[LaurenOE]

Are you using the AF button to lock AF on the intended subject,and then letting 9-point close tracking maintain the lock? If done correctly, this may give the best result.

I used AF.C with center point, and tracked with my gimbal.
I think there is camera tracking even with the center point, but I'm not 100% sure.
Regardless, even with the center point and no camera tracking, the K3 was able to not go "stupid" and lock on the fence.

Something very nice is going on inside the K3 that I could only dream about in my K5 cameras.

[ChrisA]

Not a great example of AF tracking prowess.

+1. People tend to see what they want to see.

It's getting hard to glean anything from the somewhat over-enthusiastic 'review' shots (not just from the K-3, and not just on this forum) people are posting since the K-3 came out.

There's a lot of:

- 800 px reduced-to-web shots that show nothing
- shots that are sharp, but prove nothing because of the DoF
- shots that are claimed to be sharp but aren't

I put it down to K-3 owners that want to prove to themselves that their new purchase is so much better than what they had, and hence fully justified, and non-K-3 owners seeking to justify their decision to wait. Coupled with Pentax people desperate for evidence that they no longer have to feel inferior to Canon/Nikon people.

It's complicated by the fact that the K-3 owners aren't yet very good with the new camera, so aren't showing it at its best.

It makes it very hard to decide whether to get one!

[Blythman]

I put it down to K-3 owners ............

Trying to be helpful?

[LaurenOE]

+1. People tend to see what they want to see.

It's getting hard to glean anything from the somewhat over-enthusiastic 'review' shots (not just from the K-3, and not just on this forum) people are posting since the K-3 came out.

There's a lot of:

- 800 px reduced-to-web shots that show nothing
- shots that are sharp, but prove nothing because of the DoF
- shots that are claimed to be sharp but aren't

I put it down to K-3 owners that want to prove to themselves that their new purchase is so much better than what they had, and hence fully justified, and non-K-3 owners seeking to justify their decision to wait. Coupled with Pentax people desperate for evidence that they no longer have to feel inferior to Canon/Nikon people.

It's complicated by the fact that the K-3 owners aren't yet very good with the new camera, so aren't showing it at its best.

It makes it very hard to decide whether to get one!

I totally understand that.

What I can say, is that I absolutely adore my K5 cameras.
I have been shooting with dual K5 cameras for several years, and I have worked around all/most of the shortcomings of the K5.

The K5 single handedly took my photography to the next level, and I am a staunch die-hard when it comes to tools that work.
The K5 is one of those tools.

I am one of the last people to justify a purchase or to convince myself that I made a good purchase or compare myself to anyone/thing Canikony.

What I am finding - begrudgingly - is that the K3 is eroding (rapidly) my choices as to keep shooting with the K5.

I wish there was a way to show images at their full resolution without taking up too much webspace on this forum.

I have scaled down and done what I can so that I can put images here without causing them to be too big to view realistically.

[derekkite]

I could pretty much say what LaurenOE says, except not as eloquently. I've gotten outstanding results with that body, and gotten to know it's limits.

I would pay attention to first impressions. I know that already I'm shooting things that I didn't bother to shoot with the K-5 because it wouldn't focus to capture. I'm finding new limits and in a while will be chafing at the limits of the K-3.

For example, this morning. It was wet and rainy and dark, and I was home by 8:30 am. A heron was flying towards a tree. I tracked it until it landed. 1/160 iso 125 f4 on DA*300. Movement blur was an issue, but this one was interesting. There were three shots that had possible interest. The K-5 would have given me a series of amorphous blobs in the sky. Two things the K-3 did made the difference. Low light and tracking focus, and much better much more consistent metering.

What I'm finding is that focus is not the issue it was with the K-5. Tracking is a skill, and learning intuitively the abilities and quirks of the K-3 system will take a bit of time before it is second nature. And it will be second nature in a way that focusing with the K-5 never was. This will allow me to do other things such as adjust exposure compensation depending on cloud or blue sky background.

[RobA_Oz]

Can't see the images

Neither can I, but clicking on the space where the image should be (the left-hand side - hover over the area until the pointer arrow changes to a hand) opens the original sequence in another window.

[LaurenOE]

Can't see the images

Neither can I, but clicking on the space where the image should be (the left-hand side - hover over the area until the pointer arrow changes to a hand) opens the original sequence in another window.

Sometimes if you are logged into Pentax Forums, make sure you are in under http: not https:

You can't see images if you are in https:

[dosdan]

1/160 iso 125 f4 on DA*300. Movement blur was an issue,

Why was the shutter speed so slow? Mainly doing static stuff and this caught you unaware? Handheld? I suspect you'd be using SR for the static stuff at this FL and shutter speed. How successfull was the SR for the static stuff?

