Well I received the K1 that I ordered from WEX as an "open box" which was cheaper, although if I keep the K1 I'm tempted to return it and use the SRS offer to buy a new one instead (and support SRS).
Initial thoughts are that the body is excellent, seems well laid out, nice to use and the new fangled tilty screen is very useful, even the extra things like exterior lights for the dark and the control wheel allowing most main things to be done on the body are great.
Only two bits I'm not so keen on are the lack of a dedicated AF stick or buttons (having to two press to move the point) and the Viewfinder doesn't seem quite as nice to look through as some and seems a little too dark when showing information sometimes, but hey it works!
AF seems fine to me although I don't do much of any tracking shooting, I tend to be a single point man!
Here's where the rub is likely to be, I also picked up a used 24-70 (from WEX) and a couple of primes to try (from Amazon) so I could try and return what I didn't want to keep. So I've tried - Samyang 24mm, Pentax 50mm f1.4, Pentax 55 f.4 and the aforementioned 24-70.
I know the 24-70 is basically the Tamron 24-70 without VC and with potentially Pentax coatings and probably suffers from the same issues as its Tamron badged brother but I'm not too impressed with this lens, now in the past I've had to try a few copies of the Tamron so it could be a poor copy but it doesn't seem sharp enough v the "best" Tamron 24-70 I owned on Nikon.
This lens would be critical for me to keep the system so I may try another one and see if its better.
On to the good though - the "older" 50mm FA 1.4 is a cracking lens considering its small price, super sharp stopped down and easily up to the task of satisfying the 36mp sensor, I was a little surprised as I kind of expected the older lenses not to be so good, as when I've used older Nikon "D" glass on a D800 it wasn't great.
The 55mm f1.4 seems a great lens, again sharp and nice but at the price I'd sooner keep the 50mm f1.4 given its performance.
The Samyang 24mm seems a nice lens, not super sharp at f1.4 (which goes against what I've heard about the lens elsewhere) but I think mainly my manual focus ability was hindering it, seems like a good, cheap option for a good 24mm while I think about looking for a used 24mm f2 *
The performance of the 50mm FA 1.4 as enthused me as it suggests that the 35mm FA f2 could be a good, cheap option to cover off 35mm for now as well as I search for a cheap 31mm or a Sigma 35mm actually in stock!
The pixel shift mode is outstanding, I wasn't impressed with the artefacts showing when I loaded into Lightroom (was a lot of green bits) but remembered someone saying that Irident did a much better job and it certainly does, pixel shift images look amazing where it can be used!
I read somewhere that Pentax doubled their expected sales of the 645Z and are selling more than what the entire medium format market was before they released it! Not sure how true that is, mind you... Anyway, the 645Z is a huge success for them (ridiculously low price for very high quality) so who is to say that they won't have a similar success with the K1 (if it proves to be a top quality machine) and start breaking into the Canikon duopoly?
They do look pretty impressive and it will be interesting to see how effective this new version is with detecting slightly moving subjects...if it can cope with leaves etc blowing in the wind, that would be fantastic for landscapers!
