Pentax K3 – coming soon?
There has been a fair bit of excitement lately in Pentax circles regarding a possible new flagship model called the Pentax K3 which is looking likely to be launched in the weeks ahead. Nothing is certain at this point, although it looks like something will be announced, possibly as early as October 9, according to this Pentax stockist in the UK.
The current Pentax flagship is the K5 series, with two models, the K5ii, and an anti-aliasing filter free sister model, the K5iiS. The K5 series sensor has always been regarded one of the best APS-C sensors out there. It is a 16.3 mega pixel sensor which first appeared in 2010. As with all things in the digital age time marches on and a new Pentax flagship is welcome news indeed.
Rumored specs of the upcoming Pentax K3
- 24 megapixels, APS-C
- anti-alias filter free (with anti-aliasing filter software instead)
- 27 auto focusing points and all of them cross hair type, meaning a much improved performance in auto focus tracking
The dynamic range of the K5 has always been extremely high, with 14.1 stops of exposure value as measured by DxOMark, so it will be interesting to see if that is improved or simply maintained. Another feature which improved from the original K5 to the current K5ii/S was low light auto-focus performance which was accurate right down to -3EV.
Pentax to me are something of a quiet achiever in the modern camera age which is so completely dominated by Canon and Nikon that most other makers are not even on peoples radars anymore. Pentax routinely pack pro features into their bodies which are a fraction of the cost of the “top end” models and this new model, whatever it turns out to be, will no doubt continue that tradition.
Pentax News and Rumors
The best place for all the latest Pentax K3 (and other) news and rumors is the Pentax Forums site. You just need to make a concerted effort not to get so bogged down in reading the rumors that you forget to get out and take some photos from time to time 🙂