K-3 studio test shots now on Imaging Resource

Precisely! High ISOs can be liberating, as extra options to be exploited as long as you can still get good results.

I have gone up to ISO 12,800 with my K-5IIs this year. With careful choice of parameters in Lightroom the results were very sharp, and the noise, while there, wasn't intrusive or objectionable. And with some trickery in Photoshop I could have reduced the noise even further.

Yes I do. I shoot things that look cool and often cool looking things are in a low light situation and I want the IQ to better

If you guys chose to limit your photography to certain higher levels of light then that's your prerogative and I respect that, but there's a whole new world of imagery to be shot at low light.

And I'd like to shoot that sort of imagery without the result being bogged down with noise.

Yes I can shoot static landscape night scenes at ISO100 on a tripod no problem with exposures of 30seconds or more, but that approach doesn't work with scenes that are dynamic.

Chris's "Cart before the horse argument" is sound. I generally shoot on TAv mode, meaning ISO is the lower priority, and if that means the image I get is at ISO51200 then so be it. At least I got the image. I'd rather get a noisy image than nothing at all. But all the same, as I said, I would like those higher ISO shots to have less noise.

My K-3 versus K-5IIs tests simply printed the whole image at A3+. The subject matter was the same size in the frame in all cases, and a casual glance might have considered them to be the same photo.

In other words, I tested for a real-world situation, printing at my favourite size, eliminating any other debates about how to compare.

No the NR was dramatically improved in Process Version 2012 versus PV201. You'll see when you upgrade to LR4 or LR5

Liberating is a good description. - Nice choice of word Barry

High ISO becomes much easier if you shoot JPEG. This is an ISO 12800 shot from the MX-1, which has a much smaller sensor, and I don't see a problem with it. I would be interested to see if the K-3 is better or even as good, because it's good enough in all the cameras so far. Good enough for emergency use that is, when we're shooting black cats in coal cellars.

thanks for taking the time to do that Smeggy, that's a very interesting comparison.

Like you I enjoy low light photography of dynamic subjects so high ISO performance is important to me, and the higher the better. I have even been known to take my *ist out over my K10D for the extra stop.

I think my decision is going to come down to low light and tracking AF performance, if it's enough of a step up from the K5 is might overrule the drop in high ISO.

Thanks! I had better press the button to buy that new PC then.
This is what I am thinking of.

Of course... 24MP v. 16mp will do that


Well looking at the pics, I would say that those who want to blow up pics to poster size "might" benefit from the 24MP sensor when the pic was taken at low ISO values.

I say "might" because based upon the DNG's I couldn't discern any meaningful resolution increase with 24MP that was of any practical value over the 16MP of the K-5, even at 100% pixel peeping.

So far I've seen nothing that that the K-3 gives over even a MKI K-5 in terms of base IQ. In fact at really high ISOs it's not as good as the K-5. Of course IQ isn't everything and the K-3 brings some nice features the K-5 doesn't have and for those that value them then the K-3 is worthwhile upgrade




Anyway don't blindly rely upon my conclusions, download the DNG's yourself,do some comparisons and report back

LR4 and it's PV2012 does take a bigger hit on PC performance compared to PV2010. So much so that I leave NR and sharpening to the last thing on the edit list - in practise that's not a problem.

Barry, I couldn't bear the thought of the Creative Cloud, so I bought a DVD copy of LR5 before it becomes unobtainable. I had to build a whole new machine to run it, similar to the options you are looking at. If you're just running LR5 on a Sandybridge to Haswell cpu equipped machine, you don't need to get a graphics card. LR5 runs fine using the CPU's inbuilt graphics processor. You might want to invest in a graphics card if running CS6 though.

I reckon if you are patient and trawl the bargain basements, you can build a machine as good as Chilli Blast are offering for less money. If you like to spend a lot of time doing PP go for parts that run quite and cool, you don't need overclocking unless you're into games really. Overclocking means noise and noisy machines lead to fatigue.

I am very much impressed with LR5 having only used PDCU in the past. Based on what I am reading here, I am not so impressed with the K-3. Dare I say it again, improve DYNAMIC RANGE please P/R. It's what you all want, some people just don't realise it yet. The K-£ is just consumerist nonsense. It's a new year so we must have a new model. Nonsense.

I apologise if I have offended anyone with my last remarks.

That's mainly down to Sony or the other sensor manufacturers, not Pentax who have only a minor role in enhancing the signal path. I personally don't think we'll see any big jump in DR or noise performance for many years, silicon is silicon and you can only push it so far and it has already been pushed a lot compared with say 6yrs ago and if there have been any improvements in the last 2yrs then they have been fairly minor so sensor performance is plateauing already.

If we get improvements then it's more likely to be by using 'cheats' like better on-sensor NR but there's always some drawbacks with NR no matter how it's done.

Yup Lightroom doesn't use GPU


I overclocked my i7 920 machine from 2.8Ghz to just under 4GHz. Made a huge difference with lightroom and everything else and it's fan isn't noisy at all. barely notice it's on. CPU is currently running at 35deg C



I'm not offended

There are some nice new features in the K-3, but IQ isn't really any better and from what it seems worse at higher ISOs. I'm waiting for the DXO tests for dynamic range and S/N at all ISOs as well

I've decided to skip the K3, as high ISO performance is the main thing I am interested in.

As far as noise reduction goes, I'm finding DXO Optics Pro 9 far outperforms LR5, by at least a stop, two in many cases. It takes 10-15 minutes to process a RAW file, but that's not a deal-breaker for me; the improvement in noise reduction is the difference between shots I keep and shots I bin. It's on a deal until the end of the month.

Here's a crop of a shot, about a quarter of the frame, shot at ISO 6400 and then pushed 2 stops, processed in LR5 using max noise reduction.
(it's worth clicking through to see the full-sized images, though the difference is still apparent at 800 px.))





The same image processed in Optic Pro 9 using the Prime noise reduction
feature.

I didn't expect the K3 to improve on the K5 in fact apart from the selectable AA filter it may only be an improvement in the AF area that's worth having in my case.

It is strange that Ricoh announced both cameras (Std and Ltd ) together and it may mean that even the K3 is a stop gap.

FF is on it's way and Ricoh are on board. Squeezing a little more DR from an APSC is not the way forward.

Yes I have a K3 Ltd on order. It's more of a collectable than a requirement for me and I don't see it blowing away my K5.

I see it possibly being the last of the Pentax top APSC cameras but then to be rational, the K5 series already has that title.

All of this is only my take on it.

Best regards