Pentax K-3 Field Test

Before I get down to my thoughts on the Pentax K-3, a little background would probably be appropriate. When I'm reviewing cameras, I'm pretty brand-agnostic: What the camera can do for me is far more important than the badge on the front. I can't afford to own everything I get to review, though, or to keep changing allegiance to a new lens mount. For the last few years, I've used Pentax's flagship DSLRs as my daily shooters, after the original Pentax K-7 brought me into the fold back in 2009. A couple of years later, I upgraded to the K-5, but I skipped the subsequent K-5 II, as it was a fairly modest update.

When I first heard news of the Pentax K-3, I was thrilled. There's a lot I love about my K-5, but there are areas in which I wanted to see the company make some improvements -- especially autofocus -- and with the K-3, it seems to have done so. As well as the new AF system, I also found the prospect of better metering, dual flash card slots, a better and wider-aspect LCD monitor, and a brighter viewfinder to be particularly appealing. And the promise of greater all-around performance doesn't hurt, either.

In the first part of my Pentax K-3 Field Test, I shot exclusively with the 18-135mm kit lens that can be purchased in a bundle with the camera body. In part, I did so because that's the one lens K-3 shooters are most likely to own, and we always try to ensure we cover kit lenses for that reason -- even if they're not the most exciting optics available. It also didn't hurt that I happened to own a copy of the same lens myself, meaning I could shoot side-by-side with my K-5, with no fussing and changing lenses back and forth.

With a consumer camera, the kit lens might very well be the only lens you'll shoot with, but that's almost certainly not the case with an enthusiast SLR like the Pentax K-3, though. For that reason, I was keen to get out and shoot with some of my nicer lenses. Sadly, I didn't have duplicates of these, so shooting side by side with these meant an exceptional amount of switching lenses between bodies.

And finally, we come to the last section of my Field Test -- and my decision whether to buy the Pentax K-3 for myself. This section has been a while coming, for which I apologize -- every time I've gone to return to shooting and writing, something else has come up. Just one example: The subject I'd chosen for my planned autofocus and burst performance testing didn't cooperate. I'd been intending to shoot with the K-3 and K-5 side by side at a local drag racing strip to get a good sense for how the two cameras' performance compared. Come the day, heavy rains had flooded the pit lane and the track day was canceled.