Apologies to anyone who's viewed these so far, but I had to add another one shot tonight in our hallway, under very dim light. I've been testing the K-3 with old manual lenses and for some reason it seems to love the old glass. This is with a 40 year old Tamron Adapt-a-matic 300mm F5.6 (Model 670AU) which cost me £20, set at F8. I was aiming to get the point of focus on the nose, not easy in very dim light and this one is just a tad forward of ideal focus, but not bad. It's a colour pop of sorts, but a very subtle one. Two things stand out to me when using lenses like this on the K-3:

1. It is revealing resolution I never knew the old lenses were capable of

2. The AF confirmation in the viewfinder is very accurate when focussing manually - this is a great help with the old glass when not using the rear LCD

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, Tamron Adapt-a-matic 300mm F5.6, 8 seconds exposure on tripod, there is a small amount of shake on this




Regards
David

I know this is going off at a tangent somewhat, but I have a K-01 and hence have the proper 'Silkypix Developer Studio' that was supplied with it. To be honest, I haven't used it yet, but I'm interested in learning it. Does anyone know whether I could get this software to work with K-3 DNG files as it currently won't recognise them?

Regards
David

These are beautiful shots Alan, the Blue Tit in particular. I presume that one was with the DA*300?

Regards
David

Three more K-3 images, all shot yesterday at Rother Valley Country Park, near Sheffield. All at ISO 400.

A Devoted Pair, DA 16-45, Polariser





Mute Swan, Sigma 150-500





On the Smartphone, DA 16-45, Polariser




As always, CC is welcome.

Regards
David

I must be very lucky!! I've had 8 Pentax DSLR's (1 K-m, 3 K-x's, 1 K-01, 1 K-5, 1 K-5iis and 1 K-3) and I can't remember an occasion when any of them have locked up! They seem to me to be designed and built very well.

Regards
David

Although this review is quite short, it is also very interesting. There are some notable omissions, for example it mentions nothing about noise levels or high ISO performance, but the most interesting part is that the reviewer rates the AF performance very highly, including the tracking capability. For someone used to using high end DSLR's from the main brands that's very encouraging. I can't comment on the tracking performance or the comparative speed against Canon or Nikon bodies, but it is obvious after using the K-3 for a couple of weeks that the AF is faster than previous bodies (especially with screw drive lenses) and it is very accurate.

Regards
David

The PDCU5 supplied with the K-3 is a bit of a poor effort as far as I can see. Yes it has some decent tools like the noise reduction for example, but it is so clunky and so slow. The only reason I use it is to identify the RAW images as my old version of Adobe Bridge doesn't display the thumbnails on the K-3 DNG files. I'm running a very fast Core I-7 laptop with loads of RAM and PDCU5 is still pretty slow. Also, the user interface is poor.

Regarding PEF files, can anyone tell us why we would want to use these in preference to DNG's? I can't think of any reasons, perhaps I am missing something?

Regards
David

Hi Sally, I know we had some correspondence on similar topics (not quite the same) a week or so ago but there are a few more points raised in this thread. For the type of shots you do at Horse meetings, if you are using the tripod for these you will need to switch the SR off and I would imagine the camera is moving with the tripod head. Same applies if using a monopod, which may in fact be the best option for you as it allows some freedom of movement whilst still adding stability. In these circumstances you can't use the 2 second timer or mirror up functions as you need to take shots immediately.

I think also it would benefit you to get a longer lens as we discussed before, something like a Sigma 150-500, which although heavy, is very useable on a monopod.

The final observation I would make is that the K-x which you are using has a lot more shutter / mirror vibration than a K-5 would have. This can make shake more likely, especially with longer lenses.

Best wishes
David

From a static focussing point of view it is definitely a lot better than the standard K-5 Andrew, especially in difficult lighting conditions. I lost so many decent shots on my K-5 to poor focussing that I lost a lot of confidence in it. I didn't find that with the K-5iis, nor with the K-3 and I would say the K-3 is a definite step forward from the iis.

Regards
David

Excellent David, very good images and the 'Heatwave' one in particular is outstanding to me.

Regards
David