I received my K-3 today. I decided to wait to open the package, as I was watching my 10 month baby girl today, not to mention it was time to go pick up my other daughter from school. I would have lost track of time, space and reality as a whole by opening the Pandorama box. I'm not going to ignore my K-4 student in favor of a stupid K-3 body.
Anyways after 5 minutes I change my mind and go grab the box. She can walk home. It's pretty mild out today in Milwaukee, that 19 degree feels like spring actually.
So I open the box, it's poorly packaged as usual but everything inside looks intact.
First impression is how cold the body is. No worries here as it spent the whole day in the back of a UPS truck traveling around South Eastern Wisconsin. I've never had any trouble with Pentax gear in freezing cold temperatures by the way, thanks to the in-body shake reduction system I guess... (Sorry about that, I'm tired)
I'm now ready to mount my favorite lenses. The test is simple, I'm going to try them all wide open in the low light of my office, maybe expecting a little better than the relatively soft results I was getting with my K-5s under the same conditions.
And then...Revelation! Whaaaaat? Every single shot no hunt, right on focus. Tack sharp wide open. Legacy glass, newer one, It doesn't matter. I have some good glass but still. My FA50 required a +6 fine adjustment with both my K-5s, with the Sigma DC 17-50 my ratio of keeper at f2.8 was just too low, same thing with the DA50-135, even at short distance.
I ran the same test again with my K-5 and, sure enough, 100% crops don't look nearly as optimal wide open except for the FA 50 BUT with a +6 adjustment.
I looked at my K-5 ... You b@st#rd! It was you!
I really thought I couldn't expect such sharpness and accuracy from my lenses wide open. This is going to give me so much more flexibility and DOF control! Of course I have to run some more extensive field testing but the first images under challenging conditions look very very good.
I will try my best to find the time to post a side by side K-3/K-5 comparison with 3 or 4 different lenses, wide open, low light with no fine adjustments ASAP.
If my kids let me...
COMPARISON EDIT 2/13/14: Alright here's what I was talking about. side by side K-5/K-3 under very specific conditions and settings: indoor with low natural light (coming side ways in this case), AV priority wide open with 3 different fine lenses. ISO locked at 400. I took 3 shots for each setting and even though the K-3 showed very consistent results, the K-5 AF performed with variation of accuracy so I only picked the sharpest picture of the 3 from the K-5. DNG files, converted to 1280x800 Jpeg but with no other post processing involved.
Last edited by nicoprod; 02-13-2014 at 07:16 PM.
Reason: Add comparisons