Talisman39
Forum Enthusiast
My K-3 arrived the other day and today was my first chance to do anything substantial with it. I'm upgrading from my trusty old K20D, now about 6 years old. Boy, is it an upgrade. If you're a K20D owner, let me tell you you are in for a treat!
A few highlights:
Build: The K20D is quite a solid camera, but the K-3 puts it to shame. When I pulled it out of the B&H box it was cold to the touch - ah, magnesium! At first I thought the grip would be a bit too big, but as I use it it's just right. Everything is crisp, smooth, and snicks into place. Very nice. The K-3 weighs the same as the K20 but is significantly smaller - it's a dense little sucker.
Speed: Focusing is obviously much quicker, overall everything is more responsive. Even with some fairly slow to focus lenses such as the 35mm Macro Limited, it's a ton faster especially in dim light.
Color: I've recently been mostly shooting with a Fuji X100s, which I love, partly because the quality of the color on it is beautiful. I always struggled to get what I felt were good colors out of the K20D - I'm not talking simply saturation here; it could have a fairly dead quality to its colors, especially greens. Blue skies would tip to cyan easily, reds would go to magenta. Especially with Limited lenses (which I mostly use) which have a cooler color cast to them IMO. The K-3 has brought the life back to the color - hard to put a finger on exactly what it's doing different, but I'm liking what I'm seeing a lot more. The dynamic range is also a lot wider, so colors don't block up and over-saturate as easily, and can breathe more.
Metering: Holy cow this thing is amazing at metering. Backlit things that would have me reaching madly for the exposure comp on the K20 (usually several times as I tried to get it right) the K3 nails in the first go. The pictures below aren't anything super special, but some of them have (intentionally) really tricky lighting with wide dynamic range and bright light in weird places, and I really didn't need to do anything on camera or in Lightroom for the most part. So much better. White balance also seems way better. So far I haven't seen a big difference with the adaptive white balance, but early days yet.
Other new stuff: Live view works great. Rear screen UI is quite good (I changed it to gray, didn't care for the default color scheme). The new buttons and layout takes a little getting used to, but I like the dedicated ISO button, and the exposure comp button is easier to use. Electronic levels work well. Haven't tried movies yet.
On to the pics. All taken with my old FA35 f2 which I put on for fun. It's not the sharpest and can get lots of CA, but I like its bokeh. These were all JPEGs shot using the Portrait color mode, which so far is my favorite, with all color, sharpness etc set to default (flat). On my K20 I only shoot RAW because I always wanted the latitude, on the Fuji I pretty much only shoot JPEG as the JPEGs are just so damn good. Once LR gets a K3 profile I'll do some experimenting but from what I see right now I could easily see myself sticking with JPEG except in the most demanding situations.
Hip shot - it got the exposure really well - note the sunlit wall at right didn't blow out entirely to white. But it focused in the distance...(AF was set to auto with the smaller area - easily had the man inside that area, not sure why it didn't go with the closer focus point)
K20 would have muffed this exposure for sure. If anything the K3 over exposed a touch.
My dog. Did have to bring up the shadows a little on this one in LR.
Another metering test. Probably a bit over exposed again, but retained detail in trees. This is a lot of dynamic range to cover. Sun didn't throw it.
Yes, liking the color.
--
//
Photos: http://www.adamjohnrichardson.com
A few highlights:
Build: The K20D is quite a solid camera, but the K-3 puts it to shame. When I pulled it out of the B&H box it was cold to the touch - ah, magnesium! At first I thought the grip would be a bit too big, but as I use it it's just right. Everything is crisp, smooth, and snicks into place. Very nice. The K-3 weighs the same as the K20 but is significantly smaller - it's a dense little sucker.
Speed: Focusing is obviously much quicker, overall everything is more responsive. Even with some fairly slow to focus lenses such as the 35mm Macro Limited, it's a ton faster especially in dim light.
Color: I've recently been mostly shooting with a Fuji X100s, which I love, partly because the quality of the color on it is beautiful. I always struggled to get what I felt were good colors out of the K20D - I'm not talking simply saturation here; it could have a fairly dead quality to its colors, especially greens. Blue skies would tip to cyan easily, reds would go to magenta. Especially with Limited lenses (which I mostly use) which have a cooler color cast to them IMO. The K-3 has brought the life back to the color - hard to put a finger on exactly what it's doing different, but I'm liking what I'm seeing a lot more. The dynamic range is also a lot wider, so colors don't block up and over-saturate as easily, and can breathe more.
Metering: Holy cow this thing is amazing at metering. Backlit things that would have me reaching madly for the exposure comp on the K20 (usually several times as I tried to get it right) the K3 nails in the first go. The pictures below aren't anything super special, but some of them have (intentionally) really tricky lighting with wide dynamic range and bright light in weird places, and I really didn't need to do anything on camera or in Lightroom for the most part. So much better. White balance also seems way better. So far I haven't seen a big difference with the adaptive white balance, but early days yet.
Other new stuff: Live view works great. Rear screen UI is quite good (I changed it to gray, didn't care for the default color scheme). The new buttons and layout takes a little getting used to, but I like the dedicated ISO button, and the exposure comp button is easier to use. Electronic levels work well. Haven't tried movies yet.
On to the pics. All taken with my old FA35 f2 which I put on for fun. It's not the sharpest and can get lots of CA, but I like its bokeh. These were all JPEGs shot using the Portrait color mode, which so far is my favorite, with all color, sharpness etc set to default (flat). On my K20 I only shoot RAW because I always wanted the latitude, on the Fuji I pretty much only shoot JPEG as the JPEGs are just so damn good. Once LR gets a K3 profile I'll do some experimenting but from what I see right now I could easily see myself sticking with JPEG except in the most demanding situations.
Hip shot - it got the exposure really well - note the sunlit wall at right didn't blow out entirely to white. But it focused in the distance...(AF was set to auto with the smaller area - easily had the man inside that area, not sure why it didn't go with the closer focus point)
K20 would have muffed this exposure for sure. If anything the K3 over exposed a touch.
My dog. Did have to bring up the shadows a little on this one in LR.
Another metering test. Probably a bit over exposed again, but retained detail in trees. This is a lot of dynamic range to cover. Sun didn't throw it.
Yes, liking the color.
--
//
Photos: http://www.adamjohnrichardson.com
