The K5 for rainy days, and other considerations

https://lawrencehelm.smugmug.com/RiverPhotography/Dec-2015/

Leaving Olympus I started Pentax with the K20D but always liking backup (my own particular Ozdean reason for buying a camera) I bought a K7. As soon as it was out of warranty something went wrong with its AF, I couldn't get the focus dot to come on, so I sent it in for repair -- back to just the K20D and needing backup I bought a K5. Once the K7 was repaired I gave the K20D to my son, but . . . I didn't really trust the K7 anymore so I bought a K5iis and gave the K7 to my son -- probably perfect after the repair but I didn't trust it. Some time passed, other things went on, the price on the K3 dropped so I bought one. I found myself using the K3 all the time until . . .

I discovered the pleasures of Samyang. I liked the Samyang 85mm, decided to add a couple of more and then ordered a Pentax-M P/K SMC 200mm F4, excellent condition (the buyer said) for $89.99. The menu page asking which focal length a manual lens had wasn't popping up automatically, so I did some research, found I could access that screen right beneath the Shake Reduction, and in a non-Samyang type lens I needed to be sure and turn off C27 which keeps the shutter from working unless a manual lens is locked in "A." Did the 200mm that was coming even have an "A" lock? I didn't know.

And then the weather report indicated that it would rain the next day (today); so I couldn't use a non-WR lens. Plus, my camera settings were getting way too complicated for me to remember. I was sure to forget, grab a camera take it on a hike some future day and discover it didn't work properly and I couldn't remember why it was set the way it was. So I decided to set one of my cameras as a rainy day only camera, not to be used for manual lenses, but which camera?

I decided it would be between the K5 and K5iis. Did the K5 even measure up anymore? I looked for a comparison and found http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Pentax/K5 Unexpectedly it rated the K5 as better than the K5ii. The DXOMark rating rated the K5 against several other cameras and only the Nikon 7200 beat it out: http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Pentax/K5

So not only did I decide to make the K5 my rainy-day camera, reserving the K5iis and K3 for manual and AF lenses (haven't sorted out which camera to use for which), but I developed a new-found respect for the K5. It rained intermittently today. I had the K5 and the 16-85WR lens on this very dark day: see https://lawrencehelm.smugmug.com/RiverPhotography/Dec-2015/ (all but one of today's photos are on page four of the Dec 2015 gallery) No camera was going to shine on a day like this one (IMHO) and in looking at the shots later on Lightroom 6 I couldn't see that the K5 or the lens did badly under these conditions.  I had the camera at ISO 400.  In retrospect I wish I'd shot some of them with ISO 800, but the apertures I was using never demanded a ridiculously low shutter speed so I left the ISO at 400.

Lawrence