[Vylen]

Most of us were expecting a K-3. That's not to say that one won't appear this year though.

Certainly nothing wrong with us expecting a K-3, but the ideas put forth about it were conjecture based on technology used by competitors, e.g. the 24MP Sony sensor in the Nikon...

The K-5 II/IIs sounds more reasonable since its based on technology used by Pentax.

Admittedly, one wouldn't quite expect an incremental update - technically the K-5 was a sort of update to the K-7... So, if the K-3 ever comes around (say, March like some people have mentioned before), it should be something big.

[ElJamoquio]

I would say the K-5 II is what people were asking for though... Wasn't it that a while after the K-5 was released people were saying they loved the K-5, and that it was best in class, but the AF was crap...

2 years down the track, you have a K-5 with faster AF...

What more do you want?

A 2-year-better sensor.

[allknowingeye]

Are they nuts. Putting the K-5 II out with the same 1080P25 crap is just insance. We needed 24P or 30P. This is showstopper in a massive way as far as I am concerned - will not buy and I would have otherwise.

[solar1]

This is a strange thing to leave out imo, unless someone forgot to mention this in the announcement.

Adam, is there any other info to make this clear?

[sjwaldron]

Color me underwhelmed (as expected).

They must be pretty confident in that new AF system to justify setting the price back up to $1300. I'll be curious to see K-5 II and IIs images side-by-side, but I'm sure there will be tradeoffs.

Not sure what to think about the LCD. It doesn't look as robust in the photos (debris getting stuck between the camera body and LCD corners?), but who knows.

[aT0Mx]

The least they could have done with video was some sort of high speed 60/120fps at lower res.

[sjwaldron]

Are they nuts. Putting the K-5 II out with the same 1080P25 crap is just insance. We needed 24P or 30P. This is showstopper in a massive way as far as I am concerned - will not buy and I would have otherwise.

The internals besides AF are exactly the same it seems. That also means MJPEG compression. The K-01 is the best video camera Pentax has at the moment in my opinion. I use it a lot more for that purpose than the K-5.

[glanglois]

I would say the K-5 II is what people were asking for though... Wasn't it that a while after the K-5 was released people were saying they loved the K-5, and that it was best in class, but the AF was crap...

2 years down the track, you have a K-5 with faster AF...

What more do you want?

If you stick a 24MP sensor into a K-5, then it's no longer a K-5!

There certainly were quite a few people who claimed that they'd be content, or perhaps ecstatic, with improved AF on a K-5. They got their wish. I won't take the time but I wonder how many of those people are still unhappy.

To me this looks like an annual model update rather than a new product. The K-30 showed us what we could expect. And then it seems to have been taken away again. There will be a lot of very unhappy people in Pentax land, particularly if FF direction is not shared.

Now I'm certain I made the right decision when I bought a second K-5 recently. My Pentax wallet may be closed for quite a while ....

[twitch]

This is a strange thing to leave out imo, unless someone forgot to mention this in the announcement.

Adam, is there any other info to make this clear?

My guess is that because Pentax are still using Prime II, this means no focus peaking. These kind of features, along with video codecs etc, are the product of the imaging engine and that piece wasn't upgraded.

[JFN]

I would say the K-5 II is what people were asking for though... Wasn't it that a while after the K-5 was released people were saying they loved the K-5, and that it was best in class, but the AF was crap...

2 years down the track, you have a K-5 with faster AF...

What more do you want?

If you stick a 24MP sensor into a K-5, then it's no longer a K-5!

Exactly my thoughts when I read about the new K-5 II ... Ya'll asked for it, and got it, what more is there to say? Probably means they're working on the K-3, which most probably will be that FF everybody is moaning about (and will complain about when it's too expensive)....

Enjoy!

[JohnBee]

There certainly were quite a few people who claimed that they'd be content, or perhaps ecstatic, with improved AF on a K-5. They got their wish. I won't take the time but I wonder how many of those people are still unhappy.

To me this looks like an annual model update rather than a new product. The K-30 showed us what we could expect. And then it seems to have been taken away again. There will be a lot of very unhappy people in Pentax land, particularly if FF direction is not shared.

Now I'm certain I made the right decision when I bought a second K-5 recently. My Pentax wallet may be closed for quite a while ....

I agree with all of this.

I think its good that Pentax has taken the time to refine their award winning body.
I likely won't buy into one myself as my wife and I both own K-5's though I commend Pentax for taking the initiative and making the headlines in such a short period of time following their merger.

I too was curious to see if they'd release a 24MP body this round, though I can't say I'm disappointed given that I had my doubts as to whether or not they would make the same mistake they made with the K-7 with the K-3. Then again... there's no way to know if Pentax isn't holding out on other announcements down the line either(next show perhaps?).

[rawr]

What sort of resolution improvement might one expect from the K-5 IIs compared to k-5 'Classic' or K-5 II?

Anything one would notice in real world use?

[ElJamoquio]

What sort of resolution improvement might one expect from the K-5 IIs compared to k-5 'Classic' or K-5 II?

Anything one would notice in real world use?

It would take a large print, IMO. Others disagree with me, though.

[JohnBee]

It would take a large print, IMO. Others disagree with me, though.

If we compare this to the current K-5 I would say the differences will likely be substantial. Though they may not be so big with the K-5 II - perhaps.

Anyways, I'm going to venture that the II/s will produce much better microcontrast than the K-5 as well as improved detail retention at higher ISO. No clue if this would have any impact on color fidelity etc. though the D800E seems to show very so slight improvements in this area as well. So there may be potential there also.

Whatever the case, it will be very interesting to see how these two systems measure up on the test bench. And who knows... it might just be enough to convince some of us to upgrade. Though I have no intentions of doing this now myself. But that could change

[rawr]

The message from the DPR D800E review probably applies to the K-5 IIs:

"So the overall message is that the while D800E can indeed provide higher resolution than the D800 (although with the risk of accompanying false colour), you'll only obtain this across a specific aperture range, and (of course) when using impeccable technique."

- ie there will be a marginal visual difference in most real world cases.

But it may be worth only an extra $100 I guess.