I need to make a choice between a Pentax K5 and a Nikon D7000

[jeryst]

I used to do portrait work back in the 35mm days, but have been out of it for many years.
Now I'm looking to get back into it again. Currently, I have a Pentax K20d for personal use, and am looking to upgrade
to a better camera.

I have narrowed it down to a Pentax K5 and a Nikon D7000. I will be doing mostly portrait work, but
also some events and some landscapes as well.

Pentax makes some great cameras, that are loaded with cutting edge features.
Nikon, well the name pretty much says it all.

I'm looking for some opinions to help me make up my mind, but I am really looking for
the one that takes the best "Wow" type photos because I dont like to fudge things
with post processing.

So let the battle begin - lol.

 

[dots]

You have Pentax lenses?

 

[jeryst]

You have Pentax lenses?

Yes, I have the Pentax 18-55 DA kit lens, and a 55-300 DA.

I dont have any Nikon lenses, so I would be using the 18-105 kit lens.

 

[dots]

Well. i don't know anything much about the Pentax K5 but i have read on dpreview that some of them are pretty cool cameras..a bit underrated - Nikon and Canon being able to shout so loud. You have those lenses which is a basis for going with Pentax (can you also use all those excellent Pentax manual focus lenses from SLR days?) ...on the other hand most people rave about the D7000 being a great camera.

 

[dots]

Therefore i withhold my vote

 

[Overread]

Just to muddy the waters a little, but don't just look at the bodies; also consider the lenses each brand offers you as well as the support (ie flash and accessories). It might well be that one company has a lens range which more suits your style and budget (current and future) - and with pro series lenses being solid investments whilst bodies age and are ugpraded fast this might prove to give more longlevity to the choice.

Also remember that both these bodies are crop sensors, so the angle of view you get with them will be different to the angle of view you are used to with 35mm. Lenses will appear to have longer focal lengths on these bodies than compared to the angle of view on a 35mm (called fullframe in the DSLR world). This is something you really need to try out (shop/local camera club) yourself to see and get a feel for the effect.

If you want to push to fullframe I'm honestly not sure what options would suit a similar budget in the Nikon or Pentax ranges - Canon might be an alternative with a second hand/reconditioned 5D series body.

 

[orb9220]

Yep for a lot of portrait work would go the Nikon D7000 route as their CLS flash system is great. And D7000 with dual card slots Makes my choice. For nothing else more lens choices and flash capabilities.

The Pentax K-5 is a great camera. Read this guy's comment on why he had to switch to the D7000.
PENTAX K5 vs the D7000 had both

And the other issue for me is what a complete system offers in the way of lens options and flash capability.
.

 

[BlairWright]

Friends don't let friends buy Pentax. I'm a Nikon shooter and I would recommend a Canon just to keep you from going Pentax.

Why? Pentax doesn't have any pro level lenses that can stand up against Canon or Nikon. They don't even produce a 70-200 2.8 or a fast fixed aperture mid range zoom.

If your only getting into photography as a hobby and you will only pick up your camera once a month Pentax will give you what you need but if you are at all serious and want to get to the next level don't consider Pentax.

 

[jeryst]

Friends don't let friends buy Pentax. I'm a Nikon shooter and I would recommend a Canon just to keep you from going Pentax.

Why? Pentax doesn't have any pro level lenses that can stand up against Canon or Nikon. They don't even produce a 70-200 2.8 or a fast fixed aperture mid range zoom.

If your only getting into photography as a hobby and you will only pick up your camera once a month Pentax will give you what you need but if you are at all serious and want to get to the next level don't consider Pentax.

You make a good point. I've heard that the Pentax Limited series lenses are spectacular, but I've never tried one.
I'm not getting back into photography as a hobby, but still, I will be mostly doing the same thing all the time, so
a big choice of lenses is not that much of a concern, once I find something that works for me.

I'm most interested in clarity, and sharpness of the image, and the ability of the autofocus to do its job correctly.
I wear bifocals now, and manual focusing is just too much of a pain. Thats one of the problems I have with the
Pentax K20d that I have now. The autofocus seems to be off a tad, even though the camera allows you to make
adjustments for back or front focusing. I'm just not happy with the quality of the pictures, and thats what interests
me the most. I'm old school 35mm, where you took the photo correctly and didnt have to touch it afterwards. My Minolta
equipment always yielded tack sharp images that didnt need any doctoring, and that's what I'd like to end up with here.

