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Pentax K3 user experience

@Dino26323

I enjoy your street captures and try to view them when time permits. I would be interested in reading more thoughts on the Pentax K3 mono. I'm still on the fence about ordering one.
Thanks,
barondla
 
I never post larger than 1200. That is what many of the sites have recommended in the past. Am I posting too small? I mostly read this site on an 8 or 10" tablet. Nothing past 1200 looks any different to me.

@PentUp I try to do as little post processing as possible. I do resize pics using PS Elements #11. It is easy to type in size and save. No math required. You may already know this.

@Dino26323 I enjoy your street captures and try to view them when time permits. I would be interested in reading more thoughts on the Pentax K3 mono. I'm still on the fence about ordering one.
Thanks,
barondla
I do not know what to tell you about the mono because these things are subjective and I realize / understand many people will regret it for the money.
On the other hand it truly is exceptional image quality and anyone should be able to see this because even on my rubbish cheap monitor screen at work there is somehing very special about a full size jpeg I occasionally look at from a challenge finished on the main forum. But others will say you need to do a blind test ( just as they say you must do in hi fi audio ). Many mono users seem to enjoy different aspects about the camera. It makes a mockery of the gear talkers over the years because it is genuine image quality and yet many of them dispute having one is worth while but to be fair if you miss colour then that is understandable and is the real reason for their grumpy so so low enthusiasm. I will write plenty when I get test data to publish from my tests. I saw something interesting last week. Pushed 3 stops to recover shadows a far away building showed superior detail in brick work over the colour K3 iii but the test is crazy because at 500 % used the brickwork would not better the mono camera even if the bricks were shot at correct exposure and NOT PUSHED 3 stops on the beyer camera. The detail on the mono is crazy when you examine images at 200% 300% 500% even 1000% where it crushes beyer cameras. I personally knew what to expect and it kind of does exactly as I expected. K1 pixel shifted images are amazing so the mono is going to be amazing. It is common sense. I will publish things over time when I have things worth writing about.
I am getting some filters square to play around with too.


Regards
 
@Dino26323 I have encountered naysayers before. When FF was getting big, many claimed shooting a smaller format was terrible. One had to shoot FF for the "best" image quality. Then medium format heated up with all the FujiFilm introductions. Many FF shooters claimed MF just wasn't worth it. They switched the argument from image quality to other considerations.

Does Pentax supply a special program to process the Monochrome images? I use the supplied Silkypix to convert my color Pentax cams. Looking forward to more of your thoughts on the K3III Monochrome.
Thanks,
barondla
 
I got this from Pentax Forums info for K3 iii and mono camera review. "
Aother difference is that the camera does not ship with a CD. The supplied editing software is saved inside the camera, and accessed via the USB-C port." So there is no silky pix CD for you but there should be something for you to use.

I am running tests on the mono camera and will publish write up the info on a thread I have already started that has already written plenty of information about the mono camera. ( K3 iii monochrome is available improving " i think was the title.

It is a very curious camera and polarizes opinions. Gear talkers for yrs make sing songs and dance over small gains of every sort but when it comes to the mono they are mostly seem to be negative. That in itself is interesting. For example every photo review site ever raves about Sigma Art lens image quality. Well you have no clue how good they are actually. You have never seen past the veil of the beyer filter array which crushes image quality at 1000%. So you buy a Sigma Art 40mm F1.4 and it weighs a ton and a half for image quality and yet the same people that buy such beasts are stum silent when faced with image quality at 1000%. Yes I realize you can say you will not see the difference at 100% on a mono camera ( it is there but it is mostly small difference at 100% ) but that also applies to Sigma Art 40mm F1.4 situation. That is also small in most ways because many lenses are good at 100%.
Image Quality is actually a complex thing because it is subjective and most gear talkers over sharpen their Sigma Arts and thus ruin any image quality it did possess anyways. Ok I am being harsh because not everyone does this.
My small sensor MX1 takes very very sharp photos but when upsized for a 24 inch print there is a massive hit in image quality compared to a bigger sensor camera even though the image actually looks sharp on a digital screen. Image Quality is a complex thing and viewing 100% 1000% may not be ideal either.

I posted a full size jpeg on a challenge i finished on the other forum from the mono camera a while ago. If you go to my gallery and find the picture of a fast car taken with the mono and then click onto the challenge entered you will be able to see the full resolution. It looks amazing on many screens. Even crap screens that picture looks amazing at 100%. It is sharp but is a different kind of sharp to what people call sharp. It is sublime sharp. Rounded sharp. Analogue sharp. Only my mono camera has made an image like that at 100%. Maybe it is my imagination ? Never the less it lo1oks amazing and was as it happened taken on a mono camera. Rounded sharp. See all the reflections on the car of trees and things. The image quality is incredible. No shit over sharp digital details that most people think is what image quality is. My MX1 makes very very sharp looking images but like I said earlier it cannot compete with my ApSc cameras at 24 inches print even after upsizing. Image quality is complex thing. 645Z is bigger than Full Frame. The advantage is there on some photos for sure if you made massive prints. It is not just sharpness. It is more than that. My best image quality print from my K1 is taken on my 85mm F1.4 lens and the Mountains are slightly soft because it is shot at F2. The Mountains are drifted very slightly out of focus past infinity. The print quality is amazing. Most people believe that the mountains look better stopped down to F8 or F11 or something. Photography is actually about subtlety especially in giant prints. That print looks amazing. The usual logic from most photographers is wrong. You cannot even explain why it is like that. Basically it is subtlety that trumps crude sharpness in Prints very often but even saying that is just guessing it. Image Quality is complex thing. You will know it when you see it perhaps. Take a look at that car shot I mentioned. Subtlety yet very high details. Taken on the mono camera. Looks great at 100% even on cheap basic screens.

Regards Dino26323
 
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