Why I love the Pentax K5

By PF Staff in Influential Photo Gear on Nov 28, 2012

As long as I can remember, I have loved looking at the night sky. 

When I was in High School, my mother and I would head out to the back yard, wrapped up in quilts to sit in lawn chairs, late at night and watch the beautiful Perseid Meteor showers.  And when I was in college, I took an astronomy course that required a night astronomy lab and that we be able to identify many of the familiar and not so familiar constellations that grace the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere. 

I always wished that there was some way to capture what I saw, but back then, I wasn't a photographer.  My first dSLR was the Pentax K10D, which I absolutely loved, but I quickly discovered, wasn't great for photographing night subjects, due to excessive noise.  My next camera, the Pentax K20D was a similar experience when I tried to photograph the stars:  simply a mass of intense noise in the sky. . .  But having waited through the K7, I bought a brand new K5 and found that I could easily take the star shots I wanted to capture. 

I was lucky enough to have a friend who taught me what I needed to know and I've been able to get some of the shots that I wanted to all those years ago. 

In addition to that, I have been able to do lifestyle photographs such as skiing, skateboarding and barrel-racing, which are all very fast-paced activities that I love to observe. 

I was able to sell the above photograph of a female barrel racer to a company writing a book on Standard Bred horses for children last year.  If I hadn't had the K-5's wonderful abilities to focus quickly and accurately and track the motion of a subject, I probably wouldn't have been able to capture any of the high-speed images as nicely as I did.  I also love the K-5's ability to take so many pictures per second, which allows me to do composite images, to capture the sequence in a ski jump.  And of course the incredible dynamic range that the K5's sensor is capable of has been unbelievably helpful to me in all of my photography.  It allows me to effortlessly move from lifestyle to portraits, architectural to landscape, food or night photography.

I have just heard that the K-5 is being discontinued as a camera model, so I can only assume that they will come out with an even better camera that will somehow top my beloved K-5.

- HypnoCin67