[rawr]

Photoreview.com.au does their K-5 review:
Pentax K-5, digital cameras, digital photography, photography, digital slr, camera recommendation, price comparison, photographic companies, camera companies, digital camera best prices,

No real surprises. A few things they liked:
"It was impossible not to be impressed by the camera's performance at high ISO settings, regardless of exposure lengths."
"Auto white balance adjustment was above average..."
"Autofocusing was fast (although not spectacularly so) and accurate under most conditions"
"We found no instances of the 'rolling shutter' effect that is common with CMOS sensors and no signs of the coloured banding encountered with the K-7."

No dislikes of any comsequence.

The Sydney Morning Herald also reviewed the K-5 last week:
Review: Pentax K-5 DSLR

"Like: Image quality is on par with the competition from Canon and Nikon. Autofocus in Liveview is astonishingly fast and accurate.
Dislike: Auto-white balance is disappointing.[...]"

[WerTicus]

AWB is crap imo... K-x was better in this regard.

[rawr]

In the same set of reviews, one review says AWB is great, esp for flourescent, another says it is crap, esp for tungsten. What's a boy to believe?

What puzzles me is the resolution x ISO chart for the Kx vs the K5 (and K7 too) in the photoreview.com.au tests.

Using basically the same kit lens on both bodies for their IMATEST tests, photoreview.com.au gets results that show (at RAW, centre) that suggest the Kx is outresolving the K5 at ISO 200 and even ISO 3200. Something ain't right about that.

[pinholecam]

Really odd that Sydney Morning Herald would cite AWB under tungsten as a problem. Did they leave AWB for tungsten at the weak or strong setting??

[Ash]

It ain't all that bad IMO.
Definitely different colour rendition to previous sensors, but it is not all that abhorrent.
Perhaps a tinge of magenta, but certainly the tungsten adjustments have been very much improved. I didn't mind how the K20D rendered its colours, and the K-x is OK also, but the K-5 does the job very nicely.

Hard to explain how they got those resolution figures for the K-x and K-5 - not convinced personally.

[Class A]

They write

"Pentax claims it also provides more stable autofocusing, particularly in low light levels."

What's the point of a review if it regurgitates manufacturer claims without checking?

[yusuf]

They also write

Don't buy this camera if
- - You're not interested in in-camera processing to obtain special effects with JPEG files.

[Class A]

They also write

Don't buy this camera if
- - You're not interested in in-camera processing to obtain special effects with JPEG files.

Damn! And I liked everything else about the camera. Oh well, I have to keep looking for another one then.

[maxfield_photo]

The Sydney Morning Herald also reviewed the K-5 last week:
Review: Pentax K-5 DSLR

"Like: Image quality is on par with the competition from Canon and Nikon. Autofocus in Liveview is astonishingly fast and accurate.
Dislike: Auto-white balance is disappointing.[...]"

Auto white balance as a concept is fundamentally disappointing, I can't imagine why anyone uses it. Saves you two seconds at the shoot, and costs you two hours in post.

[kevinschoenmakers]

Regarding WB: Who buys a €1200 camera to set it to JPEG anyway?

[robroy]

AWB is crap imo... K-x was better in this regard.

Also K-r has has very weak AWB performance even compared to some cheap Canon compact camera.

[0144]

AWB is great when set to strong. Too bad most reviews don't bother beyond default settings.
And even with default it's way better than any canon DSLR

[RonHendriks1966]

Regarding WB: Who buys a €1200 camera to set it to JPEG anyway?

well when used with some manual white balans setting like ExpoDisc (I did a little test) that is in certain circumstances no problem.

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-k-5-forum/140425-expodisc-whitebalance-k-5-a.html

[glanglois]

Regarding WB: Who buys a €1200 camera to set it to JPEG anyway?

Someone who wants images quickly and/or in quantity: PJs come to mind along with sport photographers, event photographers (including wedding events), family photographers who want to get images to Flickr et al. in a hurry, etc.

None of these will shoot JPEG-only at all times but it makes sense to do so in many circumstances.

For shooting some aircraft events, it makes sense for me to rap off a lot of images of a specific aerial performance - I don't want to deal with the buffer limitations of raw. The rest of the time is raw+JPEG. I'll seriously process the raw if I'm looking at a real winner but just keep/post the JPEG if purpose is more of documentation than aesthetics.

Others, as above, have their own reasons.

[Frogfish]

Someone who wants images quickly and/or in quantity: PJs come to mind along with sport photographers, event photographers (including wedding events), family photographers who want to get images to Flickr et al. in a hurry, etc.

None of these will shoot JPEG-only at all times but it makes sense to do so in many circumstances.

For shooting some aircraft events, it makes sense for me to rap off a lot of images of a specific aerial performance - I don't want to deal with the buffer limitations of raw. The rest of the time is raw+JPEG. I'll seriously process the raw if I'm looking at a real winner but just keep/post the JPEG if purpose is more of documentation than aesthetics.

Others, as above, have their own reasons.

Think ANY event where 100s of images have to be cropped, PP'd in second and sent off around the world instantaneously ! I've watched the sports shooters in the media tent at numerous sports events here - all are shooting jpgs.