You’d better check B&H again. I’m seeing the 2-year extended warranty for $7.95. The $19.95 one is for the K5 and KR. Pouncing on it now.
The $8 one is for the K7, their older camera, which I don’t think you can even purchase anymore retail. As you mention, the $20 covers the K5. Which is listed as temporarily out of stock.
Whoops! It’s out of my cart. Damnit! Now I’ll have to remember to order it in the future. Damn. No I don’t. B&H has an e-mail alert. Lucky me.
I think I have everything: the body and kit lens, the 55-300mm lens, 3 16GB SDHC cards, UV filters for the lenses, extra lens caps (cheap enough I bought 2 different kinds. If the one I’m not familiar isn’t good, I still have the other as fallback), extra battery and charger plate, and 2 wired remote releases (one for tripod bag, one for camera bag).
Cool, sounds pretty thorough. If you find that it’s on the small side for your hands, you can also add a battery grip.
Create a flickr account and add me as a contact and we can learn the k5 together.
Talk about psychic. I was just reading reviews of the battery grips on B&H. If the camera seems scrawny, I’ll get it when I buy the warranty. Now that I’ve heard from you, I’m hitting the checkout button.
Flickr you say? Hm. If the terms and conditions aren’t horrible like Picasa’s I’ll do it. That’ll be for later. I gotta go get my credit card…
Order confirmation received. In a week or two I’ll have a Pentax of my very own.
I was going to say earlier than that, but I forgot you were apparently from England. B&H is great but don’t you have somewhere in the country you could’ve ordered from?
In any case, I made my purchase today too - had some issues with my bank, turns out their debit cards have a maximum purchase of $1000 at a time by default, and I had to get that resolved. So Tuesday I should get my K5+kit lens, woo. Then off to buy some more lenses…
It’s much cheaper for me to buy from B&H due to the exchange rate. The camera, assuming the same promotion was worldwide, costs $1,000 in America. In Europe it would be £1,000 or €1,000, which are $1,589 or $1,331 respectively. I always thought this pricing strategy to be curious. No relative equivalence between currencies. The difference in cost is more than VAT.
Is it here? Is it here? [checks mailbox] Nope. Damn!
Now it’s here. The cycle is complete.
Yeah, got mine tuesday, it’s a great camera. Not that I have a lot to compare it to - but I’ve played around with my other choices, the D7000 and 7D, and I like the K5 best.
Crappy time for US customers though - Pentax has no real retail presence in the US, and Ricoh bought them and is being more aggressive making the brand bigger - but part of the reason no one stocks the lenses is because B&H, adorama, a few other major retailers sell the lenses really cheaply and B&M can’t compete. So, like Nikon and Sony (and Apple), they set a minimum price across the US. Which means lenses went up in price 20-50%, which sucks. Doesn’t affect you in Europe I don’t think, your prices were always higher, but it robs Pentax somewhat of its really great price/performance ratio reputation on lenses. Still good, just not great.
I’ve not had a chance to run it through its paces yet due to the two W’s, weather and work. The couple of shots I snapped, I’m impressed with how the thing works. The kit lens is wicked fast on the focus but oh so loud. The camera is tiny. I thought maybe it seemed so small since my last camera was large. Nope, it’s small.
A few features I like: the top LCD light comes on when you change settings. The ISO and EV compensation controls are easy to find and use. The back LCD shows all the current settings in big easy to read characters and colors. It puts out DNG files. It can take external power. And finally, it’s fairly easy to carry around due to its size.
Last week between ordering and arrival of the K-5, I borrowed a Nikon 5100 for a commitment I couldn’t get out of. I guess it’s aimed at people who don’t plan to use the semi-automatic and manual modes, and I really needed manual for that gathering. The lighting was very unusual and kept tricking the metering. I was almost in tears. Thankfully a massive infusion of Vitamin P saved the day.