[pinholecam]

Let me be the bad guy here..

This site being The Pentax Forum just does not give any review of Pentax stuff a Pentax point of view.
They like to think their comments/conclusions as 'fair', but what is 'fair'
Comparing and equally recommending a Nikon?
On THE Pentax forum?
What about lack of on camera stabalization? Lack of on camera drive motor?
At the best, they are give and takes between the two cameras, but PF would rather leave these comments out and provide the Nikon as a 'perfect' negative 'foil' to the K50 review.
Come'on.
That sort of comment/recommendation can be left out w/o being considered biased (or is it because the reviewer also owns Nikon Forums)


Q7, same bleh.. review to me.
There are a lot of things the Q system can do, but the PF review wasn't trying too hard to show it in that light.
Yes, it can do lots more than any other advanced pns can do.
Fast f1.9 normal lens; super tele; super macro; fisheye, etc, all not covered.
It almost reads like any other Q review I've seen on the internet, which is fine for them cause they are not a Pentax Forum.
I expect a Pentax Forum to try harder.

As said, I'm not saying that the reviews should be unfair.
But it certainly can be better in terms of orientating it to the Pentax way of things as perhaps an aside commentary.


Hopefully, the K3 review will be 20+ pages that offers something above what can be gleaned off other review sites.

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Last edited by pinholecam; 11-11-2013 at 08:49 PM.

[bobmaxja]

I believe now with all the comments from Adam lately that he his bias with Nikon, he love Nikon. This is my perception,
.

[solar1]

I believe now with all the comments from Adam lately that he his bias with Nikon, he love Nikon. This is my perception,
.

There certainly is more money in the system, with much more users and the cache in the name

So I can see the bias from the sales he would generate from a similar but Nikon centered website.
It could certainly be way more lucrative. They do have faster AF too, which doesn't hurt.

[Adam]

I believe now with all the comments from Adam lately that he his bias with Nikon, he love Nikon. This is my perception,
.

I plan on expanding our network of photo sites to eventually cover all the big brands, including Pentax, Canon, Nikon, Sony, and then mirrorless. But there's something unique about Pentax and this site that I think none of the future sites will ever have...

This shouldn't have any influence on on our in-depth reviews as all the different sites will have different writers. And it's not really relevant at this point, as PF is going to be bigger than anything else we might launch for at least the next decade, I would say.

Adam
PentaxForums.com Webmaster (Site Usage Guide | Site Help | My Photography)



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[saladin]

It's up!!!!!!!!


Pentax K-3 Review - Conclusion - PentaxForums.com

[wizofoz]

I plan on expanding our network of photo sites to eventually cover all the big brands

Today PENTAX, tomorrow Ze World!

[seppel13]

Thanks for the review. Already posted it to the dslr-forum.de board. Think they will be happy about it!

Cheers
Sepp

[pentax user]

In the autofocus section it says
Users of lenses with screwdrive autofocus will enjoy up to 50% faster focusing speeds from the K-3, as it has been fitted with a more powerful motor.


Is this phase detection or contrast detection up to 50%faster?

[Vylen]

Quickly scanning through the review...

While Pentax was at it, they went all the way! The screen also adjusts to being held upside down as shown here with the electronic level!

Haha, I've yet to hold my K-3 upside down so I didn't know that worked - had to even try it for myself

[saladin]

yep, excellent review. it is as clear as day that the k3 produces cleaner images at iso 100 than the 5iis. noticeably so. Considering i'm happy with my k5 classic IQ, that's no minor feat either! I still don't know whether i'd try to get a runout "s" rather than a 3 though. ahh, decisions, decisions. lol

[RonHendriks1966]

With the K-7 we could make jpg, full resolution and one star quality at max fps untill the card was full. A future that never came back again in later models.


Does the K-3 offer this option in any off the settings (8,3 fps or a lower framerate) with the new and faster processor?

[falconeye]

Adam,

thank you so much for the review. It is a great piece of work!

