[zmohie]

I have been here and in the other forums reading about the early issues with the k3 from the soft pics through the blure images and finaly the noisy sensor and also the SR issue. even with these early issues I pulled the triger and ordered the silver one from B &H .
Iam confused . Iam seeing many out standing images around and here but still reading about only problems. why many persons produce a great photos with this tool and the others are still complaining.
I hope I will not be on the queue and complain.

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Last edited by zmohie; 12-06-2013 at 05:13 AM.

[klkitchens]

Yes you made a mistake.

Silver? Really?

It will be fine. You might have to improve a little as a photographer, but is that a bad thing?

[i_trax]

every new camera will take time to master it.
I took ~ 1000 photos with my K-3 and I love it more and more, it is great photographic tool.
some of my photos:
Pentax K-3 - a set on Flickr

[zmohie]

every new camera will take time to master it.
I took ~ 1000 photos with my K-3 and I love it more and more, it is great photographic tool.
some of my photos:
Pentax K-3 - a set on Flickr

A very nice series.
do you master it with a special settings.thanks in advance!

[zmohie]

Yes you made a mistake.

Silver? Really?

It will be fine. You might have to improve a little as a photographer, but is that a bad thing?

yeah silver!!
It cost me 1770$.lucky you are in U S A.
regarding improving my photography skills I will try my best but as I know pentax is known making the ​​ easier cameras .so what kind of skills one should have than one usualy does with k5!

[klkitchens]

yeah silver!!
It cost me 1770$.lucky you are in U S A.
regarding improving my photography skills I will try my best but as I know pentax is known making the ​​ easier cameras .so what kind of skills one should have than one usualy does with k5!

Blessed to be in the USA, but blessed to have only bought the black. Used the extra for a battery grip!

As for skills... Not sure as mine is two days late but supposedly arriving today. But the images are 50% larger than before, so more pixels to highlight errors in shake, noise, etc... But 6016 x 4000 is roughly 20x13 at 300ppi, so when you resize to normal levels and screen images, most of the noise will go away I think.

Just have to learn to use the tripod/monopod more, etc...

Will know when I have mine, LOL

[frogoutofwater]

Hi there - And welcome to the K3.

I think you will get some answers from more experienced Pentax owners here, but I will add a few comments of my own, reflecting my experience switching from a Sony NEX-6 to Pentax and the K-3.

1) One part of improving your photographic skills involves experimenting the K3's functions in what I would call a controlled setting. It's not so much about making a beautiful composition but rather seeing which settings (e.g., in terms of AF settings, focus points, etc) produce the best results for you. You also want to see whether the camera is actually focusing where you intend it to focus - and if there are problems, whether it's an operator problem (e.g., shaky hands, lack of a tripod when you should be using one) or a camera in need of slight adjustment.

One area where I've really had to adjust my habits relates to my exposure settings. With my NEX-6 (16.1 MP versus K3 24), I was accustomed to opting for fairly high ISO on a regular basis (often shooting at 1600 in Aperture priority) in order to get a fast shutter speed for my chosen f-stop. I photograph a lot of animals, and so I wanted to ensure that I could freeze action. The resulting photos generally looked pretty good in web galleries etc, but I they weren't very high resolution (so didn't look great as larger prints). Now I have a camera that has the potential to produce much sharper images in large prints because of the high resolution, but the images are noisier in the higher ISO ranges. So I'm looking at adjusting my habits (going to experiment with TaV setting this weekend, where I select aperture and shutter speed and let the camera choose ISO - I should get some lower ISO images this way because in the past I think I was needlessly setting too high an ISO for what I wanted to achieve).

By controlled setting, I mean setting up something to photograph (indoors or outside) or finding a location where you can test your camera's output as you manipulate the settings. It's not so much about making a wonderful composition as it is about seeing which settings work best for what you want to shoot.

2) And then the other part of skills as a photographer is just good general technique, I think. Getting exposure right, for example. You want to get the exposure right because underexposed photos are going to look noisier and affect image quality. You want to ensure you're camera is as stable as it can be - proper technique when you're hand-holding it and using a tripod when you should. (Taking and using my tripod is one of those things I really need to get better at.) And then maybe improving your skills in post-processing to bring the best out of your RAW image files.

I know that in my current experience with the K3, I have fewer great crisp shots and more "misses" than when I used the NEX, but my few "great" shots are "greater" than the comparable images out of my NEX. I think that as I practise, my proportion of great shots will increase.

