[gmans]

Been using this lens a lot since I bought it and this is the fastest focusing lens I've had so far. It's very fast even in lowlight and more important it doesnt "hunt" as much as the 50-135mm for exemple.
I think this is a great lens for event, the only drawback is the 70mm starting point so you need to have a second camera, for concert I've been using zither the 50-135mm or the 35mm f/ 2,4 which does the job pretty well.



+1 on that. I still use both but the K-3 outperform the K5 in every aspect I think of.
The smaller AF point is a nice bonus too (I use selective AF point).

Yes, it is a great lens. I only have two modern Sigma and both are very fast. would be nice to get something fast in the plus 400 range.

[gzub]

I am very satisfied with the result of k-3 while shooting events. Here are some of the images i took recently.

[DimC]

Cross-post fromK3 sample page, below you will see some K3 magic


Theses with 50-135mm, the Sigma 70-200mm was on repair. All shots from the pit, the Sigma @70mm would have been too long anyway.





















Sigma 70-200mm was especially good for dance Shooting :















Under Very difficult Lighting :

[john5100]

Lots of great examples here; some in very difficult light.

[Shyam]

Cross-post fromK3 sample page, below you will see some K3 magic


Theses with 50-135mm, the Sigma 70-200mm was on repair. All shots from the pit, the Sigma @70mm would have been too long anyway.





















Sigma 70-200mm was especially good for dance Shooting :















Under Very difficult Lighting :

Wow! Really good set of images.. There is no doubt K3 can deliver in terms of IQ.

So far, I haven't seen much of wedding works on the net/forums with K3 but I have confidence it will perform in that area too
Would love to see some wedding works if you guys have it for sharing

Used K5 last evening for a shoot on multistory car park roof-top and I really had to struggle with focusing. Many photos turned out unusable because they all back focused. Perhaps it has more to do with my lens than the body itself because first few photos with my DA*55 had accurate focusing even though it was slow. The smaller focus points and -3EV sensitivity would have been awesome if I had K3
500px / Ghanashyam Ghimire

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences and thoughts with K3

[IchabodCrane]

Wow! Really good set of images.. There is no doubt K3 can deliver in terms of IQ.

So far, I haven't seen much of wedding works on the net/forums with K3 but I have confidence it will perform in that area too
Would love to see some wedding works if you guys have it for sharing

Used K5 last evening for a shoot on multistory car park roof-top and I really had to struggle with focusing. Many photos turned out unusable because they all back focused. Perhaps it has more to do with my lens than the body itself because first few photos with my DA*55 had accurate focusing even though it was slow. The smaller focus points and -3EV sensitivity would have been awesome if I had K3
500px / Ghanashyam Ghimire

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences and thoughts with K3

Forum member "Alison" is a professional wedding photographer who, last we heard, uses a K-3. Maybe you can send her a PM to get her thoughts.

[bkpix]

Concert shooting is not, in my very limited experience, as challenging as shooting candid people photos at an event like a wedding. I may be wrong about this, as I'm not that interested in concert shooting and haven't done that much of it. But a musician on a stage is generally far enough from the camera that the focus zone is ample, even at wider apertures. It's fairly easy to use center-point focus and recompose. If you miss one shot you get a second chance. And so I've been able to shoot some satisfactory concert photos with the K-5IIs and the 70/2.4 without much strain.

Shooting people close-ups in small groups under dim light, on the other hand, means difficult focus challenges -- people are moving around unpredictably, and the depth of field is pretty narrow at close range. And there are a lot of photo possibilities that simply aren't repeated, so you get one quick window of opportunity for a lot of shots. Using the K-5IIs has been an exercise in frustration for me several times; by the time it manages to find something to focus on, the picture is long gone..

Fortunately I don't do events professionally. Those who do may have a different experience.

[DSims]

Sigma 28mm. F2,8 ISO 3200

The images were processed in DxO 9. I am far more satisfied with the images shot using Sigma. Despite the fact that it focused slower than 16-50, the shots that were succesful, seemed to me better. On the other hand the second concert had brighter stage lights and there were no smoke machines.

They came out nice. I wouldn't have thought of using so wide a lens, but I guess you were close enough.

I agree that the Sigma photos came out better. The DA*16-50 should normally be stopped down to about f/3.5. That wouldn't necessarily make it equal the Sigma here, but it could help.

[Stagnant]

They came out nice. I wouldn't have thought of using so wide a lens, but I guess you were close enough.

I agree that the Sigma photos came out better. The DA*16-50 should normally be stopped down to about f/3.5. That wouldn't necessarily make it equal the Sigma here, but it could help.

I was in the front row, so the distance was not more than a couple of metres in most cases.

I tried shooting another event two days ago. Considering that I was doing it for fun, I decided to experiment with a new copy of 16-50, which I received from Pentax Europe as a replacement for my old lens. It is quite sharp at 2.8 as opposed to my previous lens, so I used it wide open for all of the shots. This time the stage lights were even more difficult to handle, so I experienced several issues :
* the autofocus was hunting frequently (both C.D. AF and P.D. AF - to a lesser extent).
* at it's widest the lens was still too slow to keep the ISO low. From 6400 onwards the photos are too noisy to be useful, even with proper processing. I tried using the camera in TAv mode F2.8 1/100 Auto ISO. The ISO ended up being 12800, which made most of the photos too bad, even resized. Majority of my successful shots were around 1/25 and 1/50 at ISO 1600 to 6400. Handshake stabilizer worked fine, but at such a slow shutter speed motion blur comes into action. Actually in some cases it created a rather interesting effect.

