Originally posted by Kenntak Remember the thread stating that the camera needs to be priced at $1,800 or less to be a success, and most of us (including me) thought that would not be possible. Well, it is.
yea I was pretty flabbergasted when I saw the price, I was part of the $3000 crew too. In Canada it's $2500, which I think makes it a lot less attractive... stupid Canadian dollar. I'll admit I was wrong about the price and I'm eating chow now. I didn't think it was going to be possible.
Anyways, theres some cool stuff here. The LED lights all over the camera to light up different things makes a lot of sense and is a very cool addition. I like it. The Ultra-resolution mode would be a wicked feature if I was still doing urban exploring. The 100 frame RAW file buffer sounds fantastic! and if you got a high speed card like an Extreeme 95mbs card or faster it should be pretty close to a shoot at 4.5fps till the cards full. GPS and WIFI internal are very nice additions. The huge ISO range is pretty incredible, we will have to see how it does in practice. 6400 ISO was incredibly usable for prints on my D800 and D810. I haven't pushed the D810 higher than that... but I assume that Pentax will match or beat that. I would have liked an iso 64/80. I know it's not a big deal...but the iso 64 shots on my D810 are so clean and sharp it's pretty scary! I can't wait to see how the 70-200mm f2.8 performs on this thing. Tethering?! yes please!!
I decided last week that my next Pentax camera would be a 645z with the 55mm and 150mm lenses. While I'm at a point underwhelmed by the K1...since it's $500 less than I expected and I assume by the fall it will be closer to $2000 CAD I may be more inclined to maybe pick one up and see what it can do... not that I need another 36mp camera.
To play devils advocate.... vs the D810
K1 Pros:
- Shake Reduction
- Super Resolution mode
- GPS/Astrotracer
- better weather sealing (based on K3 vs D810... the D810 disappoints me compared to what I was used to)
- price
- AA Simulator
- multi-pattern white balance
- super flexi screen
- more cross AF points
- lots of lens selection
- less menu diving due to additional controls and buttons
- higher iso sensitivity
D810 pros:
- more AF points spread over a larger area
- better AF point selection method
- AF point selector on battery grip
- RAW small mode
- more crop modes other than APSC and FF
- faster flash sync speed (but negligible lets be honest....)
- better TTL (because Nikon)
- much better video package
- faster FPS at full resolution
- lower iso sensitivity
- better battery life
- on board flash *arguable. I use it as a flash commander*
- better third party system support
- USB 3.0
To me a lot of the pros the D810 has are things Pentax should have matched....specifically AF point spread/points. That being said the rest of it is pretty debatable if it's of any use to the average shooter and even more debatable if its more important than the glaring advantages of the K-1.
I think for the landscape, urban explorer shooter that the K1 is going to be an incredibly hard camera to beat. If Pentax would come out with a quartet of high quality tilt shifts (17/24/45/90) then I think Canon users may even start to think about jumping pretty quick. Imagine using a 24mm tilt shift with the super-duper resolution shifty mode? oh god yes.... Plus the automatic GPS tagging and wifi-tethering. Then the ability to use the inbuilt astro-tracer. Yea, if I was a Landscape shooter I'd be selling my Nikon kit and pre-ordering everything ASAP.
For the studio or commercial portrait shooter, I think a lot of the Pentax features may end up being wasted. shake reduction doesn't do much in those situations. The lack of HSS strobes (aside from Priolite) limit it's use in bright daytime sun. Chances are this shooter is less interested in GPS...but tethering and wifi is for sure a nice add for the studio.
I think wedding shooters are going to love it. As they will have the high-iso advantage, shake reduction, gps, wifi, weather sealing and more!
It's a very well rounded camera. It's very close to what I expected. Is it enough to make me want to switch out my Nikon system tomorrow? No, I don't think so, not just yet. I'll keep on with my plan of skipping it and going 645z.