Got to shoot with the K1 today...

helltormentor wrote:

Your impression contradicts what DPR found regarding the K-1 AF system. I myself have become interested in the K-1 for many things but claiming its AF is on a par with 1DX sounds extremely dubious.

How a user perceives AF is directly linked to how they use it.

Pentax top end cameras since post k7 have had some of the fastest AF available (competitive price points ), fortunately that raw speed has  been linked to increasing more adept fuzzy logic to tame it behavior.

The K5's biggest AF issue is not the camera but the user, Because it af is so fast and has no common sense a fraction slip during a pan will make the camera rack OOF and it stupid algorithms will happily take blurred images

Now if your using these cameras in single point against defined Phase variance they will focus and lock in a fraction of a second easily a perceptually fast as a Canon 1dx.

But if you tracking and erratic subject in indoor lighting with a kit lens the you would soon see what the extra 1000's of $ buys you in a top flight sports tool like the 1dx or D4/5.

Add then decent optics and the gap between midsumer and pro becomes glaring but really Pentax is not aimed at Pro willing to spend £10,000+ on a lens/body combo.

The k3's biggest AF issue is too slow processing without any other gains the 40% faster processor of the K1 should make af-C noticeably quicker and to this lens like the 70-200 and you should see a decent lift in tracking ability . But without any improvement in the users skills/knowledge this may be a mute point for any single consumer.

Thinks like Pan detect do not improve tracking at all but do make the camera auto configure in that aspect for action shooting , Unfortunately there is still 10's of other options that need tailoring for the task at hand (same for Canon and Nikon high end bodies).

That is the downside of a highly configurable tool ..... It can be tailored to deliver very high level performance for any chosen task but conversely it can be miss-configured to behave like a dog.