K-01 First Impressions: A trip to Wonderland

Like quiet a few others, I recently took advantage of the huge price drops to pick up the love it/hate it camera of the year, the K-01.  I bought the camera for a fairly specific purpose, using older manual lenses for tripod outdoor shots.  The pictures I've seen from the K-01 over at the Pentax Forum's "Add your best K-01 photos here" thread showed incredible detail and 3d effect that I had to try for.

My initial impressions, and some pictures:

• ​Design/Ergonomics - ​Size wise it's no NEX, but it's a lot smaller in person than I expected.  The looks are personal preference of course, I think it has a classy retro look to it with limited and old manual lenses.  It balances nicely in the hand and the minimal hand grip is better than it looks , but I can't help feel how much better it would be with a couple of the corners rounded off the body.  Yes, the green button is in an awkward spot.  
• ​Build - ​Pretty much every review has mentioned the high build quality for the price.  At the discounted price it's stellar.  Like everyone else, I'm dubious about the life span of the rubber SD cover, but I also haven't seen any actual reports of it failing.
• ​Use with manual lenses - ​Fantastic.  First off, stop-down metering is much improved, with none of the exposure errors that the dSLR's get when stopped down.  f/4 or f/22, the green button gives you an accurate shutter speed.  I assigned focus peaking to the red button, it seems to work best with a narrow DOF - with wide angle lenses pretty much everything glows, so I find the 'OK' one-press zoom works better for focusing those. 
  

My first trip out with the K-01 was a success, I think.  With the firmware update the camera seemed stable, and I'm happy with the pictures.  I think any serious Pentaxian with older lenses should look hard at the K-01, if for no other reason that it may be your only chance to get a native K-mount mirrorless - no one knows if there will be a K-02.  Which would be a shame, I think.

The 'Wonderland' in the title refers to a bike trail near Squamish, BC.  I was using the K-01 with the SMC K24 f3.5 lens with a Hoya polarizer.  Please look at the originals, as these downsized versions look awful.

Pete

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