaps the key change here is a new Movie menu tab, where previously movie options were unintuitively clustered in a sub-menu off the still image menu.
Options related to image capture, autofocus, connectivity, and LCD display are also grouped in their own pages. I'd love to see some of these changes ported back to the K-5 firmware, as well! I found myself using live view more often with the K than with my K-5, thanks largely to the snappier autofocus.
For this shot, it was a must: there was a wall right behind me, and I didn't have a wider lens handy, so there was no room to fit myself behind the camera to frame! Live view. Pentax has put quite a lot of work into its live view mode in the K, and it shows.
The improvement is also in part thanks to the new PRIME M image processor, which doubles the refresh rate for live view. To be quite honest, I've seldom used live view with my K-5, other than with static scenes such as shooting tabletop studio shots. While I still mostly preferred to use the viewfinder on the Pentax K, I did find myself using live view quite a bit more often too.
That's largely due to the improvement in autofocus speed. Our lab testing found contrast detection autofocus in live view to be about a third faster, and there was a similar margin for prefocused live view shooting.
My experience in the field bore this out, and so did an informal comparison of my K-5 and the K review sample side by side, with the same lens and subject. The K had often finished focusing in live view mode when the K-5 had barely started to do so, and it failed to lock focus less often as well.
You can no longer opt for phase-detect AF in live view mode, but contrast-detect was fast enough that I really didn't mind.
Also, the K now lets you disable the AF autozoom function, which I'd found helpful and frustrating in about equal measures with the K-5, depending on whether the subject was moving or not. You have to pay attention to shutter speeds for moving subjects. Even in bright sunlight, the K's Program autoexposure often doesn't freeze the action. Out of seven bracketed shots of my hyperactive three year old with this flower sculpture, only one was fairly sharp.
Another very worthwhile addition to live view mode was the focus peaking function, even if I'm not a fan of Pentax's implementation. What focus peaking does is indicate the areas of highest microcontrast on the LCD display.
These are typically the areas that are closest to being in focus, and so the function makes it easy to see where the point of focus is as you manually rack through the focus range.
Where Pentax's implementation stumbles is that the indication isn't in color. Instead, high contrast edges are given a white glow. That's great on dark subjects, but white is a fairly common color in real-world subjects, so it means that for bright, light subjects, the peaking overlay can be hard to see--particularly when shooting outdoors where you have to deal with reflections and glare on the LCD panel.
I'd like to see either an optional user selection of the peaking color, or at least to see Pentax use a color that doesn't appear in real-world subjects so often--a vivid pink, yellow, or something of the sort.
I'm a bit old-school though, and I do still prefer a TTL optical viewfinder. I feel closer to my subject with the camera to my eye, and I think it helps my shooting. I was thrilled, then, to learn that the K shared the same viewfinder with my K Or at least, largely so--I did notice the K's autofocus point indications weren't as good as those on the K They were more like those of my K-7, a little unevenly lit and dimmer.
It could be that this is simply down to a poorly-adjusted component, though, as the basic style of the point indications is the same on all three cameras. Noise levels are similar to my K At ISO 1,, grain is fine and quite film-like Autofocus is said to be improved for regular, non-live view shooting too, but I must admit I didn't notice the difference here as much as for contrast-detect AF.
Subjectively I felt it hunted slightly less, and refused to focus less often, but didn't seem to focus in lower light conditions than did my K Our lab testing suggested it was also a little less responsive than the PDAF in the K-5, so perhaps the improvements came at the expense of a little speed. C or automatic AF. A servo modes. When enabled, this considers the autofocus distance data of AF points surrounding that you've manually selected, and will let the focus point roam to any point that has similar distance data to your manually selected point.
The assumption is that these point are likely seeing the same subject, and you've simply slipped your selected point off the subject momentarily. It's a good assumption, and one that makes a noticeable improvement to autofocus. I'd really like to see this ported back to the K-5 firmware too, although it's a bigger change than those made to the user interface, and so quite likely not possible. Speaking of the AF. A mode, by the way, this is a nice addition for the advanced amateurs who might be stepping up to the K from a compact or older Pentax SLR.
This simply selects between continuous and single autofocus modes automatically, as the camera deems necessary. Still plenty of fine detail in the instrument panel cluster, though--this is a very usable ISO 3, Another area in which the Pentax K has really been improved quite a bit is in its video capture capabilities.
For the full story, you'll want to look at our video page , but let's briefly hit the high and low points. Perhaps most importantly, video is now stored with modern H.
