AP review of the K-3

Strange tone in this. First of mentions the struggle that Pentax has had with various owners, fair enough but then uses the example of Jessop's not stocking Pentax... I was under the impression that Pentax UK did not want to give Jessop's the necessary credit line to keep their kit in the by then going backrupt concern.
Mr Sibley then goes on to complain about the noise of the kit lenses and the 40mm Limited. AF gets 7/10 , seems that the AF isn't sleek enough for his tastes , no mention of its accuracy in low light conditions though.
Sensor wise, a solid 9/10, it is one of the highest resolving DSLRs to date, getting 36/40 on the resolution chart. Lines are readible but moire and other artefacts stopping it getting the perfect score.
He had trouble with the interface, not as intuitive as he would like it to be (perhaps he is using the other marques a bit more ) and feels the body is a bit heavy for an APS-C sized camera.

"Enthusiasts looking to break away from Canon or Nikon could do far worse than the K-3, although expect to do a little bit more legwork to get the results that you want"

It gets a Very Good rating in Enthusiast DSLR.

I think given the current situation it's pretty fair, we don't know what conditions it was tested under though I suppose but you would expect them to try to have a look at the low light performance at least I guess.
Regards the rest of the Pentax AF conudrum, what I'll say is, we are not going to be able to quantify it against another marqus performance until both are tested with the same lens IE a third party one, (Not so easy either given the lack of support in the third party world at the moment!) so that the focus throw and speed of the motor are the same or Ricoh/Pentax decide to be benevolent enough to let us have lenses that can face the opposition head on (erm sort of pun sort of intended). If ricoh gave AP the K3 to try and let it out with a "kit" Lens, then as Mike P alluded in another thread, they deserve all they get and it should be teamed with the 18-135. Although that does not escape criticism either, see the Photography Blog review below.
http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/pentax_k3_review/

I know that AP did a first look peice on one of the pre production samples but I do not know if AP were on the recievers list for the production products. If not they may well of waited until it was out and went and bought one to test themselves, in which case were looking at a kit lens, a DA40 and seven out of ten..

AF seemed to do ok here but then I have no idea how many hundreds of shots he had to take to get these!

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52601915

I have both the Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 OS and 50-500mm OS in Pentax and Canon mount so if you want to send me your K-3 I will be happy to test this for you

Nope, you send me the Lenses Mike!

This guy used to post a bit about Pentax and he's back, probably not to Smeggys taste but anyway he lieks em and uses em, he's just binned his 5DMKIII for a K3...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QLpVqb2vrA

It has always confused me why with each demo camera, Pentax does not send along a choice set of primes and zooms. The camera would come back, so would the lenses, what is the issue? A lens may go missing every now and again, fair enough, mark the reviewers card for next time round and write it off as a business expense.

I agree with the fact that the kit lenses do let the whole package down. Using DA* lenses makes a dramatic difference. His thoughts on the interface rang true for me as the first thing i did was turn that damn screen off! The only problem is that unlike my previous Pentax`s there is no info at start/wake up. So to see which mode i am using when it`s too dark to see the dial means turning the dial back and forth or use a torch. The other thing that i would like to see is the AF button bringing up the AF settings regardless of screen info mode (Even off), These are all things that i can live with but it would make life a little easier for me! Still the overall feel of the review is very typical of AP Pentax reviews! Damning with feint praise!

He was a bit optimistic using 1/2sec shutter speed for the SR test.

Ye gods he's annoying.

Didn't realise Sigma had stopped making the 8-16mm in Pentax mount.

Still listed at SRS but don't know if that means anything or not. Price has gone up from £399-£549. Maybe just state side, they might have enough over there for current demand, and don't need to make anymore at present...

More from the same guy, feels a bit weird quoting myself!

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52608870

And Again.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52613681

For me, seeing the posts from this guy and considering some of his shots were of Royal Terns which are really swoopy kind of birds, this puts the BIF argument to bed for me, If your chasing swallows buy a D4 or a 1DX.

Need to find some good shots of Aircraft now as that's what lights my candle, realy need to find out soonish if the K3 can do that and I'll be in Xanadu with the thing.

LOL I'm not sure why he's specifically not to my taste, but I did give him 5 minutes out of 30 before I lost the will to live.


He looks like a Doomsday Prepper that you wouldn't want to meet on a set of Deliverance, but I won't hold that against him

A whole five minutes!?!? I gave up at 2 mins 34 seconds...

I knew you wouldn't like him, Nathaniel, War of the Worlds?