[Arne Bo]

I wouldn´t worry to much. I revisited this video and blunty just showed out of camera jpegs. They look really nice to my eye. (link should begin at the small slide show.)

Pentax K-3 Review - DigiDIRECT TV Ep 050 - YouTube

But with so much reports something with the K-3 seems to be different in comparison with the older 16mb sensor cameras. Perhaps a handling adjustment is all, but i wouldn´t rule out some firmware issues with certain settings or lens-body communication.
I´m not overly concerned.

[Na Horuk]

Online forums are often the place where all the complainers go. I am sure there are hundreds of satisfied K-3 owners having fun taking photos, without ever posting a comment online. But as soon as they have a problem (even if it is their lack of skill), they will go to a forum and complain. Don't worry about it Their complains do not affect your work

[RonHendriks1966]

Well the K-3 is a fantastic camera. Just learn to use it.

[frogoutofwater]

Online forums are often the place where all the complainers go. I am sure there are hundreds of satisfied K-3 owners having fun taking photos, without ever posting a comment online. But as soon as they have a problem (even if it is their lack of skill), they will go to a forum and complain. Don't worry about it Their complains do not affect your work

I find it helpful to see the "complaints" and issues raised about potential potential problems in this forum, because there is so much useful feedback from knowledgeable Pentaxians here. People share ideas to help figure out if there really is a problem and if there is one, they swap ideas about potential solutions. Maybe I'm a Pentax Pollyanna , but I view every so-called complaint or problem discussion as an opportunity to learn about how to maximize the potential of my camera.

[LaurenOE]

You didn't make a mistake. My second K3 should be here in minutes.

[derekkite]

When I got the K5 a few years ago it took me a good 6 months to get a good shot out of it. It was more of a camera than I'd ever had previously, and it did exactly what I told it to do. The previous body would give me a very noisy iso 400, the K5 let me make a fool of myself at iso 6400. I could use any number of great or horrible old lenses that are readily available. Putting a long lens on it, using the SR gave me a couple of stops where my technique needed half a dozen.

Then I started to learn how to tell it to take good shots. A while more I started to learn what light conditions it really liked, and what light conditions is really didn't (which happened to coincide with the light conditions prevalent in the areas where the K3 was first available). I learned how to hold and stabilize the camera, and learned what my limits were as to shutter speed. I learned what lenses I just left in the pile and which ones were nice. I bought some very nice ones as well. I took many many shots, saw what worked and what didn't.

The K3 has already produced some nice shots for me. There is a learning curve; some light it really doesn't like and the fall off is a bit more extreme than the K5. I'm just getting past the point where I'm looking at what the camera is doing, trying to build the muscle memory for the various functions that I use. I see that in some cases it is more demanding of me in technique, but that is fine.

There are sometimes bad copies that good photographers recognize and get replaced. I learned that my shooting style and locations make a bi yearly tune up on the camera and lens very worth while. We are seeing the results of the K3 in skilled hands and it is excellent.

The majority of shots I threw away with the K5 were out of focus. Now they are in focus, but the majority are worth throwing away nonetheless. Maybe that is what we are seeing. All those bad shots that would have not gotten past the initial throw away stage are showing up on internet fora.

[ENicolas]

The thing I find with the K-3 is I have less wiggle-room as far as my abilities as a photographer - it is less forgiving if I'm not on my game.

It's a more sensitive and refined device than the K-5. Especially as far as image noise is concerned, you have to think ahead and really visualize what the image is going to look like at the far end of the processing pipeline. I have also found that in Lightroom less is more with the K-3: less sharpening, less color tweaking, less contrast adjustment, etc. The only place I use more is noise reduction - take care of that at the start of your processing workflow and the results are great. It is especially useful to make local noise reductions using the adjustment brush: heavy in the sky or any "flat" color area, less where there is a lot of texture detail. But the extra 8 megapixels are just going to make the sensor more subject to noise because the photosites are smaller. I think we are seeing the limit for APS-C at 24 megapixels with current technology.

Once we get software with profiles for the K-3 the fight for IQ will settle-down. And of course the camera will improve with firmware updates from Pentax just as all digital cameras do.

My K-5 is resting in foam inside a hard case with my "extra" lenses. I won't sell it, but so far I haven't been tempted to take it out, either.

[Miguel]

The thing I find with the K-3 is I have less wiggle-room as far as my abilities as a photographer - it is less forgiving if I'm not on my game.

That's really well stated and I'm in agreement.

M