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08-23-2021, 10:47 AM   #16
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QuoteOriginally posted by pres589 Quote
Right, I was thinking more about an 85 with autofocus. Not a lot of options available here in k-mount land...
There is the pentax 85mm which I'm sure is worth every penny, but ooof, too much for me.

08-23-2021, 11:01 AM   #17
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I'd probably go looking for the Sigma 85 HSM. It's not cheap but it's much less cost, usually, when one comes up for sale.
08-26-2021, 06:00 AM - 4 Likes   #18
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I had the opportunity to test out the K3 iii's low light performance for action photography last week at my daughter's night-time soccer game.

It's a fast moving game so 1/400s was as low as I was willing to go with shutter speed, and the lens was wide open at f4. When I realised just how dark it was, even under the lights, and the kind of insane ISO values these settings would require, I almost put the camera away, but I figured I might as well give it a go.

Photos from the night ranged from ISO 20,000 to ISO 64,000 (!) and I have to say I was extremely impressed with the results. I wasn't expecting to get anything, but ended up with a bunch of remarkably usable action shots.

As an example, the pic below of my daughter was shot at ISO 40,000. Subject-wise it was just a test shot, not a 'keeper' (unfortunately all the good ones include other people's kids, and I don't post those online) but it shows that the K3 iii is able to produce what I consider to be a very usable image of someone sprinting away from the camera in near darkness, which I find remarkable. Even more impressive considering this is quite a heavy crop of the original frame, as shown in the Lightroom screen shot below (and it's been straightened - ooops :-) ). I was shooting in raw with in-camera NR turned off, and just used Lightroom's standard noise reduction controls - I'm guessing you could probably get slightly better results with third-party noise reduction software.

I was also very impressed with the AF, which did a surprisingly good job locking focus and tracking fast-moving players even in the low light. It misfired a few times and racked through the whole focus range to find focus, which never happens in daylight, but this didn't happen often, and when I went through the photos afterwards there were very few that weren't in focus (albeit the general loss of resolution at extreme ISO values gives a bit more leeway!).
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08-26-2021, 06:02 AM - 1 Like   #19
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QuoteOriginally posted by speagles2 Quote
I had the opportunity to test out the K3 iii's low light performance for action photography last week at my daughter's night-time soccer game.

It's a fast moving game so 1/400s was as low as I was willing to go with shutter speed, and the lens was wide open at f4. When I realised just how dark it was, even under the lights, and the kind of insane ISO values these settings would require, I almost put the camera away, but I figured I might as well give it a go.

Photos from the night ranged from ISO 20,000 to ISO 64,000 (!) and I have to say I was extremely impressed with the results. I wasn't expecting to get anything, but ended up with a bunch of remarkably usable action shots.

As an example, the pic below of my daughter was shot at ISO 40,000. Subject-wise it was just a test shot, not a 'keeper' (unfortunately all the good ones include other people's kids, and I don't post those online) but it shows that the K3 iii is able to produce what I consider to be a very usable image of someone sprinting away from the camera in near darkness, which I find remarkable. Even more impressive considering this is quite a heavy crop of the original frame, as shown in the Lightroom screen shot below (and it's been straightened - ooops :-) ). I was shooting in raw with in-camera NR turned off, and just used Lightroom's standard noise reduction controls - I'm guessing you could probably get slightly better results with third-party noise reduction software.

I was also very impressed with the AF, which did a surprisingly good job locking focus and tracking fast-moving players even in the low light. It misfired a few times and racked through the whole focus range to find focus, which never happens in daylight, but this didn't happen often, and when I went through the photos afterwards there were very few that weren't in focus (albeit the general loss of resolution at extreme ISO values gives a bit more leeway!).
Very cool! I decided life is short, and ordered a K3 iii last night. Looking forward to being able to post up some images.

08-26-2021, 06:07 AM - 1 Like   #20
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QuoteOriginally posted by bobbotron Quote
Very cool! I decided life is short, and ordered a K3 iii last night. Looking forward to being able to post up some images.
Hehe - yes, mine was a birthday-present-to-self. I also decided life was short so I bought the FA 77Ltd at the same time :-)

(hey, it was an end-of-financial year sale and, y'know, the more you spend, the more you save :-) )
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