After an eight week wait (!!) my Pentax K3 ii has finally arrived. The K5 had died early in July (card reader failure) so I was without a camera for eight weeks which was a real trial as I was on holidays at the time - another story there. By the way my first impressions are while using a pentax 18-135 WR lens.

My first impressions of the K3 ii. It looks very much like the K5. Noted differences - it is slightly bigger and heavier. The grip is bigger and for my hands it has more comfortable grip & balance - it actually fits my medium large hand really well. I miss the on-camera flash but in truth I rarely used it on the K5. I have purchased a cheap-ish Metz 36 AF 5 flash so I suppose will get better results with a bit of practice. Unless I plan ahead flash-fill in the field will probably not happen now as I won't have it sitting on the camera all the time.

Of course I had to try some of the headline acts, so I have put the shutter speed up to 2,000 and held the trigger down for that rapid fire click click of the fast frame rate - I know I am just a child.

Went to the botanical gardens to try the pixel shift function on a tripod. Took some rubbish photos with a surprising result. The raw files were between 100 - 133 MB. Ouch. My laptop really struggled with 'pixel peeping' on this file size. The Mac Pro (about 2 yrs old) has never looked like struggling before but it made all sorts of new noises when I was panning across the photos. It has always been 100% silent so that was new. And a bit disturbing. Does this mean I need a new desktop machine as well? Probably not going to happen.

To my (inexperienced) eyes the photos did contain a lot of information and I could see a fair bit of detail at 400% but not sure how much more than a non-pixel shift image. I will need to be more systematic about comparisons before passing judgement here - at the moment I am too distracted by "new toy" syndrome to compare things systematically. Sorry.

Having two card readers could be very useful. I have set it with one on Jpeg and one for Raw files. But of course I didn't think to mark the cards and I mixed them up when downloading so there are now some raw and some jpeg on each.

Other impressions? The shutter is definitely quieter and I like this. The GPS log works and now that I realise that it pin points my home location I have taken it off again - a bit paranoid. Will be useful for my bushwalking & camping photography so I can keep track of where I have been.

Most excited bout the Astro tracer but haven't had a chance to try it yet.

I will post a photo as soon as I work out the best way to compress without losing all the resolution...