Practical Photography

The January 2014 edition of Practical Photography has a basic review of the K3.
In a odd section headed "Handling" there are bizarre comments that the camera is reminiscent of Soviet SLRS of the 1980s, can dig into your hands and is in general critical of the look and feel of the camera.
Later in the section whilst making a positive comment about the control layout and the menu the reviewer suggests the menu should be changed to something more intuitive, whatever that means!!

It would seem that some staff at Practical Photography favour Nikon & Canon without considering what other camera brands provide, even if the cameras are outstanding in tens of spec and tech.

Sadly reviews that are paid for will always be biased and skew the truth which is why I rarely buy magazines which only endorse Nikon & Canon.

Soviet SLRs of the 1980s were clunky and hardly refined IMHO. It's a very uninformed comment at best.

They always go on about not as intuitive when they review pentax , when they did it years ago i phoned them and cancelled magazine as they are biased

At the photography club the other night we have a beginners section. I was showing another member how to adjust white balance on her Canon. Must have dug through every menu before I found it. Of course a Canon user would have found it much quicker. You get used to what you're used to. Simple as that.

Well the Pentax menu system has hardly changed in years, suggesting the reviewer has never used a Pentax before which is disappointing in itself.

i don't really care for photo magazines to be honest except for BJP.

Personally I find this forum more entertaining than any mag.

Amateur photographer is nice to buy from time to time and much friendlier to obscure brands

Think I will stick to AP in future. At least their reviews seem more balanced and knowledgeable.

With 'experts' young enough to be my children I take what they say with a lot of caution - and they are very ill-informed - and you can tell PP is chasing the lowest common denominator when you read the letters page- it reminds me of the Steve Wright Show on R2

To be honest I think Pentax' menu could be improved upon, but Pentax seem to prefer being conservative and posts here reminds us there are good arguments for that too. The best thing about Pentax is how rarely you need to dig into the menu.

My general feeling wrt to a lot of magazines' test is that they are carried out by tech geeks rather than photographers. I am not sure I would put more faith in a review just because the reviewer is old, though ...

I have just added a Nikon to my man cupboard, menu wise whilst I am naturally very familiar with Pentax, I don't recall my Kr (my first DSLR) being as hard to navigate in the initial days as the Nikon.

A flip to that, a friend playing with my K5 recently found the menu a breeze!

I menu is a menu, by and large I don't see what difference it makes as long as we're used to it?

I stopped buying PP years ago. Magazines must find it difficult today with camera reviews as every man and his dog seems to be an expert on Youtube and various web sites and blogs.

I got this edition (jan) as well, saw the cover with northern lights, was hoping it would have guide for shooting the lights, however, there was no article about it inside, was a bit disappointed really.