Originally posted by Falcons Yeah but some of us do shoot static scenery and we like our affordable Pentax's - so why don't you outlay your extra cash on a Canon 1DsMK111? Sort of getting tired of being told I'm a fanboy or I'm defensive if I happen to like my camera the way it is - and I'm still on the *ist DS.
Apart from the AF "issues" (and I concur with your assessment of going to some other brand if speedy AF is needed while Pentax gets to the required level), I recently went through more than 2 years worth of my pictures (and sent more than 500 pics to be proof-printed... at last!) that were taken successively (and sometimes jointly) with a Ds, a K10, a K20, a 30D and a 5D and it was an interesting exercise to see if these material evolutions had led to some quality evolution in the end result...
After all, I shot my Z1P from 1995 through 2004 and never felt the need for anything else so it's pretty unusual for me to go on a "buying spree" like last year...
Well, the conclusions are quite clear when it comes to the switch to Canon: I definitely have much more keepers from the 30D/5D and I am really achieving the "look" I was looking for from the 5D but I do a lot of indoor low light portraits of my family and landscapes and this camera was almost tailor-made for this.
When it comes to the Pentax cameras, the K20 clearly produced some of the most beautiful pictures of the bunch with incredible textural details at ISO 100. Above ISO 400 though, it gets behind the 30D/5D for DR and noise.
I was not that happy about the K10 with a lot of slightly misfocused shots in any kind of light and underexposure leading to high noise in low light.
But perhaps the most surprising was rediscovering the pictures from my Ds: lots of keepers (even with the slowish AF), very nice colors and noise really kept under control up to ISO 800: it doesn't have the sheer resolution of the K20 or 5D but up to 20x30cm, I am pretty sure I will get some very nice print!
I was not found of the UI on the Ds but IQ was certainly very good.