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You may consider it Gear Acquisition Syndrome but I have made my mind to go with:

  • Pentax K-1 Mark II or III (in future), and
  • Fujifilm X-H2S

My first preference is Fuji X-H2S though, as of now, it is not available with 16-80mm lens. You need to buy separately. X-T5 is available with 16-80mm lens.

"Kit lenses are inferior"

This I heard often in the Nikon world. But is it true with Pentax and Fujifilm as well?

There are few reasons why I want to go with these:

(1) Pentax build-quality and image quality is very good. Body is weather-resistant and overall lens cost is low.

(2) I checked the demo of Fuji X-H2S. The auto-focus is very good and colors are vibrant. Most photos don't need post-processing.

(3) My existing camera (Nikon D5600) is not weather resistant. Auto-focus is slow and does not work well with 150-600mm lens. It struggles in low-light.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ All the 600mm zooms are slow [f/6.3 or less]. The choice is also extremely limited - digitalcameraworld.com/buying-guides/the-best-150-600mm-lenses. In your last [several] questions it was reasonably well-established that your camera was not at fault. \$\endgroup\$
    – Tetsujin
    May 29 at 10:54
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Tetsujin Camera change is required because the body is not weather shield. Secondly it has no in-body image stabilization. \$\endgroup\$
    – RKh
    May 29 at 12:04
  • \$\begingroup\$ This series of questions is all starting to feel a bit of an XY Problem… or otherwise a "what can I spend my money on next rather than learn to use what I already have?" \$\endgroup\$
    – Tetsujin
    May 29 at 17:47
  • \$\begingroup\$ You can look up objective performance data on both lenses at dxomark.com/Lenses with particular attention to the "sharpness" score. I can confer that my lenses that score low on sharpness do indeed look a bit soft, which is probably the main gripe about kit lenses or what makes any lens look "meh/good/great". \$\endgroup\$
    – dandavis
    Jun 3 at 7:29

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To gear snobs all lenses are inferior except the most expensive one they own.

To actual photographers no modern lens is inferior, it's just that some lenses are less not-inferior than some other lenses. But really good photos can be taken with any of them in the hands of a skilled photographer who understands their limitations and works just within the bounds of those limitations. And all lenses, even the most expensive ones, have limitations of some kind.

Pretty much every zoom lens introduced in the past 15 years for interchangeable lens cameras is better than 95% of what was available only 25-30 years ago when "kit" zoom lenses first started appearing on the scene instead of 40mm or 50mm primes being the lenses most often included with a new camera body. Other than a few really cheap lenses that have been around since way back then and are still being sold new, none of which are primary "kit" lenses, current lenses are pretty much all better than 100% of zoom lenses available for 135 format (35mm) cameras back then. That's when "kit lenses" got the reputation as being poor lenses.

Sure, there are always more expensive lenses than the cheaper ones on the market at any given time. In general, the more you're willing to spend on a lens the better it will be, at least for the use case for which it was designed. Just don't expect a great macro lens to also be a great portrait lens, and vice-versa. They're built for two different purposes. More expensive lenses also tend, at times, to be more specialized lenses that are optimized to do one particular thing very well. Kit lenses, on the other hand, are designed to do many things as well as is possible at a certain price point. But just because one $700-800 lens comes in a "kit" and another $700-800 lens does not come in any kits does not mean the latter is necessarily better than the former.

Having said all of that: The main problem with your D5600 probably isn't actually the D5600. It's probably the 150-600mm lens, most of which tend to be relatively slow to autofocus and perform worst optically at their longest focal length which is the focal length everyone buys them to use. I'd venture to say that any Nikon normal zoom for APS-C in the 18-55mm range made in the past ten years is a better lens than the 150-600mm you're using (regardless of which version of Tamron or Sigma it is) with your D5600. So you're doing a bit of an apples to oranges comparison complaining about a 150-600mm telephoto zoom and then wondering how various 16-80mm lenses stack up against each other.

If you're bound and determined to get a new body then the two choices you have suggested are both pretty good cameras, but each has advantages over the other. The mirrorless Fuji will almost certain have a better AF system than the Pentax DSLR. The Pentax DSLR, though, will be more environmentally resistant to water and dust than the Fuji will. So which is more important to you? Only you can answer that.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ My primary reason to change is the expenses in getting lens and camera serviced recently. Dust and water jammed the LiveView lever. Dust in the lenses. It costed me dearly. \$\endgroup\$
    – RKh
    May 29 at 9:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ Not even the highest end pro bodies and lenses are dustproof. This whole idea that "weather sealed" or "not weather sealed" is a binary question is flawed. They're all somewhere along a continuum. Unless you're using an open truss telescope, every lens has some weather/dust resistance. At the other end of the spectrum, even an underwater case is not dustproof without the pressure of water outside to compress the seals. \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael C
    May 29 at 14:36
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    \$\begingroup\$ @RKh Dust in lenses isn't usually an issue unless You're talking about a LOT of it. Please take a look at this blog entry from Roger Cicala, the founder and chief lens guru at lensrentals.com: The Apocalypse of Lens Dust \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael C
    Jun 1 at 3:31

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