For BIFs, 1/500s-1/1000s would be better. At this light level that would be ISO400-ISO800, which should still be acceptable.

Dan.

[alcstudios]

I totally understand that.

What I can say, is that I absolutely adore my K5 cameras.
I have been shooting with dual K5 cameras for several years, and I have worked around all/most of the shortcomings of the K5.

The K5 single handedly took my photography to the next level, and I am a staunch die-hard when it comes to tools that work.
The K5 is one of those tools.

I am one of the last people to justify a purchase or to convince myself that I made a good purchase or compare myself to anyone/thing Canikony.

What I am finding - begrudgingly - is that the K3 is eroding (rapidly) my choices as to keep shooting with the K5.

I wish there was a way to show images at their full resolution without taking up too much webspace on this forum.

I have scaled down and done what I can so that I can put images here without causing them to be too big to view realistically.

I agree Lauren, the K3 is that good rather people believe it or not, I never had any of the K5 series, until last week I was still using my workhorse K7 so you can only imagine the improvements I'm seeing... This camera makes me feel like a pro (and trust me I'm not) but in just a week my confidence level has shot way up.

P.S.. I have the 50-500 too, it's my favorite lens

[derekkite]

Why was the shutter speed so slow? Mainly doing static stuff and this caught you unaware? Handheld? I suspect you'd be using SR for the static stuff at this FL and shutter speed. How successfull was the SR for the static stuff?

For BIFs, 1/500s-1/1000s would be better. At this light level that would be ISO400-ISO800, which should still be acceptable.

Dan.

It was dark and I had the settings appropriate for a shot against the grass or brush. A few minutes previous I had a shot with the mountain in the background and the iso was at 2500. I'm not certain that a faster speed would have been better. I find that at these light levels a moderate increase in iso degrades quality substantially. A longer exposure gives more detail to work with post. With both the K-5 and K-3. I don't think that the colors and texture would have been apparent. The back lighting made it seem brighter than it really was. The exposure was pushed 2.8 EV post.

I started out with a beamer gizmo on a Metz AF-50, but it started raining. I don't want to find out how a wet flash unit fails. The WR flashes recently announced are very tempting.

[Ponosby Britt]

Not a great example of AF tracking prowess. 1/1500s, f/9.5, ISO 800, 58mm FL. It's a bright day, but you're using a high f-stop (& resulting ISO800) to get enough DOF to ensure that the dog was in focus. Hard to tell without seeing the unsharpened original, but FocusMagic's suggested adjustment radius at different spots in the image suggests to me that the fence might be sharper than the dog's fur.

Imagine shooting that scene with an f/2.8 zoom lens, at or near fully open aperture, to make the dog "pop out" in relation to the blurred background. How confident would you be then that the K-5 would have gotten the dog and not the fence?

Using manual exposure, it was Sunny 16 bright. Decision #1 was a fast shutter speed to stop motion. Decision #2 was aperture around f8 (with my 2.8 zoom lens), the sharpest part of most lenses. I shoot a lot of theater starting at ISO 3200, so ISO 800 is quite the noise free luxury. I don't know about "Focus Magic" so I can only accept your forensics.

[Ponosby Britt]

Not a great example of AF tracking prowess. 1/1500s, f/9.5, ISO 800, 58mm FL. It's a bright day, but you're using a high f-stop (& resulting ISO800) to get enough DOF to ensure that the dog was in focus. Hard to tell without seeing the unsharpened original, but FocusMagic's suggested adjustment radius at different spots in the image suggests to me that the fence might be sharper than the dog's fur.

Imagine shooting that scene with an f/2.8 zoom lens, at or near fully open aperture, to make the dog "pop out" in relation to the blurred background. How confident would you be then that the K-5 would have gotten the dog and not the fence?

Using manual exposure, it was Sunny 16 bright. Decision #1 was a fast shutter speed to stop motion. Decision #2 was aperture around f8 (with my 2.8 zoom lens), the sharpest part of most lenses. I shoot a lot of theater starting at ISO 3200, so ISO 800 is quite the noise free luxury.

I don't know about "Focus Magic" so I can only accept your forensics. Of course, you're correct, it isn't possible to use a K-5 to track and focus action at 2.8 in dim light.

[RobA_Oz]

Sometimes if you are logged into Pentax Forums, make sure you are in under http: not https:

You can't see images if you are in https:

Something obviously changes the electrons when they flow South, because I'm on http: and the image isn't visible.

[timcatn]

Changing to http worked for me. Thanks

[RonHendriks1966]

Looks good, but also not to hard on AF, since it is just following and keeping in focus.