K-3 20 page review out

I love Kai, but "Blunty" was truly dreadful. I lasted 1m:30s

To an extent they are all what they are, Kai is naturally irreverent about everything except his Leica M9, which he likes to flaunt in your face because he knows it annoys pretty much everybody really.
Blunty is pretty much your average straight talking Aussie, fairly articulate but very much with his own driver, wants to get his point across as quickly as possible and not afraid to use six words when two will do.
I like em both, you really have to try Spiros to appreciate what annoying really is, I just want to break off every part of him that keeps moving which is pretty much everything!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxLjnpuAb8w

I'm going to disagree with that as well. You seem fixated on noise levels, but there's more to it than that. The proof of the pudding though is having the K-3 in your hands, with an open mind.

I have proved to myself by a very quick test with the new PDCU version 5 supplied with the K-3 that the noise is very simple to remove, at least to 3200 ISO (not tried higher) with almost no detrimental effect on image quality or sharpness. The result is a beautifully clean image that is of higher resolution than the K-5iis, with a more accurate White Balance.

Therefore, my conclusion is that the noise levels are almost irrelevant at what I would call sensible ISO's. I wonder how many people in real-world shooting situations regularly shot at 12800 or above for example?

Regards
David

OK, but please show the evidence to support your opinion.

I compared the two DNGs from imaging resource in lightoom, and while we all know that noise isn't the only factor it was indeed the deciding factor at higher ISOs. any extra detail from the extra NR required more than negative any other possible.

I made the effort to post my results on the forum to support my claim. Please show us your evidence that the K-3 is has better IQ than the K-5 at higher ISOs.




LOL - not another one

You're telling someone with an open mind to have an open mind??

Who cares about the minority eh? I'm alright Jack.

I've already posted the proof that the K-5 is better than the K-3 at higher ISOs even with noise reduction applied ( and LR's NR is one of the best ). The amount of NR required to equal the noise levels smeared the K-3 image to an unacceptable extent

I shoot at whatever ISO is required to get the which includes ISOs right up to 51200. Any ISO is sensible if it gets the shot.

Anyway if you make large prints or view your images on 6000x4000 computer screens and only use

What the hell are you going on about Smeggy? You really have a massive chip on your shoulder and I think it's you in the minority, not me. Your head is stuck firmly in the sand.

If you want to shoot at 51200 that's fine by me but most of us on here don't use that sort of ISO level and never need to. Why don't you just accept reality and move on from your fixation on noise, high ISO's and the K-5 Mk1 in general?

Up to sensible ISO levels the NR to remove noise on K-3 images does not result in 'unacceptable smearing' to my eyes or the eyes of any other reviewers or users I've read so far, this is simply not true.

I never set out to push my views down the throats of others (unlike you) and whatever I post is intended to be useful and helpful information. I cannot imagine why you would think I have any 'alright Jack' attitude as I most certainly do not and I take offence to you suggesting this. If you don't want to buy a K-5iis or a K-3, fair enough, but lots of people do and I will continue to try and provide useful information to anyone who wants it.

Regards
David

The K-3 has more noise at very high ISO levels, but not by much and there is actually slightly more detail.

At lower ISO values, up to 6400 or so the amount of extra detail is very significant. I've already posted images that show how dramatic this difference is.

Actually it's quite a bit higher at high ISO levels, and to equal it up with the K-5 the image quality ends up being worse due to NR smearing.

Firstly put your toys back in your pram. Again.

I have no fixation on noise, or being stuck in the sand about anything.

My reference to the K-5 in comparisons to the K-3 include ALL K-5 variations, K-5/K-5II/K-5IIs so you can quit that K-5 fixation nonsense.

I never said it did. I'm talking about high ISO levels. And what kind of phrase is "sensible ISO levels" anyway??? The onyl sensible ISO setting si the one that gets the shot

You're making judgements about a camera by disregarding what a percentage of users will find important. I'm not the only person who values a good high ISO performance. So yes you are displaying an "I'm alright jack" attitude in your appraisal of the K-3 by implying the performance at high ISOs doesn't matter becuase YOU don't shoot at those values.

I might remind you that I took time out to download and compare K-3 DNGs and post them here as useful information well before you provided your test shots, so please don't try and usurp my input into these K-3 discussion by claiming you're the provider of "useful information to anyone who wants it"

You mention reality? Well the reality is that many people do want to shoot at high ISOs and were hoping that the High ISO Performance of the successor to the K-5 ( ALL VERSIONS!!!! ) was going to be an improvement in ISO performance and at worst case equal to the K-5.

That hasn't happened, and the high ISO performance is worse on the K-3. Am I disappointed? yes. Am I surprised? Well yes a little as I thought they could have equalled the K-5 performance. Will this affect you? No becuase as you only shoot at, cough, "sensible" ISO settings then you're OK aren't you? Enjoy your k-3

One from DC Watch...
http://translate.google.com/translate?act=url&depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl...

I'm with Smeggy on this one, I was also hoping for better high ISO performance from the K3. If the K3 had proved to be a superior performer at high ISO (6400 and 12800) to the K5, I would already have bought one. Low-light performance is the deciding (in fact only) factor for me as far as buying a new camera is concerned. A/F speed doesn't matter to me; I don't shoot sports or air shows, though I appreciate that I am probably in a minority in never having found the A/F speed on the K5 limiting in any way. In low light I use manual lenses so A/F is not a factor there either. The K5 does everything I need except produce images that can be printed large from shots at ISO 6400 or higher, so I'm still waiting....

If the next Pentax doesn't do what I personally want from a camera, then I'll no doubt jump ship and buy one that does, though I'd prefer to stick with Pentax.

Why not have a really close look at the studio ISO results in the EPZ review. You'll find out that the detail at ISO 6400 is slightly better in the K-3, even though the noise level is slightly higher. A real life example is in the sample shots, the one of the leaning gravestone.

Have a close look and a play with a few images and forget what anybody says, judge for yourself. Also check out the comparisons between the K-5 IIs reviews shots and the K-3 ones. How could amyone not be impressed by the difference....

Noise is not as simple as "I turn ISO up - therefore I will get more noise", this shot was taken at an ISO of 400 on a K5 with a Sigma 70 - 300mm lens

[

Vulcan 02 by Chris_Judge, on Flickr]

and is full of noise.

Same camera, same lens - different day shot at 3200ISO

[

Botanical_Gdns_0199 by Chris_Judge, on Flickr]

No trace of noise.

The K3 has more Mp crammed onto the same sized sensor, so the pixels are smaller, will it have more noise - yup, but that's not the whole story, it will also have finer resolution, more detail to start with so noise reduction blur has less effect.

My final point is that as yet there is no software that optimizes K3 files for noise or anything else as the software hasn't yet caught up except for, may be, the Silkypics software bundled with the camera, so your comparing K5 images which have been optimized for noise reduction with K3 images that, as yet, haven't.

The images I shot were all JPEG, so they were definitely optimised by the engineers who designed the camera.

Chris makes some very valid points there.