K5 focusing inaccuracy in low-morderately low artificial light

[JohnTaylor]

Tonight I experienced the K-5's poor AF ability at the Orchard Rd fashion parade. It was on Av mode, which I usually use, and I had the Pentax 35mm f2.8 macro attached.

The worst target was the road. I'd put the centre focal point to centre, and half shutter press to the road. It would hunt back and forth and then lock totally out of focus.

I've had this problem at a low light BBQ a month ago with the K-5 and a Sigma 30mm f1.4, and at my friend's place taking indoor photos of her 2 year old daughter on a very overcast day.

What made this more embarrassing was that at the bbq, when my k-5 couldn't AF lock and kept flashing the green AF light, my friend gave me his 4 year old Canon compact camera and that AF locked straight away- no delay.

Do you think getting Emjay to have a look would fix this terrible AF performance? I use the K-5 in a lot of low light situations and have high expewctations of it given it's price and its status in the Pentax line up.

 

[ranchy]

Tonight I experienced the K-5's poor AF ability at the Orchard Rd fashion parade. It was on Av mode, which I usually use, and I had the Pentax 35mm f2.8 macro attached.

The worst target was the road. I'd put the centre focal point to centre, and half shutter press to the road. It would hunt back and forth and then lock totally out of focus.

I've had this problem at a low light BBQ a month ago with the K-5 and a Sigma 30mm f1.4, and at my friend's place taking indoor photos of her 2 year old daughter on a very overcast day.

What made this more embarrassing was that at the bbq, when my k-5 couldn't AF lock and kept flashing the green AF light, my friend gave me his 4 year old Canon compact camera and that AF locked straight away- no delay.

Do you think getting Emjay to have a look would fix this terrible AF performance? I use the K-5 in a lot of low light situations and have high expewctations of it given it's price and its status in the Pentax line up.

Oo.. You was at the orchard fashion parade. Was you at a good position. Could not get a good place to shoot. Sad.

I don't think sending it back to emjay helps. It's the system AF which tends to poor at low light. But for focusing on the road, it seem tough to lock focus due to the lighting & poor contrast? Normally, I will switch over to manual to prefocus. More accurate.

I have no issues of K5 unable to lock in low light though, only inconsistency in accuracy. Have you try to set ur k5 to release priority instead of shutter priority, at least when you feel its in focus, you can still fire off. Another work about is to use live view?

Sometimes, I felt that green AF beam of pentax is useless, it ain't helping the system where as the P&S red AF beam seem more brighter and assist the system to find the contrast to focus. I have try to make use of ppl red AF when they focus and I find focus loock faster than the pentax one firing off. Zzz ... (just an unscientific try)

 

[edutilos-]

What made this more embarrassing was that at the bbq, when my k-5 couldn't AF lock and kept flashing the green AF light, my friend gave me his 4 year old Canon compact camera and that AF locked straight away- no delay.

Do you think getting Emjay to have a look would fix this terrible AF performance? I use the K-5 in a lot of low light situations and have high expewctations of it given it's price and its status in the Pentax line up.

Maybe try live view next time.

 

[poseur]

been waiting for many weekend

Didnt know u want to borrow my test kit??? Aiyo...should have just call me leh....i blame it on your lazyness....hahhaa.

 

[pscion12]

You guys can correct me if I'm wrong here (pretty groggy right now) but.......JohnTaylor, you can't really compare the focus speed and accuracy with a compact camera. The last time I played with one was a ricoh gr10 and I remembered that anything further than 10m, it sets itself to focus for infinity - you combine that with a large depth of field, it pretty much gets the object that you were actually focussing on in focus as well. For near objects - because it has a wide depth of field, it can pretty much misfocus by a foot and still get away with it too.

I suspect that the digital compacts, with their even more wider depth of field gets away with inaccurate focussing even more - making it seem to focus and lock on fast. Otherwise we all should be asking why are we paying more for a dslr for its elaborate focussing system when a compact camera seem to operate faster? Right?

For the people asking about k5 af speed in low-light, yep its about there. To me its pretty ok, those that have been using Pentax since the film days will know that the k5's af is pretty much the fastest that Pentax has right now. No I don't think Emjay can do anything about it, unless of course they have a super-duper technician that can hack the af module, on their payroll. Personally, I feel that the best in the business is still Nikon's af implementation but should it deter you from using Pentax? I think not, there is still quick-shift, manual focus, live-view, pre-focus.