[tim60]

You will probably find the extra quiet K-3 shutter very useful in such settings.

As with the K-5/K-5II, you can practically use the K-3 on burst whilst standing right next to someone in a quiet room without causing any disturbance. Even quieter if using manual focus.

Quiet shutter was another good point I noticed while using the K5 that day - and a sensitive point to me about he K100DS.

[tim60]

News for the other contributors to this thread.

I went through the complicated tradeoff:
1. My belief about the future of the AUD:USD/JPY exchange rates this year: negative, i.e. AUD falling - will increase AUD price.
2. Current price of K-3 has fallen a bit from where it began, in AUD. So I could be getting the sweet spot.
3. Got paid for some contract work. I knew this was coming.
4. It should be massively ahead of what I currently have, which I feel I have outgrown.
5. Can usefully pass on the current camera to my daughter to encourage her interest in photography.
6. I have been itching for something nicer for some time, to go with the 60s-70s Takumar primes I have collected. As was clear from my early posts in this thread, the ability to focus more easily is a big issue for me.
7. Have a couple of trips soon, one to a place I may never get to again, the other to a country I get to fairly often.

Put it all together so I rang an Australian seller listed as an official seller from the Ricoh page, offering same price but slightly better Ts&Cs than Ricoh and asked how many days to deliver if I order right now. So I put my order and it should arrive Tuesday. That gives a few days extra to get to me before the first of the two trips. Will give me something to do during the dull parts of my trip.

Does anyone know which company casts the magnesium housing of the K3? Is it the same company that make the housings for Apple products?

[geomez]

News for the other contributors to this thread. I went through the complicated tradeoff: 1. My belief about the future of the AUD:USD/JPY exchange rates this year: negative, i.e. AUD falling - will increase AUD price. 2. Current price of K-3 has fallen a bit from where it began, in AUD. So I could be getting the sweet spot. 3. Got paid for some contract work. I knew this was coming. 4. It should be massively ahead of what I currently have, which I feel I have outgrown. 5. Can usefully pass on the current camera to my daughter to encourage her interest in photography. 6. I have been itching for something nicer for some time, to go with the 60s-70s Takumar primes I have collected. As was clear from my early posts in this thread, the ability to focus more easily is a big issue for me. 7. Have a couple of trips soon, one to a place I may never get to again, the other to a country I get to fairly often. Put it all together so I rang an Australian seller listed as an official seller from the Ricoh page, offering same price but slightly better Ts&Cs than Ricoh and asked how many days to deliver if I order right now. So I put my order and it should arrive Tuesday. That gives a few days extra to get to me before the first of the two trips. Will give me something to do during the dull parts of my trip. Does anyone know which company casts the magnesium housing of the K3? Is it the same company that make the housings for Apple products?

Awesome. Congrats. I have no idea who casts the K-3.

[RonHendriks1966]

I also would suggest the Pentax K-01 and a loupe for working in the sun. I guess you are not in a hurry working with your photography.

Viewfinder Adapters | B&H Photo Video

[tim60]

I have been impressed with the K3. It is much easier to do MF and so now my keeper rate has improved considerably. It also make the old STak and SMC Tak lenses show up well (all I have used on it). My former boss looked at some of my pictures and said now he needs to buy a new camera to give him, an excuse for buying old lenses. He says that will be cheaper than his audiophile things.

Seriously, I am impressed at the step up I got. Now I need to learn how to use the esoteric features like HDR and sensor shifting. But for the normal stuff I have been doing the interface is very pleasant to use.

Next trip I need to give a workout to a different set of lenses.

The STak 300/4 works well with it - could read the title on the spine of a book at 100m. The SMCTak 135/2.5 (5 element) is a joy to use with it, nice feel good results. Does seem to get some blue fringing at the 1-2pixel width. The 50/1.4 has become usable for me. The previous camera viewfinder made that one nearly impossible for me to focus. STak 24/3.5 and 35/2 SMCTak have not done enough on it to have much report yet. The 100/4 macro is fun to use with it because focusing is so much easier. Still a bit of a challenge in the tropical sun at mid-day, but then I have always found photography remarkably physically demanding, especially macro work.

