I like the first two, but although the gold in the third one is really splendid, I find myself wishing there was more beach. I realise the sky is the main attraction, but it still looks a bit abruptly cut off at the bottom.

Yes, that's me for sure

But it's only brought about by lack of money.
Totally agree - I definitely don't. I don't give too hoots for the extra DoF, and I don't want the expense and weight of the long glass that I'd need.

I really like APS-C, and I really like Pentax ergonomics. The only thing I really want that I don't have is an excellent AF system (ie quick and accurate in all lighting conditions). The rest of the K-3 improvements are really in the nice-to-have category.

The FF Pentax won't be a K-3 anything

In reality, no one to my knowledge has expressed a single actual negative, other than the increased noise at very high ISO, against which has to be weighed the additional detail.

A number of people, including myself, are attempting to weigh up a number of factors in order to make a decision, and it's not a simple one.

No one's disputing that the K-3 is better. It's whether it's enough better that's the point, given what's probably coming.

Even Smegs would probably concede that it's hard to weigh up the likelihood of getting more actual keepers at high ISO, between the K-5 (mark 1, mind) and the K-3 - quicker, more accurate AF and more detail against a bit of extra noise... it's a pretty close call to my mind.

If the K-3 was the price of a D7100 I'd buy one tomorrow. And if I had more money I'd still buy one tomorrow, and then I wouldn't be bothering with threads like this.

Yes, but it's a gentle ripple, rather than a sea change, n'est-ce pas?

As is focus-peaking. Nice to have, but £3-400 worth? I doubt it, somehow.

I don't think you'll see many, for two reasons.

One, someone would have to be quite good with their K-3 to do better than you can do with your K-5, in the styles you tend to adopt - it still comes down more to the photographer than the gear.

Two, the resolution increase gives subtle, not colossal, additional detail, so most of what we see (on the web at least) will only occasionally be obviously better with more pixels.

If you'll forgive me expressing an opinion based only on others' comments, it seems to me that, resolution aside, the thing the K-3 gives most of all is usability, especially in difficult situations.

This isn't going to make much of a difference to the best achievable image quality when you have time to set the shot up, but it'll potentially make a big difference to the number of good pictures achievable in a wider variety of situations.

So for instance, I'm hoping that the overall results from a day at an airshow, obtained from a K-3, would blow away the same with a K-5.

That would justify it, for me.

As an aside, the sensor-shift AA filter is a clever consequence of having a sensor you can move around, but its real-world benefits are being grossly over-played in the reviews, IMO. I don't think that counts as a sea change at all. If the difficulty John experienced getting moiré at all in order to review its removal (don't worry, I'm not going back to what I think that time should have been spent doing ), is anything to go by, it's going to affect a tiny minority of shots at the very most - and let's face it, we throw away images for all kinds of reasons already.

I have no idea, but it's a quote from a Monty Python sketch, where John Cleese was charged 60 quid (plus eight for the fruit bat) for a cat licence.

Script here... sketch here.

You did ask...

50 quid? Not even another eight for the fruit bat?

That is amazing. Running digital in parallel with film will also be amazing.

Just two things:

1. If you renege on your determination to do film and end up learning loads more with the K-R, you have to come back and 'fess up

2. (More seriously ) Exposure is different between film and digital. Although the principles are the same, in practice it's hard to ruin a sky with a bit of overexposure on film, whereas it's almost impossible not to on digital. As I expect you'll discover, if you have dark foreground and bright background, on film you can expose for the foreground and still end up with reasonable sky. However, if you do that with digital, the foreground will be Ok, but the sky will be a vile mix of bands of white and cyan, which ruins the whole shot. So on digital you need to expose less than you think, and then do what you can to recover the shadow detail on the computer.

Don't worry if this means nothing at this stage, you'll run into it soon enough.

Do keep us posted though - sounds like the beginning of a fascinating journey for you.

That's very helpful, John, thanks. Although we cross swords sometimes, I do certainly respect your comparative view of the Pentax range over the years.

One reason I've been hesitating over the K-3 is that I can't really figure out if, when the K-3 successor comes out, we'll look back and view the K-3 relative to its predecessors as more of a K-7 than a K-5. But if you feel already that it's more than that, that's well worth knowing.

FWIW, I never owned the *istD, but my brother did, so I'm somewhat familiar with it. I came in at the K10D, skipped the K20D and K-7 (the latter as my perception was much as yours is), and now I have the K-5, which I've been pleased with in many ways. But as you probably know, it's frustrated me on numerous occasions photographing aircraft in flight and dancers in low light.

I really want the K-3 to be the advance you say, but I'll have to sell quite a lot of gear to afford it, so I can't afford it to be wishful thinking.

Just out of interest, John, how would you compare the size of the difference between the K-3 and the original K-5, with the difference between the K-7 and the K20D?

Is K-5 to K-3 a bigger jump than K20D to K-7, do you think?