Originally posted by magkelly You badly want to go full frame so do it. You won't be happy till you do because in your mind the K-3 isn't enough camera for you.
+1 on that. If a FF is what you want and feel that it'll be better, you will always hate your K3, no matter how good it is.
I know of a few photographers that actually prefer using their lighter and smaller APSC camera with a small DX zoom for weddings or long photoshoots. But it doesn't scream I'M A PHOTOGRAPHER as much as a D3 with a 70-200 on it. But after a full day of shooting, they sure appreciate the lighter weight.
As I said earlier, high ISO will be handled better by a current generation APSC than it will be by a 5-6 year old FF. And reducing your frame from 24 to 16 or 12 mpix (in post) will also help.
Also, I don't know about the K30 but my Kr loves to increase ISO as much as it can when it's set to auto ISO, on my K5 I can adjust how the ISO will be handled automatically but that option is missing from the Kr. This is to prevent camera shake as much as possible. But the auto mode always assume that the photographer has Parkinson. Try setting your auto ISO to 100-6400 and see if this helps. If you're using manual ISO, try to limit yourself to 6400 or 12 800. Learn to hold steady, practice your breathing and trust the SR a bit. As steadier hand will let you use much slower shutter speed, allowing you to use lower ISO.
I know it's not apples-to-apples but back in the film days, very few people that I know of would use anything more than 800 ISO film...
There is also the photographer to take into account. Or his way of shooting. I usually shoot P mode, auto ISO 80 to 1600. If my shutter speed drop to 1/30 or below and my aperture is already as wide as I want it to be, I will manually increase the ISO to 3200 or 6400. But depending on what I am shooting, I might also drop my shutter as slow as 1/8 to keep the ISO down. For a club setting, 1/30 may be pushing it a bit and very shallow DOF isn't always great so increasing ISO makes sense. But unless it's a dark cave, I can't see how the ISO would need to be higher than 6400 or 12800. Even at these level some NR will bring the pictures to a decent level, certainly good enough for 8x10 prints.
Remember that besides pixel peepers, most human beings will look at photographs on a shitty computer monitor set at 1920x1080... or on prints in a photo album in 4x6 format with a few 8x10. And most people will notice composition much more than they will notice resolution.