So next week I should take a different set with me.

[NotaxPen]

My experience is the K-3 is easier to manual focus than the K-5 with the stock screen. I have the ee-s screen in my K-5 and it's great. When I bought the K-3, I thought I would put the ee-s screen in the K-3, but so far have not had any problems manually focusing with the K-3 and it's stock screen. I don't use focus peaking, just focus the way I always did in the film era. I hate to admit it, but I'm also finding the auto focus on the K-3 is pretty good too.

[tim60]

NotaxPen, I agree with you.

The present trip did not go so well. Got delayed for a day as a result of the immigration computer failing at SFO, so about 3000 people between gates and the immigration counters. And in the land of private enterprise no-one was enterprising enough to be hawking food and drinks to the waiting multitude! But then, we were on the other side of the gate to the said land. So, I missed the rest day at destination which I intended to use to look about.

Did get a few pictures this morning which I have yet to put on the computer to see properly.

[tim60]

I had a recent trip to Henderson, NV, where I did a bunch of conference pics. I am currently processing and uploading those (after giving the in camera jpgs immediately tot he organisers).


The light conditions were a bit challenging - eg at the dinner I was using ISO12800. That left a bit of noise in the images, but not actually too displeasing. While processing it kept going through my mind: "photographing in the dark".


I got a bit of time off work (for a not nice reason) and so I get time to do the processing and uploading, one at a time.


In the plenary sessions I used the 85mm from the front row quite a lot to do broad enough framing to do a study of hand movements of speakers after something one of my friends tipped me off about on the first evening. The first speaker had been coached to speak with symmetrical hand movements and had overdone it to the extent that my friend said "I cannot trust him".


On this trip, a pity I did not get out and about more - wall to wall meetings fro 10 days or so and blisters on my feet.

[lister6520]

Regarding the fitting of the mirror lens, if it is of any help I have a Samyang 800mm and it fits the K-3 with plenty of room to spare:

[tim60]

Regarding the fitting of the mirror lens, if it is of any help I have a Samyang 800mm and it fits the K-3 with plenty of room to spare:

Thanks. The Rubinar 1000 fits like that too. And the viewfinder is bright enough to make focus reasonably reliable. And it is a macro lens - strange perspective THAT gives! (Focuses to about 1:2 magnification - 4m)

[Poit]

Quite interesting (and enjoyable) reading someones journey towards, and after, their K-3 purchase. Thanks for sharing Tim60.

So, after several months with the K-3, are you glad you bought it? Still enjoying it? Have you used focus peaking much yet?

I have a K-3, and love using it, but I haven't explored some of the features (such as focus peaking) much yet.

[tim60]

Quite interesting (and enjoyable) reading someones journey towards, and after, their K-3 purchase. Thanks for sharing Tim60.

So, after several months with the K-3, are you glad you bought it? Still enjoying it? Have you used focus peaking much yet?

I have a K-3, and love using it, but I haven't explored some of the features (such as focus peaking) much yet.

I am really enjoying it. It gets bursts of use because I am busy with other things. I am currently processing a lot of conference pictures I took under poor light conditions in hotel conference halls. Much better than the old K100DS would have been.


I find the colour setting (default) needs a bit of extra saturation in most pictures to get the colour like the old camera, which I liked.


I use it almost exclusively with MF M42 lenses, so the work process is like the old film days with the MX. I have not used the focus peaking - should try that, nor the video. I should try that just to know what it is like.


At the conference one English person comment about 'nice camera'. He seemed to be thinking about getting one and had a couple of friends with K3. I would recommend K3 to anyone with a significant interest in photography who I thought could afford one.


