Forum: Pentax K-3 III
02-10-2022, 05:08 AM
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Yep - my go-to lens for kids' soccer on the K-3 and works even better (at least my copy) on the K3iii
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Forum: Sold Items
11-12-2021, 02:09 AM
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Forum: Sold Items
11-06-2021, 03:04 AM
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Thanks UncleVanya - yep, I love the K-3 too, just don't have enough time for photography to justify keeping it as a second body now I have the K-3 iii. I do miss the built-in flash though!
Still available if anyone's interested...
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Forum: Sold Items
11-03-2021, 04:48 AM
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Bump! Price reduced! Any takers before I turn to ebay...?
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
10-30-2021, 03:57 AM
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I don't disagree - if I return a camera with water ingress claiming that all I did was took it out in the rain, then I might well have actually dropped it in the ocean, and it's always going to be hard to prove one way or another. And I know we've gone a bit off-topic here as the OP was using their camera in a canoe and no-one posting here other than them actually knows what the circumstances were or whether the camera actually got much wetter than the kind of rain exposure shown in the Pentax ads. But I guess I'm a bit disappointed as this whole thread has left me a little nervous about taking the K3-iii out in the rain, which I've never felt before with my other Pentax gear.
But then maybe this is just one case, and we shouldn't get too hung up on it - I'd still like to think, perhaps naively, that if I really did nothing wrong and my camera failed just in a rain shower then Pentax would stand by it.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
10-30-2021, 03:43 AM
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I can only speak from an Australian perspective, but here, at least, that's not true. The advertising matters. Australian consumers are protected by laws that relate directly to the advertising, irrespective of the warranty.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
10-30-2021, 03:32 AM
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Clackers, with respect - and I do respect you as you're clearly an excellent photographer and a great contributor to these forums - I think you're wrong. At least in Australia, advertising isn't allowed be 'aspirational' it has to actually be true. As a consumer, if I buy a watch that is advertised as 'waterproof to 10m' I don't use it 'at my own risk' if I wear it in the swimming pool, even if the small print on the warranty card in the box makes it clear that the watch isn't actually waterproof at all. I am entitled to rely on the claims made by the seller in their advertisement. If Pentax tells me clearly in their advertisement that I can use my K-30 in the rain, and that turns out not to be true, that's their fault for false advertising, not my fault as a consumer for falling for it.
In Australia, the ACCC says: "It makes no difference whether the business intended to mislead you or not. If the overall impression left by a business's advertisement, promotion, quotation, statement or other representation creates a misleading impression in your mind—such as to the price, value or the quality of any goods and services—then the behaviour is likely to breach the law."
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
10-30-2021, 02:31 AM
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Yep, that's certainly pretty clear and unambiguous messaging from Pentax - including the fact that the soggy K-30 in the 'never take a rain check' photo is sitting in a puddle of water, which I think was one of the things that's been discussed in this thread as obviously a bridge too far. Like yucatanPentax, I'm a bit deflated to think that Pentax won't stand by these claims, as one of the things I've enjoyed about owning Pentax kit over the years has been not worrying about occasionally shooting in the rain.
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Forum: Sold Items
10-30-2021, 01:30 AM
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Forum: Sold Items
10-12-2021, 04:34 AM
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Bump! Low shutter count, one careful owner...
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Forum: Sold Items
10-04-2021, 03:52 AM
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PentaxForums.com Marketplace Listing Item for Sale
Pentax K3 body only low shutter count Asking Price
600.00 AUD Item Location
Adelaide (Australia) Item Description
I'm reluctantly selling my K3 body only, excellent condition, well looked after and works perfectly, shutter count 14591.
Comes with battery charger with Australian power cord, and shoulder strap.
Reason for sale: I succumbed to the K3iii in July this year, and I'm just not using the K3 any more. I don't have enough time for photography to justify having a second body, so I figure it's better for it to go to someone who's going to use and enjoy it. I also just made an impulse purchase on a used Panasonic Lumix G7 to experiment with video (I bought a KA to M43 adapter so I can use my Pentax lenses on it, so I'm not a complete traitor!), so I think I need to sell some surplus gear in the interest of marital harmony :-)
I love the K3iii, but there are definitely things the K3 has that I wish I had on the K3iii - mainly the integrated flash, which is great for a quick fill or as a trigger (and the reason I never wanted to upgrade to the K3ii), and the bigger top display, which is definitely nicer than the more cramped one on the K3iii.
I'm in South Australia, but happy to ship international - buyer to pay postage with whichever carrier you prefer. Are you the original owner of the item being sold?
Yes Are you selling or trading this item?
Selling Item Condition (Key)
Used
Excellent Shipping Destinations
Worldwide Shipping Charge
TBD Shipping Services
TBD Accepted Payment Types
PayPal Return Policy & Additional Details
Buyer pays postage / shipping. Happy to ship outside of Australia at cost.
Please send me a private message if interested in the item!
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
09-28-2021, 06:56 AM
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That's a real bummer, and I do sympathise with tcwilson.
The fact is, Pentax do market these cameras as highly weather sealed and resistant to splashing water, from marketing photos like the ones posted to videos online of Pentax ambassadors rinsing their gear under the tap. I shoot winter soccer games and have always felt confident to stay out and keep taking photos in light rain, based on Pentax's advertising and reputation for excellent weather sealing. I've done this on many occasions with the K-30, K-3 and now the K-3 iii, and never worried about rain on the camera body, other than to make sure I dry it off with a towel after the game. It's one of the things that makes me feel proud to be using Pentax gear. I'd also be pretty devastated if my new K-3 iii failed due to water ingress in these kinds of conditions and I was told that it was irreparable and I had no recourse - it's a very expensive piece of kit.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
09-05-2021, 05:34 AM
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I was experimenting with this tonight with a cheap HDMI video capture dongle and found it works pretty well using liveview - once I turned off the 'auto power off after 1 minute' setting...