Regarding your section about AF.C, and how it compares to the competition (D610), I have two comments i'd like to share. Overall though, this section is a great resource too

1. D610.
It can be shown (I tried it in my papers about equivalence and true reasons for FF) that a larger sensor using the same AF module as a smaller one produces disproportionally better results. Therefore, a comparison against a D7100 or 7D might have been more fair.

Nevertheless, with the results you obtained and taking my experience with a 70-200/2.8G into account, I assume a D7100 wouldn't have faired much worse with a bycicle. It's just not challenging enough.

2. Methodology.
You follow the same methodology as a majority of testers. By computing the ratio of keepers. Unfortunately, this is a rather meaningless score (except for keeping AF points on the subject with long focals like BIF).

By construction, AF.C fails if things start to happen too quickly with just excellent results on the slow side. Every AF.C. Where "quick" must be considered in terms of magnification ratio change speed (squared), absolute speeds being meaningless to an AF. So, with a strict focus priority policy and a fast burst rate a camera would always score 100% keepers, even if its AF.C is bad. It would just stop shooting if the subject is too near (the magnification ratio change speed is zero at infinite distance and becomes infinite at zero distance, provided the subject approaches at a constant speed).

Therefore, I adopted an alternate interpretation of AF.C test results: given a subject approaches the camera at a defined speed and given a defined field of view and given a defined physical aperture diameter, what is the nearest distance the camera could still snap a sharp photo? Given scene brightness and target contrast. And where sharp is in LW/PH >x. And using a fitted plot of LW/PH over distance for many runs to eliminate the effect of burst rate. The fitted curve will show a sharp drop-off at some distance.

The true score of an AF.C system then is the inverse of this drop-off distance, scaled to a magnification change speed number (Hz). This is a speed measurement and reflects how fast an AF system can update the focus.

So far, the only source allowing for this alternate interpretation is the labo test FNAC documents. It gives mixed results due to them doing a single run only. But with a lot of heuristic interpretation to discuss outliers, it still is my best source to assess the vendors current state-of-the-art.


Therefore, I'd like to know the respective closest distances you still obtained sharp images at. And how you evaluated "sharp".

BTW, with 80 frames at presumed 5fps for 10 to 100 feet, the speed was something like 6.2 km/h, just as fast as fast walking. If correct, the bike was much slower than they use to be in France But maybe, the #frames are from multiple runs and therefore, each run was a lot faster and more challenging for the AF?

[awaldram]

Last week I sent out an e-mail stating that our in-depth review of the K-3 will go live on Monday (i.e. today). Well, due to a few complications it looks like the review won't be done until the end of the day, which means it will go live on our homepage on Tuesday. Stay tuned- this will be our biggest review yet with over 20 pages!

Gotcha
in specification flash modes you have all three cameras identical yet the K3 supports Manual -> 1/128 a massive feature for in body flash opening up strobe 8.3fps shooting possibilities.!

Yet you cover it extensively in the review ,

I look forward to the corrected spec comparison and another green blob for the k3

[mille19]

AF.C Tracking test
Is 60-250mm F4 v 70-200mm F2.8 a fair comparison ?

[RockvilleBob]

AF.C Tracking test
Is 60-250mm F4 v 70-200mm F2.8 a fair comparison ?

A good point. Why not compare AF using a common lens say Sigma 70-200 2.8. I think that would be closer to an apples to apples
Overall the review is very good but why not use the same lens, especially since the Sigma 70-200 2.8 is on the list of best lenses available for Pentax and naturally works on Nikon.
I also feel the focus speed of the two lenses might be substantially different with the edge to the Nikon 2.8
Bottom line - hard to compare full frame af to cropped but at a minimum the same lens should be used.
Adam - is there a chance you could investigate dong such a comparison between the two using the same lens?
My experience is that the autofocus performance is vastly superior to the K-5. The table indicates a 25% boost if af over the K5II. I own the K5 - compared to the K5 the K3 is in another world.
In fairness you do state the AF also depends on lenses -