I suspect that it is hard to improve the High ISO performance of the APS-C camera sensor, to the extent of having the range of 6400 onwards completely useful, so the only option I see is investing into the design of "fast" and sharp lenses. At this point products in Pentax lens line fail to match these criteria. There are certain lenses like FA 50 1.4 and some of FA Limiteds, but no zooms.

Some of the successful shots.


- interesting motion blur


The shots were downsized to 1504 (4 times).

[DSims]

* at it's widest the lens was still too slow to keep the ISO low. From 6400 onwards the photos are too noisy to be useful, even with proper processing. I tried using the camera in TAv mode F2.8 1/100 Auto ISO. The ISO ended up being 12800, which made most of the photos too bad, even resized. Majority of my successful shots were around 1/25 and 1/50 at ISO 1600 to 6400. Handshake stabilizer worked fine, but at such a slow shutter speed motion blur comes into action. Actually in some cases it created a rather interesting effect.

I suspect that it is hard to improve the High ISO performance of the APS-C camera sensor, to the extent of having the range of 6400 onwards completely useful, so the only option I see is investing into the design of "fast" and sharp lenses. At this point products in Pentax lens line fail to match these criteria. There are certain lenses like FA 50 1.4 and some of FA Limiteds, but no zooms.

I find that ISO 10000 can work inside (I don't go higher unless I'm desperate). I don't mind a little bit of noise - I find 10000 can be managed.

Shortly after the K-5 was released, I read reviews and noticed myself that ISO 5000 had noticeably less noise than ISO 6400. This was also true with 2500 and 10000. So unless I'm in TAv mode, I use only ISO 80, 160, 320, 640, 1250, 2500, 5000, 10000. I can't say for sure if this is still pertinent on my K-5 IIs, but I still do it this way on that camera. I also have slightly modified the in-camera NR (lessening it a small amount) at various ISOs, since I shoot JPEG-only at times.


But I can hardly think of any DSLR zoom lenses that are faster than f/2.8, can you? That's what makes the Sigma 18-35/1.8 so unique.

The FA*85 and FA77 are good for indoor stage events. The DA*55 has fantastic IQ too, if the FL is right for you (and the slightly slow AF is OK). The FA77 is great wide open, and the FA*85 and DA*55 are both great at f/1.6 to f/1.8, and usable wide-open. The DA35/2.4 is good wide-open, so it could be an economical option. And of course the FA31 and FA*24 are options if the FL works, though I had trouble with focus accuracy on my FA*24 indoors last weekend (don't know why yet).


Noise can also be reduced more effectively on the K-5 IIs (and presumably the K-3), since the sensors don't "pre-blur" the images. The K-5 IIs is probably slightly better in this regard.

[Stagnant]

It seems that there are no zooms faster than 2,8, except for Sigma 18-35. Based on my observations, it would be most suitable lens for my preferences. Some of the lenses you suggested (55, 77, 85) might work better for shooting in larger venues as opposed to clubs. I already have 35 limited, so I would rather get Sigma Art 35 1.4, or better yet wait for the 1.8 zoom.
Noise bellow ISO 6400 is not a problem in my case, because I downsize most of the concert / low light shots.

[DSims]

It seems that there are no zooms faster than 2,8, except for Sigma 18-35. Based on my observations, it would be most suitable lens for my preferences. Some of the lenses you suggested (55, 77, 85) might work better for shooting in larger venues as opposed to clubs. I already have 35 limited, so I would rather get Sigma Art 35 1.4, or better yet wait for the 1.8 zoom.
Noise bellow ISO 6400 is not a problem in my case, because I downsize most of the concert / low light shots.

Your photos are definitely interesting.


But the old saying is "If your photos aren't interesting, you're not close enough."

So don't discount the possibility that you could be getting other interesting photos with longer focal lengths from the same or similar shooting positions.

[Stagnant]

Your photos are definitely interesting.


But the old saying is "If your photos aren't interesting, you're not close enough."

So don't discount the possibility that you could be getting other interesting photos with longer focal lengths from the same or similar shooting positions.

Thanks for the suggestion ! It takes some courage (I wonder if the word is appropriate in this case), to step out of the comfort zone. Being predominantly a landscape shooter, I typically think "the landscape way", perhaps that's one of the reasons why I avoided certain focal lengths for this kind of events.

[Sandy Hancock]

My body progression for live music work has been K-5 + K10D, then K-5 + K-5, then K-5 + K-5 IIs and now K-3 + K-5 IIs. Each new body has been an improvement in AF; you will notice a big step up from K-5 to K-3. The ability to crop harder on the K-3 files is also handy sometimes. When I use flash (mainly at parties rather than concerts) it is usually on the K-5 IIs in manual and the Metz AF58 in auto mode rather than P-TTL. I must experiment more with P-TTL on the K-3, as I have heard it is more reliable now.

As for lenses, I find the DA*16-50 and DA*50-135 to be a wonderful pairing. Although the latter is slower focussing than my Sigma 70-200/2.8 HSM, it locks on more decisively, is sharper wide open and produces better colours. Despite my reliance on these two as my mainstays, I never leave home without some fast primes (usually FA31, DA*55 and FA77) in the bag in case the light is really challenging.