More Pentax K-3 vs. K-5 gallery comparisons posted

 

 

With the combined madness of the holiday season and the Consumer Electronics Show behind us, things are returning to normalcy here at Imaging Resource. (Briefly, at least -- we're only four weeks away from the annual CP+  Camera & Photo Imaging Show in Yokohama, Japan, where we're expecting another rush of new cameras.)

While we have some respite from all the announcements, we're working to get things moving on the review front. And speaking personally, I was fortunate to find the weather obliging in Knoxville, Tennessee, so I've been doing some more shooting for our Pentax K-3 review. As before, I also took my personal Pentax K-5 along for some side-by-side comparisons in the real world.

Rather than the kit lenses, this time both cameras were shot with my personal smc PENTAX DA 21mm F3.2 AL Limited and smc PENTAX DA 40mm F2.8 Limited lenses, swapping the same copies of each lens back and forth between cameras. The result is a nice comparison of the added detail to be found from the K-3's new 24-megapixel image sensor. And with the sun smiling down, there are also some high-contrast shots to let me gauge how much scope there is for recovering blown highlights and blocked-up shadows. (Raw files are available for every image in the gallery, so you can give it a try yourself, as well.)

Over the weekend, I'm planning to seek out some moiré-inducing subjects to test out the K-3's Anti-Aliasing Filter Simultator function, and also to give the updated High Dynamic Range Imaging mode a whirl. In-camera HDR wasn't a feature I often used on my K-5, both because I mostly shoot raw, and because I prefer to combine images myself for the maximum control. It seems that may change with the K-3, though, thanks to the ability to save using raw format even for HDRs. (The files are spectacularly huge, at around 100MB a pop, since they include three raws in a single file!)

Watch this space for part two of my Pentax K-3 shooter's report, and in the meantime, check out the updated Pentax K-3 gallery as well as the Pentax K-5 gallery for side-by-side comparisons. And if you want to keep tabs on what we're working on, remember to check out our new Now Shooting section at the top of the Imaging Resource home page.

Got a feature you want me to test? Speak up in the comments below, or on our Pentax K-3 review page, and I'll do my best to add your requests to my queue!