High-End SLRs Over 5 Years: Pentax K10D vs K-5

When it first went on sale, the Pentax K10D was a dream come true for many photography fans.  It had the same 10 Megapixel sensor as its contemporaries the Nikon D80 and Sony Alpha 100, but added features like mechanical stabilisation with anti-dust protection, wireless control of external flashes and what were then new modes like Sv and TAv.  The big news, though, was how it was made, with sealed joints to keep out dust and rain.  At the time that was a common enough feature on professional equipment, but not something we had ever seen on a camera this affordable.

The Pentax K-5 drew relatively less attention when it came out and looks all the world like the earlier K-7 from the outside.  It does, however, have a new 16 Megapixel sensor, something it shares with the Nikon D7000 and the Sony Alpha 55.  All of the usual Pentax features are there, including modes like Sv (sensitivity priority) and TAv (the sensitivity is adjusted by the camera leaving the photographer control over the speed and aperture), but the weatherproof frame is no longer something new; the D7000 has it too.

Interface elements that have changed include the disappearance of dedicated controls for stability and bracketing settings, replaced by an ISO button and another which activates the Live View mode.

The K-5 also has extra room for customisation and a revised system of menus.  The viewfinder is almost exactly the same.  The autofocus system still uses eleven zones, somewhere that Nikon has moved much further forward from the D80 to the D7000.

Of course, a 3'', 920 000 pixel display is also a radical change.

The K10D was a very good camera in terms of responsiveness, starting up in under a second, something which was increasingly common at the time, but not yet the rule; it would take around half a second to focus.

It still isn't left standing, and does even better when it has a lens with an ultrasonic motor.  In fact, most of the performance in autofocus is down to the choice of lens, rather than the camera itself.

The K-5 is marginally quicker at moving on to the next photo, but two extra tenths of a second isn't going to change anybody's life.  Where it really puts its predecessor to shame is in burst mode, leaping from three frames per second to six.  Nowadays, even an entry-level SLR can do better than the K10D.  Even more impressively, the K-5 has a cache of 20 RAW + JPEG photos, unlike the K10D which was limited to just 8.

This 10 Megapixel CCD sensor was the first by Sony to be criticised for poor sensitivity, with many commentators finding it worse than its 6 Megapixel predecessor.  There really wasn't much of a difference between the two, with software improvements blurring much of the boundary, but at the end of the day, the new sensor was far from a roaring success.

That kept the K10D at 1600 ISO, where it can knock out acceptable JPEGs for small format printing.  Anybody who wanted A4 prints or the chance to crop their photos had to stick to 800 ISO though.
 

By contrast, Sony's 16 Megapixel CMOS sensor was a welcome surprise.  The firm managed to improve both the resolution and the sensitivity above and beyond what it offered on the excellent 12 Megapixel sensor found in the Nikon D90.  

In just over four years, things have come on leaps and bounds, and K-5 owners can happily shoot JPEGs up to 3200 ISO without hesitation.

However, the marketing hype that claims you can go beyond that by extending to 51200 ISO aren't really workable in reality.
 

Current K10D owners can improve their results by upgrading the firmware, giving them the chance to work at 1600 ISO without too many problems, as long as they use RAW mode.  The photos above have been resized to make an A4 print.
 

At exactly the same size, these RAW photos from the K-5 without any noise reduction don't show as big a distinction as with the JPEGs further up the page, but the new camera can still offer more than ISO setting more than its predecessor.
 

It's easy to forget, but until the Nikon D90 and Canon EOS 5D Mk II arrived on the scene in late 2008, the idea of shooting video on an SLR was a pipe dream.  Large CCD sensors which take up too much energy and can overheat have never been able to supply the constant stream of images that's needed to shoot moving pictures.
 

The K-5 certainly isn't the best way to shoot video.  Its rudimentary autofocus means you're better off setting a manual focus yourself, the sound is in mono and the MJPEG codec it uses is already out of date.  If you can focus properly, the video produced is easy on the eye and has plenty of detail, but if filming is a priority for you, then concentrate on the Sony Alpha 77.