[ve2vfd]

Oh my!

As others have mentioned, the focusing is a lot snappier and precise... it would also seem that it's not as thrown off by tungsten as my old K5. The difference in sharpness is visible without resorting to pixel peeping.

A quick snap taken with the FA50 @ f2.2, iso 400






And as a side note, a test of my 60-250 has confirmed my suspicions that the Pentax Canada service department has broken my lens. Before I sent it in for sticky aperture blades, the lens was sharp as a tack all the way down to F4, since it returned it's muddy and almost unusable on my K5... My 55-300 produces sharper pics!!!

I tested it with my K5, K20d and K5iis today and I'm pretty sure they decentered it as I am getting a shadow next to all high contrast objects. No level of fine focus adjustment can make it better and the FocusTune graph is all over the place instead of producing a nice curve. Testing it with the K5iis has made it very clear (great camera to test lenses!) I'll be sending the DA*60-250 back to them tomorrow.

Pat

[Ex Finn.]

Oh my!

As others have mentioned, the focusing is a lot snappier and precise... it would also seem that it's not as thrown off by tungsten as my old K5. The difference in sharpness is visible without resorting to pixel peeping.

A quick snap taken with the FA50 @ f2.2, iso 400






And as a side note, a test of my 60-250 has confirmed my suspicions that the Pentax Canada service department has broken my lens. Before I sent it in for sticky aperture blades, the lens was sharp as a tack all the way down to F4, since it returned it's muddy and almost unusable on my K5... My 55-300 produces sharper pics!!!

I tested it with my K5, K20d and K5iis today and I'm pretty sure they decentered it as I am getting a shadow next to all high contrast objects. No level of fine focus adjustment can make it better and the FocusTune graph is all over the place instead of producing a nice curve. Testing it with the K5iis has made it very clear (great camera to test lenses!) I'll be sending the DA*60-250 back to them tomorrow.

Pat

Congrats on the IIS. Sorry to hear about the trouble with the 60-250. Can you post a sample image? Just curious of what the shadow looks like.

Cheers.

[Gilzuma]

I am considering going from k5 to k5iis. In your opinion was it worth it? I have found the k5 auto focus to be hit and miss. I don't care if it is snappier but it doesn't get in focus. How have you found the new focus system? Is it a lot better or about the same? How is noise production at higher ISO? Is it improved? I do love my k5 for that!

[ve2vfd]

I have a few days off and I'm up in the coutry and am spending some time trying out the IIs

I'll be posting more about it soon, but my first impressions is that the new focus system is better in lower light, snappier and faster BUT not that much more precise.

With the DA*16-50 is seems to focus a bit more precisely most of the time
With the FA50 it's almost always dead on, even in low light at f1.4
With the DA 10-17 it's also almost always dead on
With the DA55-300 it's ok up to 200mm, above that it's very hit and miss.
I cannot comment on my DA*60-250 as it's at Pentax Canada getting fixed... again.

I tried to follow a bird in flight with focus in auto mode, no improvements that I can tell there... seems the camera just chose random points in an empty sky as a bird flew thru the frame.

I upgraded the firmware to 1.4 and as others have mentioned, it broke the live view focusing with my DA55-300 (it just hunts, whereas it was fast and precise on firmware 1.0)



Pat