Originally posted by Chex Today I was down at a local Camera Shop and the Pentax Rep for the area came through.. I handled the K-30 with a DA 17-70 on it.. Ergonomically the K-30 is FAR FAR Inferior to the K-5.
button placement has been changed and the green button placement is awkward and ridiculous, the camera feels slightly smaller and the grip side seems very squared and made for very little hands. Of course the K-5 has the Fully alloy body, but in hand that is simply a weight difference.. just the feel of the K-5 in hand FAR exceeds the K-30.
Today I was able to handle both the K-5 and K-30 at a local shop and while I am not as emphatic as Chex, I too found the K-5 to be ergonomically a better fit for my hands. I love the depth of the grip of the K-30 and it's "stick", however it requires pulling my shutter finger "back" towards the shutter, or holding the grip in a more shallow fashion. With the K-5, my shutter finger is naturally on target. Likewise, the rear wheel needs to be manipulated at the first knuckle of my thumb with the K-30, wihle the K-5 falls naturally under the meat of the thumb itself. I also find the placement of the K-30's Green Button and EV adjustment awkward, whereas the K-5's EV and ISO buttons naturally fall under my fingers without fumbling for them. As a K-x owner, one of my bugs is the shared button with Flash and Delete. I can't count the number of times I am quickly trying to delete a photo only to miss-time and flip up the flash instead. The K-30 shares the Delete and LiveView button. I can only imagine I would be initiating LV instead of deleting in similar circumstances. The K-5 has dedicated buttons for many functions, rather than shared functions. Overall, I find the K-5 to be more comfortable and better laid out for my hands.
I was able to put my Sigma DC 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 and EX 50-150mm f/2.8 HSM II on both bodies. I snapped off a few handheld RAW shots at the short and long end of each lens, at a few different aperture's with constant shutter and internal NR shut off. The K-30 shoots RAW in DNG and the K-5 was recording in PEF. In my subjective experience, the K-5 tends to under-expose slightly relative to the K-30, and where aperature and shutter were the same, the K-5 at times opted for a higher automatic ISO (take this with a grain of salt). I did find the K-5 IQ to be a bit sharper at higher magnification and the noise to be smoother and more uniform. I also found this with the photos from image-resource, however I was using shake-reduction on both bodies, hand-held. Does the K-5 provide better shake-reduction ? This might account for the "sharper" images according to my pixel peeping. One would need to turn shake reduction off and use a tripod to rule this out, however the general patterns seemed to be the same as i what I have seen online. In terms of autofocus, both bodies were quite quick relative to my K-x. While the K-30 "seemed" to be potentially quicker, I can't objectively establish this to be so. I did like the focus peeking feature of the K-30. The K-30's shutter sound is quieter than then K-x, but louder definately than the K-5.
I will look forward to a more professional review from PF that is apparently coming out hopefully next week.