K3 Birds

Some birds. Contrast increased. Highlights reduced on the treecreepers. Default LR sharpening of 25. No noise reduction.

ISO 3,200. 300mm + 1.7x. f6.7. 1/200 sec. Cropped, about half of the frame


Treecreeper 1 by Alan Wennington, on Flickr

ISO 2,500. 300mm+1.7x, f7.1. 1/100 sec. Cropped, about third of the frame


Treecreeper 2 by Alan Wennington, on Flickr

ISO 2,000. 300mm f4. 1/60 sec. Cropped, about half of the frame


Heron by Alan Wennington, on Flickr

Have you just used "Default LR sharpening of 25." since the K3, or has that always been your practice?

Still learning Barrie. Generally use 25 in decent light with K5, and now K3. And usually with no NR

But at ISO 2000 on the K5, I'd start to up the sharpening and up the NR. Purposely left these as is, for anyone who is interested in the K3 at high ISO.

Have to say I wouldn't normally post a treecreeper with such a messy composition. Only did so, to demonstrate the ISO.

EDIT: I often use the "Punch" preset which adds clarity (a type of sharpening), and vibrance. I haven't used it on these

Alan

These look pretty good to me but what is your opinion after using the K-3 for a week or two at ISO's between 1600 and 3200?

Do you think it is a benefit over and above the K-5 in terms of the resolution vs noise equation?

Is it more accurate at focussing than the K-5 was; I appreciate you may not have had issues with the K-5, but notwithstanding that how is the focussing stacking up?

Regards
David

David, I think at low ISO, the K-3 betters the K-5. By ISO 2,000 the K-5 has caught up. By 3,200 the K-5 is ahead.

Early days though, maybe there's a learning curve with processing. And maybe firmware updates will have an impact.

As to autofocus, as you say I've always been happy with the accuracy of the K-5. The K-3 does seem better at tracking with the DA 300, and faster to initially lock.

Thanks for the update Alan, much appreciated and very useful.

I hope you don't mind me posting a couple of images on your thread; I've been testing the K-3 in the 'Natural' jpeg setting at 1600 and 3200 ISO on some of our own birds (not the wild variety like yours!) I think this is useful though as a lot of us shoot only in jpeg and this shows how strong the K-3 is when used in the jpeg mode. Neither image has had any processing, except for that which the camera applies to jpegs.

Noise levels are very low, colours, detail, sharpness etc. look good to me. Both are with the DA L 55-300 lens.

1600 ISO, 50% Crop



3200 ISO, no Crop



Regards
David

Here are the uncropped and unprocessed jpegs from the camera. Using the Natural setting

Forgot to mention that on my originals I changed the WB to shade in LR. These jpegs used auto WB.