So I finally bought a K3-III
Quote from red5isalive on January 19, 2023, 10:35 amIt's quite silly from my side but I was only taking pics here home with the camera.
A bus is stucked in the street i live and I have taken images now,
So let's say those are my firsts images with the K3-III
PK330169 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK330180 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
Not the ones I was dreaming of, but ....
Haha! A different kind of motorsport 🙂 Much slower paced xD
Quote from James Warner on January 19, 2023, 12:24 pmQuote from red5isalive on January 19, 2023, 10:35 amIt's quite silly from my side but I was only taking pics here home with the camera.
A bus is stucked in the street i live and I have taken images now,
So let's say those are my firsts images with the K3-III
Not the ones I was dreaming of, but ....
Haha! A different kind of motorsport
Much slower paced xD
hahahaha so true xD
@red5isalive I thought I'd share some thoughts on auto ISO and AF, since you mentioned in the Februrary thread that the camera by default favors high ISO (it definitely does!) and misses focus sometimes.
About the high ISO, I found that also with my K-3iii. There's a setting in Still Image Menu #2 called "ISO Sensitivity Setting." In the sub-menu of that there's another option called "ISO Auto with Min. Speed." That's set to "standard" by default and I find it will keep the shutter speed a bit higher than necessary for a proper exposure, thus increasing ISO. Right now I'm at 20mm and it won't go below 1/50s even with shake reduction on. If I change that setting to "Slow" then it will go down to 1/25s and of course a correspondingly lower ISO. 🙂 There are other options in that menu to do with auto ISO. I'm not quite sure I understand what "Min. Shutter Speed Op." does to be honest. There's so many options with this camera. 😅
About the missed focus, I noticed that too when photographing large objects with the smaller points, or really anything up close that doesn't have tons of detail. The camera is looking for lines and the small points are so small you may not land on one and miss focus. I found that Select Small (SEL5 in viewfinder), Select Extra Small (SEL6), and Spot work well for something like a bird through branches where you want the camera to ignore the branches around it. Unless I want to focus on something tiny I find SEL1 through 4 works best and is very confident. That's surprising to me because I thought it would get confused with all those extra focus points, but it seems it defaults to the small center point - if it can't find something there it moves out to the next closest, and so on. Very slick!
Quote from JBP on February 5, 2023, 4:04 pm@red5isalive I thought I'd share some thoughts on auto ISO and AF, since you mentioned in the Februrary thread that the camera by default favors high ISO (it definitely does!) and misses focus sometimes.
About the high ISO, I found that also with my K-3iii. There's a setting in Still Image Menu #2 called "ISO Sensitivity Setting." In the sub-menu of that there's another option called "ISO Auto with Min. Speed." That's set to "standard" by default and I find it will keep the shutter speed a bit higher than necessary for a proper exposure, thus increasing ISO. Right now I'm at 20mm and it won't go below 1/50s even with shake reduction on. If I change that setting to "Slow" then it will go down to 1/25s and of course a correspondingly lower ISO.
About the missed focus, I noticed that too when photographing large objects with the smaller points, or really anything up close that doesn't have tons of detail. The camera is looking for lines and the small points are so small you may not land on one and miss focus. I found that Select Small (SEL5 in viewfinder), Select Extra Small (SEL6), and Spot work well for something like a bird through branches where you want the camera to ignore the branches around it. Unless I want to focus on something tiny I find SEL1 through 4 works best and is very confident. That's surprising to me because I thought it would get confused with all those extra focus points, but it seems it defaults to the small center point - if it can't find something there it moves out to the next closest, and so on. Very slick!
Thank you very much,
I will keep an eye on this. I usually shoot in TV mode so I need the camera to not interfere with my shutter speed, but will check it out and also re-read your comment as I just arrived home and I do remember (or I think I do) what I have read before.
Yes the AF I tink it gets better with the parameters you explain. When I first tested the camera there was no option of one single point and the small area even thought was bigger than what I wanted it worked very very well. Will try this option too 🙂
Thanks! 😀
Quote from red5isalive on February 5, 2023, 10:43 pmQuote from JBP on February 5, 2023, 4:04 pm@red5isalive I thought I'd share some thoughts on auto ISO and AF, since you mentioned in the Februrary thread that the camera by default favors high ISO (it definitely does!) and misses focus sometimes.
About the high ISO, I found that also with my K-3iii. There's a setting in Still Image Menu #2 called "ISO Sensitivity Setting." In the sub-menu of that there's another option called "ISO Auto with Min. Speed." That's set to "standard" by default and I find it will keep the shutter speed a bit higher than necessary for a proper exposure, thus increasing ISO. Right now I'm at 20mm and it won't go below 1/50s even with shake reduction on. If I change that setting to "Slow" then it will go down to 1/25s and of course a correspondingly lower ISO.
About the missed focus, I noticed that too when photographing large objects with the smaller points, or really anything up close that doesn't have tons of detail. The camera is looking for lines and the small points are so small you may not land on one and miss focus. I found that Select Small (SEL5 in viewfinder), Select Extra Small (SEL6), and Spot work well for something like a bird through branches where you want the camera to ignore the branches around it. Unless I want to focus on something tiny I find SEL1 through 4 works best and is very confident. That's surprising to me because I thought it would get confused with all those extra focus points, but it seems it defaults to the small center point - if it can't find something there it moves out to the next closest, and so on. Very slick!
Thank you very much,
I will keep an eye on this. I usually shoot in TV mode so I need the camera to not interfere with my shutter speed, but will check it out and also re-read your comment as I just arrived home and I do remember (or I think I do) what I have read before.
Yes the AF I tink it gets better with the parameters you explain. When I first tested the camera there was no option of one single point and the small area even thought was bigger than what I wanted it worked very very well. Will try this option too
Thanks!
