Originally posted by Parry Christine,
Was the A7r worth it over a K-3?
It's decision time for me and any advice on this is welcome.
Unfortunately, I can't really answer your question, since I don't own a K-3 and have no intentions of buying one. I did own a K-5, but have since sold it. I still own a K-01.
If you have only Pentax lenses and don't intend to switch systems, I would recommend buying a Pentax camera. Perhaps there will be a Pentax FF camera on the horizon, but otherwise the K-3 is probably the best Pentax you can buy today.
You do lose a lot using adapted lenses on a camera. For example manufacturer supplied raw processing parameters, EXIF data, auto focus (for most types of lenses). You also lose quality through the adapter shim. Hopefully by using native lenses, the manufacturer has optimised the sensor for the registration distance of the native mount - this cannot be guaranteed for adapted lenses, and indeed some of the vignetting, colour cast and smearing issues we see in the photos on this thread should be less on a native M mount camera such as the Leica M.
I had a Leica M9 for a brief period, and I decided not to keep it because of various issues. The Leica M Type 240 doesn't really address many of my issues, and yes I have tried it briefly. I keep hoping Leica (or somebody else - maybe even Ricoh) will actually produce an M body I will buy one day. But in the meantime, the Sony is a fun camera and I like trying different lenses on it even with the disadvantages I noted earlier.
I will probably end up using it with native E-mount lenses (I have the SEL35F28Z on order, and plan to buy the SEL55F18Z). If you are willing to switch to a brand new system (Sony full frame E mount) then I think the camera is worth your consideration. I am very impressed by the quality of the images - they actually look sharp even at the pixel level - similar in quality to the D800E (I am not willing to say better at this stage).