That means much more sensible file sizes for any given video clip, but it also means quite a bit higher processing requirements for editing. You can also now record movies with manual exposure, not just aperture-priority--but shutter priority and control over ISO sensitivity are still sadly unavailable.
You can, however, record interval movies as you could in the Pentax Q and K mirrorless cameras, something the K-5 couldn't do. Even ISO 6, has a fair bit of detail -- the tartan in the sign, for example -- although the color starts to get a little muted, and there's quite a bit of noise if you pixel peep. It cleans up in post processing pretty well.
This was as far as I was generally willing to go, though. You can see an ISO 12, shot in the gallery, but a lot of detail is lost to noise. K versus the flagships. Were there some things I really missed from my K-5 in shooting with the K, though? For sure. I've already mentioned the lesser selection of external controls, and the status LCD panel. While the K feels fairly comfortable and solid, the K-5's mag-alloy body definitely feels even more so.
There are several other things that would sway me towards the K-5, though. The K-5 also has piezoelectric dust reduction, rather than the sensor-shift type of the K Subjectively we've found piezo systems to perform better than ones which rely on shaking the sensor, and that's backed up by the fact that in 18 months of owning my K-5 I've never yet needed to manually clean the sensor.
Although that's also in part because I'm very careful about avoiding dust when I change lenses. The K's shutter release sound is quite a bit louder, and harsher-sounding as well.
While it doesn't sound as refined as that in Pentax's enthusiast flagship cameras, that's not to say it's uncommonly loud for a DSLR. It's certainly more likely to startle nearby, skittish animal subjects than that in the K-5 though.
You also get a little less performance for burst shooting 5. There's also a greater level of control available over the Pentax K functions such as the program line, the ramp-up speed for Auto ISO sensitivity, and extended bracketing aren't available in the K Basically all of these would also apply to the newer K-5 II, and that camera is also said to have better low-light AF, although we've not yet had a chance to test that in our lab.
Auto white balance also sometimes struggled in low light. Battery life is also quite significantly lower. Where the K-5 was much better than average when compared to consumer cameras, the K is decidedly below average even when shooting with the optical viewfinder, managing barely over half as many shots as its older sibling.
That's largely because it uses a much smaller battery pack, and it should be noted that we're solely discussing battery life with the bundled, proprietary battery here. Battery life with AA batteries will depend entirely on the battery type you choose, and will likely vary quite radically between brands and formulations. If you shoot with the bundled battery though, you will definitely want a second one, especially if you shoot video or in live view mode very much. And there are quite a few other differences, but by and large they won't matter to many--perhaps most--of the K's target customers.
As I said at the start of my shooter's report, I wanted to answer the question of which camera was the better buy: the K-5, or the K The answer, not surprisingly, is that each will meet different needs. The good news is that image quality is fairly similar between the K-5 and K, which is not surprising given that they share nearly the same image sensor, and are only separated by one generation in their image processors. Image quality comparison. Below, you can find a number of samples shot side by side at the same time with manual ISO sensitivity, using the same lens model, similar focal length, and with the cameras' largely at their default settings.
And coincidentally, the only lens I had access to two copies of, saving me switching back and forth between bodies all afternoon!
The lens used on the K-5, like the body itself, was my own. I'd intended to shoot with the same aperture on both bodies, but unfortunately in trying to replicate the same framing, I wasn't paying enough attention to maintaining precisely the same apertures. Still, to my eye the two cameras provided very similar image quality, although the K looks to use higher default sharpening and noise reduction than does the K-5, if only slightly so. All of which is to say that both cameras are pretty darned close in terms of basic image quality, and so you can let the feature set of each camera tell you which belongs on your shopping list.
If you need the K-5 or K-5 II, you probably already know why. For the rest of you, the K offers a heck of a camera for the money, with some worthwhile improvements even when compared to Pentax's enthusiast flagship cameras. For my money, I'd probably buy the K-5, and I'd expect most experienced shooters will do the same. Enthusiastic amateurs will find a more approachable package in the K It's a shame that it isn't quite as small as the earlier Pentax K-r, but it manages to pack in a surprising amount of the K-5's DNA into a friendly design that provides loads of room to learn, and a lot of fun in a day's shooting.
All cameras in this comparison were shot with our very sharp reference lenses. The differences we see between the K and K-5 may come down to point of focus or else noise processing and sharpening.
The K's images seem a tad sharper, but they also have more noticeable halos around dark subjects, something we'd expect to see from a more consumer-focused SLR.
