You may recall that I was recently considering moving from the K-3 to a K-1 ii. I feel I owe you an update, if you’re up forit.
I am a long time Pentax user, but in recent years I have added Panasonic mirrorless 4/3 to my kit. What has evolved is that I use the Pana gear for general purpose, especially while traveling, but my Pentax system is my go-to for wildlife. Over the years I have made quite the investment in long lenses. Currently in use are the DA*300, FDA150-450, and DA 560. I understand the irony here, considering the widely-held belief (which I don’t doubt) that Canikon is better for action. However, I absolutely love the IQ of the pictures I get with these lenses, and the ruggedness of thePentax gear is a major plus for me.
Last year I had the good fortune of visiting the Galapagos. Wandering the islands with my Pana 4/3 (GX8)and a 14-140 lens (better than you might think) in a belt pack and the K-3 and DFA 150-450 attached to a shoulder strap worked very well. Each camera contributed almost equally to the above-water pics in my final album (212 and 281). My weakness on the trip was birds in flight. Over the years I have collected many excellent BOF pics, but there have also been too many disappointments. I needed to up my game, especially since next year I will have the opportunity to visit Africa and I hear there’s wildlife, including birds,where we’re going. Time to reevaluate my own techniques and also my equipment. In the distant past I had poor results with AF.C – trouble acquiring focus, which was then too easily lost. I usually went back to AF.S with Spot focus, and seemed to have better luck just refocusing between shots. But like I said, time to reevaluate. Short of giving up on Pentax (gads, that would be painful) the obvious hardware to consider was the K-1 ii, especially since the lens I want to use most is the already FF DFA 150-450. I knew I would be happy with IQ, I wasn’t too concerned about the extra half pound, I was looking forward to better DR and especially less noise with higher ISO. I wasn’t thrilled about lower resolution for small or distant subjects but I was curious about the APS-C Crop mode. So… I pulled the trigger, prepared to unpull it if necessary.
After researching what others do for BOF, customizing things to my taste, and running some tests at home, I went to the beach to see what I could do on hapless birds. The late afternoon light was good, which helped a lot. I created a “BOF” user mode with the following settings: TAv, shake reduction off, AF.C focus with Expanded Area25 (“SEL M”, clear as mud), 1st Frame Action in AF.C and subsequent Action in AF.C both set to Focus Priority. Initially I left Hold AF Status off because I had read that it slowed down tracking, but after noticing how easily focus was lost to the slightest foreground distraction I turned it on, set to Medium.The most important thing I noticed was that it did not slow down tracking that I could tell. I’ll tinker with this more. I kept shutter speed to1/1200 but had better results at 1/1600 or higher. My lens did fine at F5.6 but F6.3 to 8.0 were more forgiving. Nothing new there. What was a pleasant surprise was how much I could push ISO without worrying about it. On my K-3 I started getting annoyed at the noise in ISO above 400 (fussy, I know). But now it seems to me like ISO 1600 is the new 400.
More observations: despite low expectations I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I could lock focus on my subject. I was surprised to discover that with a featureless background (like the sky) it would easily lock focus if I could get ANY of the 25 points on the subject (this is not Auto Select after all), although with a cluttered background I did have to get the center point right where I wanted it. Once focus was locked I was very impressed with how well it tracked the subject, even with a cluttered background. Sure, the pelicans were easy, but before long I was getting pretty good results with fast terns, cormorants, and pigeons. I grew to really like the APS-C Crop mode. If the subject was small enough that I knew I would be heavily cropping anyway I just quickly switched to Crop mode and enjoyed the 6fps instead of just 4. Sad that the resolution goes down to 4800 x3200 (15mp) compared to the 6016 x 4000 (24mp) of my K-3, but oh well. Still good enough for screen viewing and even for decent printing (which I don’t do much anymore). The dynamic range improvement helped (the “drama” pelican shot below required shoving the Shadows slider in LR way up). And as I said, I absolutely love the reduced noise at higher ISO. So… Well done, Pentax! I am a happy camper, and off to Africa will go the K-1, with the K-3 as a backup.
Thank you for listening, and for your help.
Last edited by Jacobus2; 07-26-2019 at 10:15 AM.
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