Due to some information I've discovered/been sent I am going to persevere with the K3 for a while. I'll give it until I'm back in the UK in July, and if I still can't get it doing what I want I'll sell it then.

Apologies for wasting anyone's time.

Great stuff, Doc, as good as any I have seen in this genre.

If these are your first attempts, I'd suggest you do some more...

I've had so many offers by PM that I'll take the one that offers the best lens, which needs to be a fast prime or zoom....

PM's all replied to.

David, that's what I'm thinking. I've tried 3 different UV filters and they haven't made an iota of difference. I'm also sometimes getting a bit of smearing on greens from altitude, and on the ground I get none at all. It's all very strange.

OK, how about two shots, one high ISO and one ISO 100 with a huge levels adjustment needed? Finished images plus 100% crops?

Chris, as long as you don't want the K3 to perform extreme feats (which I do, unfortunately) then it's a fantastic camera. I'm sure you'll be happy with it, in good light the amount of detail you can get is amazing for an APS-C sensor. It just doesn't do what I want it to. In retrospect, I should have probably bought a FF camera instead, or just waited longer for the elusive FF Pentax.

Any time....could be an interesting experiment.

I'm interested in swapping my K3 for a K5IIs (plus a lens). This may sound a bit odd, but unfortunately the K3 has proved to not be much good for aerial photography. I think it's partly because it has too many pixels for shooting through an inch of laminated glass.

On the ground, it's a fantastic camera, by far the best camera I've owned. For aerial shots, however, the RAW files can't stand the extreme processing needed to get rid of excessive haze, the distortion of the windows shows up more, and for some reason I can't work out, it's very difficult to get the WB correct. On the ground, WB is never a problem, and I can't work out why it should struggle so much with WB from shots taken at altitude.

I've gone back to using my K5 for most aerial shots, but I really need a camera with no AA filter, as proved by comparisons between my GR and K5. The camera is a couple of months old, boxed, in excellent condition, with screen protectors fitted. Shutter count is around 1500. It was bought from a reputable dealer in Hong Kong (I've bought a lot of gear from them, including my 15mm Ltd and Ricoh GR), so doesn't have the two year warranty you get from a Pro dealer in the UK.

I'd be interested in swapping the camera for a K5IIs plus a lens, preferably a DA 35mm. Anyone interested?

Nigel, it's not just me, here's a quote from DXO's website...
"DxO Optics Pro 9 offers a gain in image quality of up to one full stop over the best noise reduction algorithms currently on the market."
My own experiments show it to give +/-two stops over LR.

No problem, Bjorn, hope you find the program you want!

Bjørn, one thing I should mention about DXO Optics Pro is it doesn't have the ability to use a grad filter, which is why I use it in conjunction with Lightroom. However, the Prime noise reduction engine works far better (two or more stops, Nigel :wink than Lightroom's NR. It also has a number of very good controls (smart lighting being my favourite) which are incredibly good. You can download a 30 day free trial, so it's worth experimenting with.