Nonstop delight and enthusiasm pur

I have the K3 with the 18-55 WR kit lens and the Sigma 18-250 Macro now for 2 months and am absolutely thrilled and fascinated by the possibilities of this extraordinary piece of high-tech.
About the camera has already been said here a lot, so I could only repeat. Nevertheless, I would like to highlight a few points that are possibly otherwise not so stressed.

Previously I had a bridge camera with which I was very happy, but when I came but in certain areas of borders, particularly in macro-, astrophysics and low-light shots concerns.
So I decided to upgrade to a DSLR and have weeks extensively compared with reviews and also tested some models. It quickly became clear that it had to be a Pentax due to some features, which are important to me especially. I then the K30, the K5II and then compared the K3 and it was the K3 I have no regrets.

Excellent images now constitute almost all digital cameras, but who wants something special, what other vendors do not offer, and wants to give his creativity all freedom at the same time, I would put the K3 warmly.

I want to mention in particular the interval composite function (only with the K3) and the Astro Tracer, which is found only in the Pentax K .. cameras. Shots of the night sky in 3 or 4 minutes exposure time succeed excellently without the stars blur. We see an incredible number of deep-sky details that remain a hidden otherwise.
To this end, however, the additional GPS module is needed, I think that with more than 200 Euro for quite overpriced.
Photographing the moon, and to see an overwhelming richness of craters and structures (and without expensive astrophotography equipment), is, or insects, in which even the smallest hairs and even the facets of the eye are resolved sharp simply a true joy and amazement and applause of his friends, where you show these pictures is, therefore a safe.
Here, the new Pentax for extremely high-resolution 24 megapixel sensor does all the work, of course, and enables extraordinary detail even at high magnifications.

With the interval composite function succeed playing slightly eg Timelapse images or thunderstorms photos with dozens of flashes without the photos would be overexposed or too noisy with long exposure time, because the K3 calculated the average exposure automatically based on the number of shots. And without the need for any complex image editing software for stacking the photos. The camera does it all automatically and you can bargain even choose whether you want to store the intermediate results to the bottom line as your own pictures.

The new exposure processor and the excellent AF module of Pentax cooperate excellently and gave me so far under difficult conditions no grounds for objection.

Technical problems such as that the system hung (as I have read elsewhere) I have not had, but have nevertheless quite early on the firmware update completed on version 1.03.

Also, I will not conceal some negatives:

- No built-in GPS, some competitors offer today
- No autofocus in video (big minus, absolutely not at the level of competition) * => revised, s comment.
- Manual difficult to read (at small font) and not particularly complete or unclear terms all the possibilities of this camera. Here I definitely recommend the K3 book by Benno Hessler.

For me this is definitely 5 star, but it depends on where to put the emphasis. Who wants to make a lot of videos with his camera beside photos, which is the K3 probably not recommended over the competition, but the moves anyway better than with a SLR with a bridge or compact camera. Who but rather wants to develop his creativity in photography, I advise completely to this camera, with unique technical capabilities that can be found only at Pentax. The baby makes genuine fun.

A pity, I find that Pentax market so leads a shadowy existence, because the K3 has this brand (now RICOH) very clear to me found their place among the top three. Slightly more drums did here certainly good, as do the other a long time.