[klkitchens]

I know, but I'm waiting very patiently. My next planned sportscovering is after X-mass with volleyball, so I'm not in a hurry at the moment.

X-Mass???

C'mon, keep the "mas" in "X-mas"

[Miguel]

My son's premier team participated in an indoor soccer tournament on Thursday night. Indoor soccer is sort of a cross among futbol, foosball, and basketball. It is incredibly quick, and the smaller turf court ensures lots of chaotic action. It's an intense, fun game.

Contributing to the photographic challenge is the reality that the venue is essentially a warehouse with two holes cut out of the walls. The lighting tends to be worse than most gyms.

I had given up shooting indoor with my Canon 7D a long time ago. I wasn't happy with ISO 6400 or above quality, and I didn't own the 85mm f1.8 lens that would give me a fighting chance.

The K-3's improved sensor was worth trying. I started with the FA 50mm f1.4 lens, but soon replaced it with the DA Ltd. 70mm at f2.8 as the reach mattered. ISO 6400 was necessary to keep shutter speeds between 1/1000 and 1/1500 which can freeze some action. Considering the lighting, pushing things to ISO 12,800 would kill any hints of quality. As it was, I had to push exposure about 3/4 of a stop across the board using Lightroom 5.3.

I usually employ a zoom lens for sports, so using a single focal length was both limiting and liberating. It was also a little odd relying upon the DA 70mm, simply because I have only used it for portraits and landscape.

K-3 AF settings were AF.C, A-9, 1st Frame=release-priority, Action=FPS-priority, Hold AF=Medium, and back-button AF is always activated.

Overall, I was happy enough to get output that I had previously written off.

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M

[sholtzma]

My son's premier team participated in an indoor soccer tournament on Thursday night. Indoor soccer is sort of a cross among futbol, foosball, and basketball. It is incredibly quick, and the smaller turf court ensures lots of chaotic action. It's an intense, fun game.

Contributing to the photographic challenge is the reality that the venue is essentially a warehouse with two holes cut out of the walls. The lighting tends to be worse than most gyms.

I had given up shooting indoor with my Canon 7D a long time ago. I wasn't happy with ISO 6400 or above quality, and I didn't own the 85mm f1.8 lens that would give me a fighting chance.

The K-3's improved sensor was worth trying. I started with the FA 50mm f1.4 lens, but soon replaced it with the DA Ltd. 70mm at f2.8 as the reach mattered. ISO 6400 was necessary to keep shutter speeds between 1/1000 and 1/1500 which can freeze some action. Considering the lighting, pushing things to ISO 12,800 would kill any hints of quality. As it was, I had to push exposure about 3/4 of a stop across the board using Lightroom 5.3.

I usually employ a zoom lens for sports, so using a single focal length was both limiting and liberating. It was also a little odd relying upon the DA 70mm, simply because I have only used it for portraits and landscape.

K-3 AF settings were AF.C, A-9, 1st Frame=release-priority, Action=FPS-priority, Hold AF=Medium, and back-button AF is always activated.

Overall, I was happy enough to get output that I had previously written off.

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M

What amount of noise reduction did you use?

[Miguel]

What amount of noise reduction did you use?

Luminance=50; Color=60; only LR.

M

[bass3587]

My son's premier team participated in an indoor soccer tournament on Thursday night. Indoor soccer is sort of a cross among futbol, foosball, and basketball. It is incredibly quick, and the smaller turf court ensures lots of chaotic action. It's an intense, fun game.

Contributing to the photographic challenge is the reality that the venue is essentially a warehouse with two holes cut out of the walls. The lighting tends to be worse than most gyms.

I had given up shooting indoor with my Canon 7D a long time ago. I wasn't happy with ISO 6400 or above quality, and I didn't own the 85mm f1.8 lens that would give me a fighting chance.

The K-3's improved sensor was worth trying. I started with the FA 50mm f1.4 lens, but soon replaced it with the DA Ltd. 70mm at f2.8 as the reach mattered. ISO 6400 was necessary to keep shutter speeds between 1/1000 and 1/1500 which can freeze some action. Considering the lighting, pushing things to ISO 12,800 would kill any hints of quality. As it was, I had to push exposure about 3/4 of a stop across the board using Lightroom 5.3.

