Originally posted by Catherine As a K5iis owner, I fully expected to be able to 'compete' with my friend and her Sony Nex
As a K-5 and long-time NEX owner (both with probably the same 16MP Sony sensor), the K-5 is certainly able to 'compete' with the NEX. And in many ways, do better, especially at high ISO.
You should probably look into how you have your JPEG settings for your K-5II if you want more brightness, and your noise reduction settings if you want less noise.
The default NEX settings usually deliver bright colours and punchy contrast, and in-camera sharpness is turned up a bit too, but it is all totally configurable. You could make your K-5II output look like the NEX's, and vice versa, if you wanted.