I'm not sure what all has been added with firmware updates since I just updated it first thing. But I think that they added the extra small "xs" focus point option in this latest update. I was like neat, if I don't need tracking then I'll just use that and always nail focus right where I want. Haha, nope! It's so tiny that it is easy to land on a zero contrast area on even a relatively small object and have trouble focusing. Of course that all depends on the subject and distance. It's neat how small it is, I think it must be much smaller than the spot point on my K-3. I'm able to thread the needle through branches to shoot little birds. 😎 I like that they keep making the camera better with firmware updates.
Yes that is brilliant!
I have never ever before owner a camera as new.
The batery grip came today, I like it! But, they have done it without the chance of using AA batteries as before, and that I find it not that good. Anyways I have a bunch of D-LI90 batteries at home, so should not be a problem.
Quote from red5isalive on February 6, 2023, 6:31 pmYes that is brilliant!
I have never ever before owner a camera as new.
The batery grip came today, I like it! But, they have done it without the chance of using AA batteries as before, and that I find it not that good. Anyways I have a bunch of D-LI90 batteries at home, so should not be a problem.
It's the newest camera I've ever owned as well, by a large margin. I feel a bit of guilt about it like any big purchase, but it's exciting. 🙂
Yeah I saw that the battery grip doesn't take AA's. It's a shame, that was such a cool feature of the previous grips. Apparently you can charge your phone with the K-3iii too (I haven't tried yet). Would have been neat to be able to run a dead camera and phone on AA's which can be found anywhere. But yeah, it will likely never be a problem for me either. The D-LI90's last so long.
First race of the season and many many many thoughts on my mind.
So I will try to put take them out of my head and write them off.
First of all I must say I primarly used the K3-III with the Pentax 150-450mm lens I also bought recently 2nd hand, and my Sigma 100-300mm f4.
I must admit that I probably don't know how to set this camera with so many diferent options in order for me to work tracking my subject. As I have tried many diferent combinations. Maybe, but I am not so sure, the best one is "priority to shutter" in every mode and also center point small, combined with the light meter in "bright compensation" is it named in english?
Why do I say so? Because I found out myself in many ocasions using diferent modes stucked trying to shoot and pressing my shutter and the camera not allowing me to do so. This is why I went all in with the shutter priority. Event thougt next thought came to mind:
Next thought is: I don't get images as easy as before with my regular K3 + Sigma 100-300mm f4, crisp and sharp ones even at shutter speeds of 1/125th of a second. I don't understand why not. Maybe it's the lens, but I am not sure. The lens was set to focus from 6m to infinite and at some point to do the full minimal to maximum focusing distances. Yet i did not felt that confident with it as last December.
Next idea: The camera (i know I was running our of batteries) using the grip (is the only way I've used it this weekend) not only stopped working. That should be normal. But it just freezed to me twice with a diferent pair of bateries. This is a problem I have had with the K3 and K3-II but I thought would not happen here.
One more idea: I don't know how I just changed my Colour Balance in the touch of God maybe xDD when doing something else, this is something I saw later on the next day after the races.
Last but not least: This thing eats my memory cards very fast. So I shoot some images and then all of a sudden the camera has slowed down to write, I thought it'd take it longer until doing this. I am not sure if it was my way of taking pictures this time (there were like 30 to 40 cars coming together) in quick fast bursts to stop and back again to quick and fast burst, or what was it.
And this I think is all I can remember. Overall I felt a bit frustrated due to the fact I thought with the older bodies, even slower in AF supposedly, it seemed that they nailed focus better. Even using the Sigma 100-300mm f4 in this body looked better.
Yet I have used the 150-450mm in the K3 Silver when testing it and it works pretty well with it.
I think I might need to reconfigure the camera, and test and fail and test and fail over and over to find the correct settings for me,
Will be posting some image soon when I will end up picking and editing them, so far I have like +500 images I like from Sunday alone, so I'd probably need some extra time 😛
Thank you for reading me,
BR,
I think you are right about needing more time with the camera and lens. Switching camera and lens at the same time is a big change, and figuring them both out will take a bit of time.
I didn't notice any negative effects swapping from KP to K3III back to back for wildlife photography. That was with the same lens though, the DA* 300mm. I pretty much used the same settings and have slowly explored with more of the advanced features of the K3III over time.
The problem you're having with getting sharp shots at lower shutter speeds - I wonder if that could be a difference in the stabilization system too. I didn't really notice it on older cameras, but on the K3III I noted I couldn't leave it in normal stabilization mode and get good panning shots. Either switch to panning stabilization or just turn it off. This isn't at slower shutter speeds for me though, I am still shooting higher shutter speeds either way. But something to consider and play around with maybe.
Excited to see the keepers 🙂
Thank you James 🙂
I was using the panning shake reduction mode and yet I wasn't that able.
But going back to basics is a good good idea.
Here some keepers taken with the previously spoken combo (it is a quite demanding combo as for it's weight I must say)
PK334069 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK334273 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
Probably the best image of the series 😛
PK335513 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK335596 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
Those are RAW files where I have been able to recover the colours as, as explained before, I messed around with the colours at some point U_U"
PK335697-2 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK335942 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK335953 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK336027 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK336347 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK336530 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK336646 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
Those images are from yesterday Sunday with the K3-III + 150-450mm attached (i forgot to pick up the teleconverter and bring it with me).
Let me show you some images with the same camera but with my beloved/admired/preffered working tool.... Sigma 100-300mm f4
*it is true that the light early morning was nicer than later on the evening, that plays in favour to this lens
PK333354 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK333557 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK333780 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
PK333855 by Daniel Gonzalez Aguilera, en Flickr
I will add some more in the next post to not confuse anyone because it would be tricky
