Alan C wrote:
Godders, thanks for your treatise. Many things I hadn't even thought of. I'm still on a learning curve. My K7 (and even my old K110D) do very well for general photography especially in good light if the ISO is 200 or less. By ISO 800 the sensors are quite noisy & noise reduction tends to soften the images. A lot of my preferred photography involves crops of distant (or small) subjects & I know I'm expecting a lot from my modest consumer equipment. Since the K7, all the Pentax offerings seem to have much better sensors, especially in low light & will allow better
There was a huge improvement starting with the Kx. In many ways it seemed as if the performance of my K20 was a step back from that of my K100, and the K7 was reputed to be no better than the K20.
The Kr addressed most of the major usability issues of the Kx, and if you can find an inexpensive one is likely your best sensor performance for the price option. It probably outperforms your K7 at high ISO by a couple of stops.
H/H performance at higher ISO's. I have seen some S/H K 01's at quite
S/H ? Second Hand?
low prices but you have now ruled it out with long lenses so that's that. Older S/H Hoya K5's (suspect?) are also to be had quite cheaply. New K5's, K5ii's, K3's & K3ii's are all still available here but rather expensive. Even S/H ones remain pricey. The K50 now seems the best bet although the K S2 doesn't cost much more. You pays your money & takes your chance!
The performance of the K-5 is very impressive, moving from the K7 it should leave you gobsmacked. While the K-3 may lag behind the K-5 in some benchmarks, my limited experience is that in the final image, with the extra pixels to work with, actual sensor performance remains about on par, and pretty much everything else is improved.
My limited experience playing with a K-S2 is that it would be comfortable for those with exceptionally small hands. My hands are small for a guy, and I found that its sharp corners poked me uncomfortably. I have never held a K50.
I suspect that your best option might be to organize a South Africa photo safari and use the proceeds from that to get one of the people on it to bring you some used gear from places where it can be purchased affordably.
Alan C
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