Primarily. I find them fascinating, and night photography in general.

Thanks I will try that.

Had my first partial success last night. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong before but two batteries lasted all night using 1 minute exposures. Still have a few things to sort out, but this was a good step in the right direction. I'm not super happy with the difference in 1 minute exposures on my Pentax vs 5 to 20 second exposures on my Sony ZV-E10 (in terms of noise and dynamic range), but I don't want to put too much stock into one night of adequate results.

link

Thanks for the advice everyone. I will try stopping down tonight and may consider swapping out the K-3 for a KF. It sounds like it will allow me to use a standard USB battery pack for a little more extended power (assuming I'm going to need it if I start deviating to either side of 1 minute exposures) and I do miss having a flippy screen. I need to look into it, but the KF may also have something akin to Bright Monitor to help me with composition in near darkness.

I will say I very much appreciate that infinite focus is actually infinite focus on this lens, where many others are close to correct according to the barrel indicator, this one seems to be bang on...making things at least a tiny bit easier. I'll keep posting about progress, I typically do a night lapse capture every night.

PENTAX DA* 16-50mm f/2.8 ED AL (IF) SDM, so far only been running 16mm wide open.

I have the K-3 Mark I.

I've recently started doing a lot of night lapse photography using a Sony ZV-E10, but bought a K-3 with a battery grip and GPS unit. I'm running into a few problems that is leaving me feeling a bit disappointed with the Pentax experience. I'd appreciate any advice.

First, do any of the Pentax cameras have something similar to the Sony Bright Monitor function that boosts the gain of the live view to make framing and focusing even in complete darkness much easier? I've tried using both the viewfinder and live view but with my older eyes I can't see jack. I've messed with aperture, ISO, brightness, and shutter speed to see if I can come up with something comparable.

Second, when I shoot with my Sony I hook it up to an external power bank that let's me run interval shooting all night long. Even with the battery grip I'm only getting maybe 400 exposures before everything is drained. Do any of the Pentax cameras allow for the use of a USB battery bank while shooting? When I hook a battery bank up to the K-3 USB port it just shuts down the camera and starts charging the battery.

Third, does the camera have a setting that detects that I'm using the viewfinder and shut down the LCD? Even with my eye pressed into the eyecup there's enough bleed through light that's killing my night vision.

I'm sure excited to make the most of the Astro Tracer function and love the build and weather sealing of the K-3 but I've got to find a solution to these problems or I'm going to move another direction.