The one issue is that, unlike video mode, in liveview it doesn't stop the lens down to the selected aperture setting, so you're limited to the maximum aperture of the lens you're using.
Interestingly, if you put the camera in M and enable 'Exp Simulation LV', which simulates the exposure in LV by brightening or darkening the image, the camera does stop down the lens when it needs to to achieve the appropriate darkness in the image... but you can't really control this, and it's set up so that if you're at 0EV then the lens is wide open.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
09-03-2021, 04:10 AM
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
09-01-2021, 06:56 AM
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Had the opportunity to try out AF.C Auto tracking seagulls against the background of the surf. Had a couple of misses where it focused on the sea instead of the bird, but for the most part it picked up the bird and tracked it accurately in spite of the noisy background. This was with the FA 77 as that was what I happened to have on the camera at the time, so these are heavy crops - the bird was pretty small in the frame.
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Forum: Lens Clubs
08-28-2021, 10:20 PM
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Just a few random shots from a walk on the beach with the FA 77/1.8 - nothing special. The seagull shots are heavily cropped.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
08-26-2021, 06:07 AM
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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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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
08-26-2021, 06:00 AM
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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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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
08-18-2021, 07:16 AM
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Sorry, haven't tried different combinations of SD card use - I always use RAW+JPG with RAW on 1 and JPG on 2
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
08-17-2021, 07:09 AM
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Hmmm, I've never noticed that as I rarely use LV, but I just tested the two side-by-side, both in M with exposure set to seriously underexpose. The behaviour of the K3 iii seem a bit different to the K3:
With the K3 iii the exposure is simulated in LV but if you half press the shutter to start focusing it returns to 'normal' (equivalent to +/-0EV on the exposure meter) brightness during the focus operation
On the K3 it does the same, but the brightness level it went to when I half-pressed the shutter was very dim, much dimmer than +/-0EV. This was in a pretty dark room
The K3 iii behaviour seems to somewhat achieve what you want - toggling to a normal brightness display during focusing - but it's not ideal because as soon as it's acquired focus it drops back to the EV simulation view, even if you hold the half shutter press - there doesn't seem to be a way to hold it in the +/-0EV view indefinitely. Worse, the half-shutter press does not work if the camera is in manual focus mode - there seems to be no obvious way to toggle it into that mode for manual focusing, which seems like when you would need it most.
Aha - after all that I just found a menu option on the K3 iii 'Exp Simulation LV' that lets you turn it off altogether! ---------- Post added 08-17-21 at 07:15 AM ----------
Hmmm, if I turn off exposure simulation in LV the histogram in LV is now not very useful, as it just reflects the brightness of the image as displayed, i.e. it never changes if I change exposure settings. I think a better implementation would have been to simulate changes in exposure by shifting the histogram if you have 'exposure simulation in LV' set to OFF. Perhaps something for Pentax to consider for the K3 iv :-)
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Forum: Photographic Industry and Professionals
08-17-2021, 05:58 AM
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Interesting that it appears to be aperture priority only with no manual shutter speed selection - I'd forgotten that was ever a thing!
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
08-16-2021, 06:50 AM
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Same here - definitely noticeably less battery life than the K3. Still plenty for my normal usage, but it's enough to make me think of getting a second battery for occasional all day events like the kids' soccer carnival, which is something I never considered with the K3.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
08-16-2021, 06:21 AM
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I just tested both bodies with my Sigma 18-200 cheapie at 200mm, which is f6.3, and the result was the same - the focus peaking effect is very clear on the K3, but very subtle on the K3 iii.
'extract edge' is kind of cool, but again I find it really hard to see, at least on my camera - the effect is a grey screen with thin and feint edge lines that can be barely visible. Using zoom helps.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
08-16-2021, 06:00 AM
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Those last two are superb!
Shooting action in poor light is always a dilemma. For kids' sport I came to the same conclusion as you - TAv is your friend, and don't compromise on shutter speed to keep the ISO down, especially with the excellent high-ISO performance of the K3 iii. Even noisy high-ISO shots can look good and be improved in post, but motion blur is not generally fixable.
I suspect centre focus point rather than auto may be a better bet in low light. The central focusing points are all cross type, which presumably gives more chance of accurate focus in poor light conditions than if it picks the edge ones in auto. The very middle area (inside the spot metering circle) includes additional f2.8 sensors that are apparently extra sensitive in low light, but I'm not sure whether you get the low-EV advantage with these sensors with slower lenses or if they're simply not active for lenses slower than f2.8 (perhaps someone out there knows). I guess that's another advantage of splashing out on f2.8 glass - even if you're not shooting at f2.8 you still get the advantage of the extra brightness for focusing.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
08-16-2021, 05:12 AM
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Just checked and mine's the same - both on the top LCD and in the viewfinder there's no indication for the default multi-segment metering, you only get an icon if you select one of the other metering modes. I guess it's by design - you only need an indication if it's set to one of the non-default modes. I'm using the latest firmware 1.10.
Arguably it's more consistent than the K-3, which shows a symbol for multi-segment on the top LCD but only has ones for the other modes in the viewfinder...
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