[everydaylife]

Last friday I bought the K01 body mainly as it was being offered at a good price thinking that if I didn't like it I could return it. Well with the lenses I use autofocus is useless unless photographing stationary objects. My mistake was assuming that the returns policies in Japan were the same as in my home country because even though I only had it a week and was attempting to exchange for a k30 they refused. They would only do it if the camera had a fault. I pointed out that they would be doubling their money but they still refused. oops!!

So is are there any particular settings that could be turned off that would make the camera autofocus faster.

[selar]

No, its a tragedy!

[everydaylife]

Cheers! Nothing I can do. It's not so bad as I have the K5. I suppose I could sell it or even part ex it when the updated k5 comes out.

[pinholecam]

There is basically no return policy in most Asian countries.

At this point, I'd advise you to try some other lenses as AF speed is also related to the lens used.
Here is a list of lenses and perceived AF speed contributed by users:
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-k-01/178920-post-your-k-01-lens-au...peed-here.html

[hcc]

I wonder what lens you use on your K-01.

My wife has a K-01 and we are travelling together right now. She uses the K-01 and I use my K-7. I can compare our respective skills, cameras and techiques. I found that the K-01 with DA40mm xs does focus fast, really fast in fact. On the other hand, the K-01 AF works slower with my DA18-250mm.

So far my wife has had no major issue with AF, unless in very low light. Then she uses MF and focus peaking is great. (My wife is not a dSLR user.) I am impressed how well she MF with the K-01 and I envy her.

[AussieTrev]

I find that the K-01 focuses fine. Low light or scenes with little contrast it does struggle but that is to be expected. Overall it is a great addition to the K5. At the moment it is te only camera I can use as I have my arm n a sling.

[everydaylife]

There is basically no return policy in most Asian countries.

At this point, I'd advise you to try some other lenses as AF speed is also related to the lens used.
Here is a list of lenses and perceived AF speed contributed by users:
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-k-01/178920-post-your-k-01-lens-au...peed-here.html

No returns policy! I'll just have to suck it up and make the best of a bad decision. As I bought body only I do not have the 40xs. I have 3 auto focus lenses. 15ltd, 43ltd and 77ltd. The first lens I used was the 77 which is not the speediest of lenses on the K5 so no surprise on the k01 really. My wife at walking pace was a struggle. Today I have stuck the 15 on and its fine. I haven't tried the 43 yet but I think that will be ok as it is a fast focusing lens on the K5.

Thanks

[Sandy Hancock]

So what you are really saying is that you have found one lens, which has a reputation of being slow to focus, to focus slowly on the K-01....
I think you are being a little quick to judge.

[everydaylife]

So what you are really saying is that you have found one lens, which has a reputation of being slow to focus, to focus slowly on the K-01....
I think you are being a little quick to judge.

Sorry my mistake. In my first post I said lenses. I should have said with the lens I use most of the time the 77Ltd. The 77 is slow to focus on the k5 compared to other lenses but still fast enough on the k5 for action. Of course that depends on the definition of action. This is where I made my mistake. When I read that the K01 was not a good choice for action photography then I imagined that meant things like soccer, basketball, motor racing etc. not somebody moving at walking pace.

So that is 2 mistakes I made. One not realising that I couldn't return it unless it had a fault and the other the definition of action photography. I had read that it was not a good camera for action photography but because I thought I could return it within 2 weeks faulty or not I decided to buy it and try it. Tried it with my favorite lens found the autofocus a little slow so tried to return it for the K30.

[Medium FormatPro]

If you happened to purchase the yellow bee Pentax K-01 and want to get rid of it; I'll add it to my collection for two hundred less than you paid for it.


The Pentax K-01 is technically marketed as being completely usable with basically the entire market of all presently marketd (being sold) PK lens mounts. And for that I somewhat agree. Yet it will also use lens' made way back in the 80's, but not quite all of them - especially some of the Ricoh PK varieties with the extra physical feature which needs to be removed.

And when Pentax states that the lens will work; well technically they are correct to a point. Will it take pics, yes. Will one need to move from the full automatic settings or adapt, uummm unfortunately yes.

But it also depends upon aperature; the starting or best aperature of the lens. Go beyond f 4.5 to about f5.0 or beyond and you'll start running into issues. Is there a way around it? Sure.

BTW there is a type of Pentax lens chart that shows compatibility issues with most any Pentax lens with all of their camera bodies. Too bad it could not be refined by Pentax - but perhaps t could be refined and posed on here. We could even make it better to show the complete line of 100+ PK lens.

And so far there's only one lens that breaks that rule...

Pentax SMCP-DA* 16-50mm f/2.8 ED SDM Lens 21650 B&H Photo Video

This one is by far the most controversial of the Pentax lens. Personally I used to own it and never ran into any issues with it; even after about 2k pics and some above average abuse of the lens. But I have seen people that do in fact run into major issues with it; some of them just outside of warranty.

But back to the main issue. Is the Pentax K-01 perfect? No.

I was somewhat aware of these issues before it even went up for sale, but I still purchased it. I also find in most all cases it is also easy to adapt around

[schufosi777]

Yes no return policy here in Japan however most stores offer a 5 year warranty with the purchase and if there is any problem with your K01 they will gladly repair it or exchange it for another errrrr K01 without and fuss whatsoever.

[Ron Boggs]

Are you sure the 77 Ltd. is autofocus? Got mine the first week it was released but haven't ever used autofocus with it...

[ChrisJowett]

The only AF lenses I own are the 18-55 and 55-300 kit lenses and a full-frame 35-70 from the SF-X days. Those I use mainly on my K-r, but they're OK on the K-01; no worse than a P&S. All my others are manual focus which is where the K-01 shines. The irony with the K-01 is that the IQ excels in low light but focuses poorly and in bright light it focuses well but the screen is hard to see. Fortunately the Focus peaking works perfectly in near darkness and is still visible in bright light.

[kaiserz]

Interesting thread. I'm also thinking of getting the K-01 (Maybe sell my K7) Right now if I'm not mistaken the K-01 + the DA40xs sells for $535 - $580. And as far as I know the DA40(Which I always wanted to get) sells for 200 - 250. with that said it's a no brainer for me to get it. Neh? right?

[JinDesu]

Interesting thread. I'm also thinking of getting the K-01 (Maybe sell my K7) Right now if I'm not mistaken the K-01 + the DA40xs sells for $535 - $580. And as far as I know the DA40(Which I always wanted to get) sells for 200 - 250. with that said it's a no brainer for me to get it. Neh? right?

As long as you are getting it for a specific reason!

I think the k-01 is a good camera, and a good chunk of lenses work well with it. However, there are certainly lenses that don't work well with it, and some just don't like to work at all. So, as a informed user on PF, choose wisely!