Your thoughts, please, on a lens dilemma.

My DA 55-300mm (original version), which I've had for a very long time, currently has 2 uses. First, as a small, light weight, 'just in case I need a tele' lens for the bag. Second, as the only option I've got if I think I'll need a zoom in the 100-300mm range (it's not my primary 300+mm lens, that is and will remain the DA*300mm f4). However, f5.8 at the long end is just too restrictive and focus at the long end is both too slow and hit or miss (it always has been, it seems to depend on whether it approaches focus from near or far). These have become too annoying so I'm thinking of at least semi-retiring it.

My ideal lens would be a 55-300mm f4 with the size and weight of the lens it would replace. But that doesn't exist. The PLM version is OK for size and weight but the max aperture is even smaller than the original. I'm open to the idea that perhaps 2 lenses are needed, one small and light weight for in the bag 'just in case I need a tele' and another for when I'm expecting to need a tele-zoom so am willing to carry more size and weight (but there is a limit and the 150-450mm is beyond both ). Money, of course, is also a factor - given the limited use it would get, the price of a new 70-210 f4 is way too much! And in case you're wondering, the cameras will be K3 and K3 iii.

Your suggestions, please.

Steve

You're making it look too easy, Gareth. Too soon for me to pick favourites, I'm still um and ah'ing .

Steve

You flatter me - I'm blushing ! There are far more knowledgeable people than me on this forum (and far better photographers), I'm just the bloke who had a few minutes to spare and saw an interesting question.

Steve

Lucky you! I've just spent an hour counting birds for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. No robin, for the first time for years.
I hope you did the decent thing and turned over some leaves or earth to help the little bird find what it was looking for .

Steve

Soo.... I took a couple of images of a white surface (white plastic window frame), one with K3iii the other with K20D (yeah, vintage!), both at ISO 3200, and compared DNGs with the DNG of the aircraft and blue sky (thanks, tigershoot ). The comparison was done with Affinity Photo v1 (I don't use LR) with noise reduction turned off. To sum up what I saw:
1. K3 iii noise was qualitatively much the same in my K3iii image and the aircraft shot.
2. K20D image noise was significantly worse than K3 iii - more and uglier (not unexpected).
I then tried to remove noise using the luminance slider. The result was that about 20% did a pretty good job of both K3iii images, less so for the K20D image. Playing around with colour sliders had very little effect.

Conclusion is that most of the noise is luminance and easy to remove.

There will, of course, always be some noise in what a sensor records because both light and electricity have random fluctuations ('shot noise' and thermal noise) which will remain however perfect the sensor. How much noise to remove in camera and how much to leave in the RAW file is a choice for the designers, particularly as noise removal results in some loss of detail in the image. Interestingly, Richoh/Pentax recognises this compromise in their K3 iii webpages where they say " the PENTAX K-3 Mark III greatly reduces noise, while still retaining the subtle outlines of a subject. This advanced technology optimizes the camera’s resolving power, and faithfully reproduces the subject's texture and detail. It also improves image description in the lower sensitivity range, while minimizing unfaithful reproduction of blacks in the higher sensitivity range where color reproduction becomes more difficult.". OK, there's some techno-babble from the marketing department in that, but it is still a statement of the priorities they took when making the trade-off between noise and detail.

Personally, I think that Ricoh/Pentax has done a pretty good job with the K3iii and the noise/detail compromise seems in line with what they say on their website. What noise there is seems easy to remove (for the types of photos I take) and I usually don't bother because to my eyes it's usually acceptably unobtrusive (again, for the types of photos I take). I'd actually be very suspicious (and annoyed ) if RAW files were all squeaky clean as that would imply fairly heavy noise reduction before I could get my hands on the files and that, to my mind, defeats the purpose of RAW. Sure, things might be even better with bigger pixels on a bigger sensor, but I wouldn't be surprised if the K3 iii is about as good as it gets for this number of pixels on an APS-C sensor with today's technology.

Steve

Another vote for the first one. More subtle, more hinting at, more impression.

Steve

By 'eck, Gareth, that's good!! Pure impressionism - everything stripped out until only an impression remains.

Steve

Really like the first two. The shapes, lines, geometry work well with mono.

Not so keen on the last. I can see what you're getting at but a couple or more things aren't quite working for me. What I'd like to see is some clear sky around the church so the branches are framing it not overlaping, the tower vertical with the inevitable lean at the right hand end of the church so it pushes the eye into the frame and towards the tower, and more contrast in the top half of the tower to draw out the LH window. Intended as a helpful comment rather than a criticism .

And as you say, £24.99 is indeed eye watering!!

Steve

In case you haven't already seen it, here's a link to the 'other forum' where the K3 iii's noise is reviewed with examples link. As far as RAW files are concerned it concludes that "Up to ISO 12800, it is hard to notice any noise contribution". Perhaps their subject was more forgiving than a blue sky.

Just had a thought (well, it is late at night!). Since only 1 in 4 pixels on the sensor records blue, about 3 in 4 of the pixels won't be detecting much light when a blue sky is photographed. A precise rendering of each pixel in the RAW file will therefore necessarily appear rather blotchy, just how blotchy will depend on how closely the sky blue matches the blue of the sensor's filter. The RAW renderer must presumably do some averaging over adjacent pixels to address that sort of thing. Perhaps the sky picture is more a comment on what the RAW processing is doing rather than what the K3iii is doing.

I hope that sounds as sensible in the morning as it does now!

Steve

Like you, I'd expect better. And I got better yesterday when shooting the K3iii at ISO 3200, albeit different subject and background (sparrowhawk sitting on fence, OOF vegetation behind). Yours looks a bit underexposed to me, might that be contributing to the noise? I've always found that underexposed blue skies tend to be a bit noisy, going back to the K20D.

Steve