It looks distinctly average to me, and the fact that people are commenting on the fact that it's a woman and she doesn't have make-up on and looks dishevelled says more to me about society than it does about photography. If it had been a picture of a male jockey it would't get a second glance. The fact that it is of a woman does not turn it from an average shot into a prize-winning one imo. Her expression is certainly interesting but that's the only thing this shot has going for it. It has burned-out highlights below her left eye and on her forehead, is badly composed, and the background, while not competing for attention, does nothing except introduce the rule of thirds into the equation. I see better portraits than this every day on Flickr.

I can't help wondering what people would have said about it if a new member had posted it here for critique?

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.

I don't understand why anyone uses PEF when the cameras can shoot DNG

Apologies if this has been posted before. This comaprison compares the K3 with the FF Nikon D600, using a 55mm f1.4 on a K3 and an 85mm f1.4 on the D600, so they end up with the same field of view. Looking at the full-sized images, there's no doubt at all that in this comaprison the K3 blows the FF Nikon away at all ISO's. Of course, there may be some other variables at play, ie quailty of the lenses.

I may have to reconsider and buy one after all.

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.

Colour noise reduction is far less destructive than luminance noise reduction, so having to crank it up shouldn't affect the images.

However, it's overall high ISO noise more than anything else that interests me, so it looks like I'll be skipping yet another model in the Pentax line-up. Hopefully the rumours of a FF digital LX are true.

Ah, Brian, thanks, I'd worked it out but you got there first!

I've just solved it, but thought I'd leave the original post and add this in case anyone else comes across it and is as confused as I was. If you open a photo processed in an older version of Lightroom, it gives you the same Develop module as you used originally (in my case, Version 2010). If you click the little lightning bolt below the histogram, it allows you to use the new controls (update to Version 2012).

A strange thing has happened with Lightroom. I have V 5.2, but the Develop module has changed since I last used it. Where in Basic, it had shadows, highlights, blacks and whites, it has reverted somehow to how it looked in Lightroom 4, with Fill light and Recovery instead. Anyone any ideas what's happened? I'll contact Adobe I guess but meanwhile I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this?

Edit: Just noticed that I have lost the noise and WB sliders on graduated filters and the adjustment brush too!

Congratulations, Bill, excellent work! It showed up on my facebook page as a link from Ricoh UK too.