*reads thread with interest....and many other threads.....*
Darnit you guys, I came here looking for help and I'm not getting it
I'm being seduced in the other direction entirely. I'm seriously considering selling my K5 & kit to go to a Leica M8 (in a perfect world, I'd keep both - anyone got a spare $3000 bucks?). It's a pretty agonizing decision because frankly I can't think of a fully AF camera that like better than the K5, I'm fanatical about the FA Ltd. lenses, and I feel like with this camera body Pentax is all grown up. There's nothing I'd change (since I don't shoot high speed action, the AF speed is more than enough for me).
What I'm being seduced by is first and foremost that extraordinary impossible-to-describe character of Leica photos - in the same way the FA Ltd. lenses' rendering make my heart smile, the Leica's rendering just stops my breath photo after photo. Not just the lenses, it's the M8 and M9 character as well, or I'd just grab some Leica lenses & slap them on my K-5! Secondly, I'm lured by interface/operational simplicity. I make use of most of the bells and whistles on my K-5, but 95% of the time I'm in Av and a good percentage of that time I'm in manual focus. At that point, I'm carrying around bulk & processor power that's weighing me down - and despite the excellent Pentax layout, digital is rather charmless to interface with
And lastly....you know, for me the initial allure of digital was the phenomenal clarity of the photos. I vividly remember looking at a shot taken of a baby, in which my friend's DSLR was etched in perfect detail on her corneas, floating in front of her astonishing true-to-life blue irises. Blew my mind. But......I'm
bored with that kind of perfection. Gosh I feel like a digital heretic
I don't want to be taking photos that blow my mind technically any more. I want to be taking photos that transcend the optics of the lens, the composition of the subject, the resolution of the sensor or my vision of the perfect outcome. I figured that was asking for the moon or seeking something that simply defined "better photographer than I," until I started looking at a zillion M8 and M9 photos....now I'm doomed