It is a good means for making photos and I think that it has made nice compromises with the sensor - at low speeds it has high resolution and good noise characteristics. At faster speeds it becomes a bit grainy, but that is a tradeoff the user can make in deciding what finish suits the picture and situation. I like to use it at ISO100 or 200 but the fastest I have used it seriously was 12800. A bit grainy, but the tradeoff of tolerable shutter speed and grain was worthwhile taking pictures in dim lighting at a dinner at the conference. I think it worked OK for that.


Having had two digital bodies (K100DS and K3) I have come tot he conclusion that the body and lens have a different relationship in terms of where you need to pitch yourself in the market in film and digital. In film the film one chose would dominate the picture, and the quality of the lens was critical to the image, but the body was just a box for allowing exposure to happen when the photographer wanted. Cheap bodies made good sense, although more up market one offered more and nicer features. I started with Ricoh XR500 and then moved to MX. MX was much nicer to use but did not actually make better images.


In digital the body comes with the sensor - the element which makes the image happen. So selecting the body is critically important to get a sensor which will do the job in a satisfying manner. The old K100DS sensor was very noisy at 3200 and too noisy to use more than a few times at 1600. That made it difficult to use in low light. The viewfinder also is a difference which makes the K3 a pleasure to use, especially in comparison. Greatly improves my technically OK rate.

[Undot]

Many thanks for this thread and for sharing your experiences. Quite an interesting read, especially since I grew into a purely digital world, only using point and shoots during the analog film era.

And it held some useful tidbits of information, as I didn't even know about the K3s focus peaking. It does look like a nifty feature, albeit I mostly use the viewfinder. Focusing screens were also a new concept to me, its use of fresnel to better judge in-focus seems like a grand idea. I was put off by the price from the linked site until I realised the exchange rate for NT$. Now I believe there's a new item on my wish list.

[tim60]

Many thanks for this thread and for sharing your experiences. Quite an interesting read, especially since I grew into a purely digital world, only using point and shoots during the analog film era.

And it held some useful tidbits of information, as I didn't even know about the K3s focus peaking. It does look like a nifty feature, albeit I mostly use the viewfinder. Focusing screens were also a new concept to me, its use of fresnel to better judge in-focus seems like a grand idea. I was put off by the price from the linked site until I realised the exchange rate for NT$. Now I believe there's a new item on my wish list.

Exchange rates are always a bit of an issue. The first place I went overseas was Taiwan so I got to know the NTD. In those days (1985/6) it was regulated at 1USD:40NTD, and I had to exchange some AUD other than at the airport. The first bank Overseas Chinese Bank of Commerce, despite the name, was not registered to do retail cash forex, so they directed me to Bank of Taiwan. I misread a street sign at a round-about and got lost. Eventually found the right place, too late in the day. Next day got there early and could not do forex until 9:30am when the teller had to ring up to find the rate for the day. In those days you could only exchange local money out if you gave a receipt for changing foreign money in. The rate has got less favourable to me since but it is reasonably stable over all that time.


Actually I find it easier to cope with prices in a currency where the numbers are grossly different than a currency like GBP or EUR where the numbers are just a bit different. The problem with similar numbers is that accidents of comparison are more likely - is it more or less.


I find it interesting how this thread has stayed alive for so long with only a very modest number of contributions.

[tim60]

Today I made an interesting discovery with the k3. First time I used the video. On e of my students is collecting video for a project (technical stuff).


He has access to his friend's Nikon 5300. The video on that is effective for what he wanted but we were interested in testing whether the different technology, no AA filter, on K3 might make a difference, so we did a bit of HD video in the office. The Nikon only offers 60 frames per sec. The K3 offers BOTH 60 and 50. That makes a big difference under fluoro lights here since our power supply is 50Hz. One of his tests will be whether the 50/60Hz 50/60fps issue is a show stopper for the Nikon.


I impressed him with the SMC Tak 50/4 macro - he liked the image quality at a quick glance.