 

[Overread]

Ahh but your 35mm film was touched afterwards - in the editing stage as it was processed. Now depending how and who did this can lead to differences of opinion and many who sent their negatives away to processing labs were essentially removed from the processing stage with their photos being put through standard processing formulas that the specific lab used.

In the digital age the double process of capture and edit is still as strong as it ever was and if you want the best out of the camera part and parcel of learning to shoot with it is learning to process the shots. This does NOT mean that you have to process for hours on end or pull and push things into the extreme; nor does it mean that capturing it correctly in the camera is any less important (heck many of the people I know who do extensive editing are nuts about getting it perfect in camera before they can really pull and push the data to extremes and get good results).


With digital most photos will benefit from sharpening, for example and part of this is because of the AA filter that sits in front of the sensor - so whilst you can get tack sharp from a solid shot there will always be potential to edit that sharpness for a better quality depending how you present that shot (ie print or web and how big its shown). You'll find this to certainly be the case if you ever consider approaching RAW shooting, where you effectively get a digital negative from the camera which requires processing (just like a negative) before it can be used as an image; this is as opposed to a JPEG from the camera which relies upon the default in-camera editing options to perform the initial conversion for you.


Ok so that whole lot isn't really what you were hoping to hear and isn't pushing you any closer to a new camera body; but I feel its an important statement to make and I'd encourage you to consider doing some light reading around the topic of editing. It's not all that complicated to start, many of the terms used are lifted straight from the darkroom itself and furthermore it need never be more intense nor complex than you find it needs to be (though I always encourage people to try to overlearn - to learn a little bit more than you need so that you work at a level which you choose rather than which represents the limit of your understanding).

I'd have a read of some of the articles over on this site: Ron Bigelow Photography Articles
They are easy to understand and follow and present many of the most common editing tools used.

 

[jeryst]

Thanks for the comments.From what I remember, 35mm film processing was pretty much an automated affair that was basically untouched by human hands. I know the machinery had some parameters it could adjust, but that was about it. As for prints and enlargements, I never asked for anything special to be done (dodging, burning, etc) to any of my prints and I won a lot of contests.I know how to use Photoshop and the like. I just prefer not to except in artistic endeavors. Making an initial great image is different from processing a flawed image into a great image. All in how you look at it, I guess.Regardless, when I take a portrait, I expect it to be correct without any post processing. Saves time and money. That's why I'm interested in buying the outfit that is capable of the best images out of the box.

 

[nickzou]

As the proud owner of a D7000 I LOVE my camera however if I could see the argument for the Pentax K-5. Honestly, the main thing that draws me to Pentax is in-body IS. I know people don't think it's necessary or that it doesn't work quite as well as in-lens IS but damn did I find it useful when I had my friend's Pentax for a month. I shot with it as much as I could because I don't get to try new cameras all that often. The in-body IS is great and as for more "pro" lenses Sigma and Tamron . Granted the Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 doesn't compare to the Nikon or Canon versions but they are still options for Pentax users. Oh and I think Pentax makes that Sony sensor work a little harder than Nikon does.

 

[usayit]

da* 16-50 f2.8
da* 50-135 f2.8

as well as the limited primes

 

[Overread]

Making an initial great image is different from processing a flawed image into a great image. All in how you look at it, I guess.Regardless, when I take a portrait, I expect it to be correct without any post processing. Saves time and money. That's why I'm interested in buying the outfit that is capable of the best images out of the box.

I fully agree that in camera is the right place to get the shot right and that most editing, for many situations, is going to be a light affair; I just always encourage people (esp many moving from film into digital, not all of whom are as confident with computers) to not discount editing since it is a key stage in the process - even if its just to apply sharpening after resizing for print/web display (ps readup on the RAW section in the site I linked to).

I do however feel that your setup should be able to get things in focus - it might be worth asking in another thread and detail your AF setup and show a few examples; it might be that your method, with a small correction, could give a much more accurate AF result (and if there is a minor missunderstanding or method problem then that could easily carry over into any new system that you choose to purchase).

 

[Sage97]

I'm a little late to this thread but I came as fast as I could.

What did you end up getting?