[photogem]

My dad had a 1980's Pentax when I was growing up

My dad never ever took any photos, never had a camera, nor my mum...so:

so I naturally ended up with a ZX-5 when I bought my first 35mm camera (1997ish).

I naturally ended up with a Revue SLR and later with a Pentax SLR.

I don't think there is anything "naturally" ... it either is forced, manipulated, sheer accident i.e. it "just happens"

For quite a while I was shooting several rolls of Tri-X a week and processing/printing in my parents basement and wore that little camera out.

So you learned how to use a SLR Pentax! And you dived quite deep, you had your own darkroom:

I bought my first house in January 2008 and didn't have the time/money/space for a darkroom anymore, so I decided to make the move to digital and bought myself a brand new K10 to go with my small collection of K mount lenses.

That was a sensible choice

Life got busy and I lost interest in photography for a while, so the K10 has less than 8500 shots on the shutter.

Well, the K10D is still a very special body!

The whole pandemic has created the chance for me to work from home and have time to rekindle my interest, but the K10 is often left in the dust by a little pocket sized Fuji that my wife bought to take on a camping trip a few years ago..

Well... can you allow me to be "brutally honest"? I'd have a good answer for that but not everybody would like my answer!???`

I've still got most of the prime lenses from when I was shooting film and they're all KA and KAF, so they should work with the latest models, but I guess I have a few questions:

Thats a bit strange:
Either you have questions or you don't.
I never heard about "guessing about questions"?

1) The k70 looks like a logical replacement, but it's been on the market a few years. What's the typical Pentax refresh cycle like?

Are you really serious about that?
C'mon... which steps of the Pentax Evolution did you experience?
Any real step will be like a super-step... if you can deal with it, master it!

Am I better off waiting until later in the year for a refresh?

No, because I think you missed so many steps inbetween that such questions are sheer theory

2) Based on the spec sheet, the performance and image quality is going to be light years ahead with the K70. Is that an accurate assumption or am I going to be sadly disappointed when it comes to the 5x7s that I usually have printed?

I think the possibility is that you could be as much disappointed as you were with the K10D, because:

3)The autofocus on the K10 always bothered me and I had become accustomed to traditional 35mm manual focus...

That just shows that you did not really invest!

The K10 has a little green icon that lights up when things are focused using manual focus, but it's always been delayed and often proves to be slower than just letting AF do it's thing.

AF is "doing its thing" as you call it:

It is you behind the camera not accepting how things are ...
in most cases it is the person behind the camera, not the camera, which is the problem

Don't get me wrong, this is no attack, it is just how it usually is...

Is MF better on the current models?

MF = Manual Focus. How can manual focus be better in old models than current models?

---

Last edited by photogem; 03-21-2021 at 11:56 AM.

[trixtroll]

Well, the K10D is still a very special body!

You bring up several great points.

I'm impressed that a piece of technology that was released nearly 15 years ago, is still usable when considering the rapid rate of development that we've seen in the past couple decades. I didn't need to upgrade, but the improved AF system was certainly a contributing factor in my decision to order a KP last night.

Well, focusing in general....An old 28mm F/2 (manual focus) has always been my favorite lens, but I've always found it difficult to focus without a split focusing screen. It'll be interesting to see if the KP has the same delay before it beeps, notifying me that I've managed to focus properly. The DA 15 and DA21 certainly interest me.