I usually employ a zoom lens for sports, so using a single focal length was both limiting and liberating. It was also a little odd relying upon the DA 70mm, simply because I have only used it for portraits and landscape.

K-3 AF settings were AF.C, A-9, 1st Frame=release-priority, Action=FPS-priority, Hold AF=Medium, and back-button AF is always activated.

Overall, I was happy enough to get output that I had previously written off.




M

Miguel once again you show the performance you can get out of a camera! Great shots! Thanks for AF settings I'll try that and maybe save it as one of my user modes.

[RockvilleBob]

K-3 AF settings were AF.C, A-9, 1st Frame=release-priority, Action=FPS-priority, Hold AF=Medium, and back-button AF is always activated.


M

Hi Miguel - nice work. Could you point me to a reference of explain what "back-focus AF activated" is and why you used it to shoot your son's indoor soccer game? Thanks - always something new to learn.

[Miguel]

Thanks for AF settings

You are welcome bass3587. I encourage you to experiment and take notes. There are a lot of AF permutations with the K-3. The settings I use for soccer may well be different from what I use for say, birds in flight.

Could you point me to a reference of explain what "back-focus AF activated"

Thanks Bob. Pages 71-72 of the user guide detail how to transfer AF activation from the shutter half press to the AF button. There is also an educational thread on this forum, but I cannot point to it. The reason I have done it for years is to hasten image capture. By not using the AF button this way, the shutter press always triggers AF per each shot and that entails some kind of delay in the system. With action shooting, this matters. Sometimes the AF is just fine and I need to capture the shot ASAP.

Another reason is to enable a recompose situation without the shutter-triggered AF re-calibrating. This technique is a recognized best practice across all platforms. The "back-button" phrase is commonly used in the Canon universe.

M

[sholtzma]

Do you know how your ISO and noise reduction choices would have compared to a K-5iis?

[Miguel]

Do you know how your ISO and noise reduction choices would have compared to a K-5iis?

No and yes. I've never had a K-5 of any iteration, but am familiar with its capabilities and have processed shots from the camera. The K-3 is a little noisier than the K-5 IIs. I assume that I may have gotten an extra stop of performance if I used one in this context. That said, in reality I would not have used a K-5 II/s because the camera's predictive AF and frame-rate performance are notably less than the K-3. Certainly not up to anything that would have convinced me to not use my noisier 7D during the prior four years. Also, in my world, sports shots get more slack in processing perfection--this ain't fine art.

For sports, camera + lens performance matters a lot more than for other types of shooting. If I had to shoot a sports event on a sunny day tomorrow, there is a very good chance I would leave my Pentax stuff home and use the 7D and the Canon lens. The K-3 is superfine for art shots in my so far limited experience with it. For sports and birds, I'm anxiously awaiting Pentax to release a decent super-telephoto zoom because I assume that the camera's performance is best brought out by the maker's lenses as a whole system. It certainly works that way in my experience so far. To me I'm hoping Pentax releases this lens prior to Canon releasing a new version of the now aging 7D.

M

[RockvilleBob]

.... and the 1.4TC!

[johnmflores]

K-3 + DA* 50-135 F2.8

[dosdan]

John, your 2nd shot is exceptional. Well done.

Dan.

[rscoote]

These are images taken with my K-3 and Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 under the meagre floodlighting available at Knaresborough Town FC - the sun had set about an hour before I took these. Both images are at 6400 ISO and no more than 50% cropping. The noise was pretty ugly when viewed on my 27 inch screen, however the noise does clean up very well using Topaz DeNoise.

What I was incredibly impressed with was the K-3's ability to lock focus under such low lighting (1/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400). In fact the focus lock behaved exactly the same as it did in the early part of the match when there was some daylight. I used a single point so no AF matrix tracking.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/80456998@N05/11635275043/" title="IMGP0654 by rc_hammer, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5478/11635275043_6a695d939e_b.jpg" width="682" height="1024" alt="IMGP0654"></a>

[gerafotografija]

This is a great thread for people considering switching to the pentax from other systems. Thanks for posting both pictures and backstories!

[mille19]

Taken with the K3 and DA 16-45mm