Sorry, included in title but forgot to bury in first post text.


Yes, K-3 thanks.


Thanks, off to read that now.

I'm considering upgrading my older 55-300 to the newer PLM version.
Hope is that with the PLM motor this will provide better subject tracking.

Has anyone had experience with this scenario and combo?

Appreciate any thoughts on this.

What camera body do you use?

The K-3 has a pretty massive buffer, and this clears fairly quickly when used with fast SD Cards?

Yep, agreed. The new model looks fine (not a fan of that weirdly placed/after thought type mode dial, but that's a minor personal taste thing).
Honestly there's not much to write about from the model displayed, other than it doesn't appear to have a fold out screen and has a joystick.

Like you, the real info I'm interested in is the capabilities. Tracking AF and Video are Pentax's weaknesses, so I'd like to see what happens in these areas, again to justify the upgrade. The inclusion of a joystick control does suggest some AF improvement, so I'd also like to know what that meant for me and my existing range of lenses.

Side note but that Pentax PLM 55-300mm zoom focusing appears lightning fast in videos I've seen.

My take on this is I'm usually in single centre point single focus.

As I understand it, people use the AF selection to achieve the same thing, but where the object of interest is not in the middle. I guess an example would be where you are tripod mounted, and the object you want to focus on is off to the side. There is a technical reason why focus and recompose might not be suitable, with a difference in how that point is focused out the side of the lens vs straight through the middle. I must say I've never done this, but I think that's the idea.

On other systems though, the more focus points is for tracking AF. This allows you to select/mark the object you want to track, and then the camera is equipped with more points to accurately keep the object in focus, even if it drifts outside of the centre of the frame. Unless Pentax gets better at tracking objects, I don't really see the need for more AF points?

When I have to shoot action with my Pentax K-3, I've gone through a lot of trials and found a setup that works for me. I'm not near my camera now, but from memory there are a few key settings which weren't on the lower tier models like the K-30 I had previously. I have AF-C enabled, and then the option to first select the object via the centre point selection, which the camera will then continuously track around the expanded 9 areas around it. This is quite different to straight auto 9 segment, as with that you don't get to nominate the object you are interested in first. Sometime 25 if I'm feeling brave and think the camera will be able to achieve this.

There is also a setting called AF hold, which determines how long the camera will wait before trying to refocus. This is useful for birds going behind twigs etc, but not so good for objects coming to wards you, as the camera will wait before trying to follow it again.

Pentax is really bad at suggesting when to use these various settings. They're all detailed in the manual, but buried on different menus, and there's no overarching guide that points you to the best combo. Difference between a technical manual and a user guide I guess. However, I found a massive improvement when I finally got the combinations right.

That added with the ability to control the auto calculations, such as favouring speed vs low ISO in AV mode, made a huge difference for me. That's the real benefit of the higher spec models personally, as often the hardware components (sensors etc) are the same or similar between model ranges. The added control options allow you to get things just right, and often that's the bit that's missing from basic reviews, where the reviewer hasn't had any time to really get to know the product in detail.

I just checked and the cropping is different (better) on a mobile browser.

I’d keep text colour consistent and consider a different background image than the bright sky/water one.

It’s looking really good though. Above is intended as constructive criticism.

Hi,

Front page looks very professional. I'd feel comfortable with the photographer based on that.

Comment re Gallery page, that image behind Take a moment to browse my gallery seems lower resolution and you've cut the eyes off, so it seems a bit weird.

The Weddings Page background image also seems a bit too lower res for the size I'm seeing it on a PC, but maybe fine for mobile.
Having white text on a white sky background makes it a bit hard to see.

Likewise on the let's talk page, low quality image.

None of this is major, and I do understand the conflict between high quality images and image size for fast loading, especially on a mobile data plan.

Hope this feedback can help.

Where is the new home for this?

Another thought, does that viewfinder look a bit yellow to you? Wonder if there’s any hybrid ideas going on there?

All good points.

Having had time to consider this, and a few drinks tonight, I’m just glad to see signs of life. The doomed cries have been ringing for years, but this dry spell was pretty epic. This at least gives some indication something is being considered.

From a personal perspective, it’s improved video specs that would draw me in. Any camera being released in 2020 needs 4k capabilities, and I’d love to see real mechanical stabilisation returned in video mode.

That being said, a mini K-1 that draws on all those previous models is far more likely. It’ll be good no matter what and if it doesn’t suit me exactly, it will still be great over the existing K-3 models which are quite old now.