Note that the Pink swatch below the red leaf swatch is more magenta than pink. And the red leaf swatch itself has less detail than the K5, which suggests more aggressive noise processing is at work in the K Skip to main content. About this product. Make an offer:. Stock photo. Pre-owned: Lowest price The lowest-priced item that has been used or worn previously. Good condition. No haze and mold. Works well. See details - Pentax K K See all 8 pre-owned listings.
Buy It Now. Add to cart. Sold by peko-store Measuring 5. This flash is capable of collapsing back into the body of the camera when not in use to protect it. With the onscreen menus accessible by the 3-inch widescreen LCD monitor on this Pentax camera body, users can select from a library of preset shooting modes and settings, with the camera automatically adjusting to match the specifications.
Additionally, the Pentax K has a selection of filters that can be applied to the images for different effects. This The Pentax camera body offers USB 2. Show More Show Less. Bundles that include this product. Pentax K K Pentax K Pre-owned Pre-owned. Recently the winners and runners up were announced for the Natural Landscape Photography Awards. The new version of the digital asset management tool promises improved performance and includes a new UI, new editing tools and improved workflow options.
Nikon doesn't specifically mention any future products, but does state the collaboration with Nissin and Profoto will 'increase reliable options for Nikon camera users, expanding possibilities for imaging expression'. Despite being a copy of a model from a far more popular manufacturer at its time of release, the Lomo LC-A has become an iconic camera in film photography culture and was the catalyst for the experimental 'Lomography' movement.
Zenfolio has announced the acquisition of Format, a popular website-building platform for photographers and other artists. The acquisition further bolsters Zenfolio's ongoing efforts to reinvigorate its business model and position itself a strong option for photographers looking to build a website and run a business. The 'Deakinizer' lens was made and popularized by cinematographer Roger Deakins when he used a modified Arri Macro lens to capture dreamy, tilt-shift like shots for the movie Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
NASA has published the first images from Landsat 9, a new space-based satellite designed to observe Earth in incredible detail. Geological Survey. But how much difference does the longer 40mm equivalent lens of the 'X' version make to the shooting experience? Click through to read more.
Want to learn more about the Nikon Z9? Do you have a burning question you haven't seen answered anywhere else? Join us for a live Twitter Space on Thursday, November 11, and be part of the conversation. Click through for details. The four firmware updates bring improved autofocus performance in a number of different shooting modes, as well as support for Nikon's new FTZ II mount adapter and Nikkor Z mm F4 S lens.
Adrian Smith is back with another excellent slow-motion video of insects filmed with a high-speed Phantom camera. The original Tamron mm F2. Now Tamron is back with a second gen version that promises to be even better. Does it deliver on that claim? Chris and Jordan did a side-by-side comparison to find out.
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We've been using Panasonic's new Lumix S 35mm F1. Panasonic has announced the Lumix S 35mm F1. Panasonic has released firmware version 1. The Hubble Space Telescope is in safe mode as engineers work to investigate what's wrong with the telescope's onboard instruments. This is the second time the venerable telescope has faced extended downtime after being offline for a month earlier this year. Panasonic China has posted a pair of images to various Chinese social media sites that tease what appears to be a new lens launch.
Gordon Laing is back at it again with another Retro Review. In this episode, Laing goes back 25 years to provide an in-depth overview of Nikon's unique Coolpix camera, which was half compact camera, half PDA. The adapter includes optics to help offset the crop factor of APS-C cameras. OM Digital Solutions — the company that's bought the Olympus imaging division — has just launched the M. Zuiko Digital ED 20mm F1.
Click through for a closer look. Chris and Jordan tease-out the differences. Submit a News Tip! Reading mode: Light Dark. Login Register.
Best cameras and lenses. Now reading: Pentax K Review 12 comments. Previous 1 Introduction. Next to the K-5, you can see how unusual the K's styling is. It's a similarly-sized camera, though. Its polycarbonate, rather than magnesium alloy construction also helps keep it a touch lighter. From the back you can see that the K has lost a couple of controls, compared to the K-5 the K doesn't have an AF mode switch or separate AF and AE-L buttons , but has retained a lot, given how much less expensive it is.
Pentax K specification highlights Tags: review , pentax. Next page. Pentax K We are retrieving offers for your location, please refresh the page to see the prices.
View Comments Comments All Absolutic What is the flash Xsync on K30? Not listed in Specs. Nev1 I have arthritis in both of my hands and have never had any trouble opening the SD card door. A Hi ebaker, Did you get the repaired camera from them? You may also like.
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