I have to tell you, all this actually makes me want to take a serious look at the competition. I mean, it's good that Pentax improves its AF once again. But them actually closing the gap makes me wonder about something. I've come to realize I don't really care about whether my camera has "Pentax", "Canon", "Nikon" or whatever written on the front side. Maybe some people do, but I don't, not really. It's what I want to do with the camera that counts. So if I'm not really a Pentax fanboy (or a Canikon fanboy for that matter), hearing people say Pentax is/was behind in AF, and having recently experienced the awesome speed of a D700 + Nikkor 24-70 (ok that's fullframe, but this concerns AF, not sensor size) makes me wonder. Some people say it is of no consequence when you are actually shooting, but at the same time these people seem to be all over new Pentax bodies when they come out, and I can't believe that's just because of how they look. I don't have any old (MF) lenses and rely on AF for pretty much everything. I never had a Canon or Nikon body. But maybe I should. I know I'll lose SR, and I'd rather not do that, but then I almost always stay below 1/(FL * 1.5) anyway, just because I've learned that otherwise I might not get sharp results.
Maybe the new AF is as fast as the big 2, but then SDM is still slow. Sure I could wait another 2 years or so and they may catch up, just as they have with framerate and now maybe with AF-C. But my point is that I don't have to wait.
I recently came across this article:
Pentax vs Canon AF Performance « robertsdonovan.com. Now it's a bit old, but after handling that D700 combo for a minute I'm thinking it still applies. And the guy who wrote it seems sincere.