Pentax K-3 Wins DPReview’s “Best Gear of 2103” for DSLR

The new Pentax K-3 has won the DPReview “Best Gear of 2013” award in the DSLR category.

This is kind of unexpected. Well it was for me. I find DPReview readers to be way more Nikon and Canon aligned so for the Pentax K-3 to come out as the top pick for 2013 was totally unexpected by me.

I didn’t even bother voting I was so sure it would be a Nikon or Canon outcome.

The timing of the release of the Pentax K-3 is a little unfortunate in a way. It is winning all these praises but as a 2013 release camera; albeit that it came out very late in 2013. If it had been released in 2014 I am sure it would have still been getting these ‘awards’ but they would have been in 2014.

Another camera I think worthy of a note, which won the “Best Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera of 2013” was the Olympus OM-D E-M1.

I have never owned an Olympus but if I was considering swapping over to a mirrorless camera—which I am not at this stage—then I think that this would be the front runner option.

The itty bitty issue I have with the Olympus OM-D is that it uses the (relatively) new four thirds (4/3) sensor. This sensor is quite a bit smaller than the APS-C ‘half frame’ sensor used by Pentax in the K series DSLR cameras.  A 4/3 sensor has a surface area of about 220 square millimetres compared to whopping 420 for the APS-C ‘half frame’ sensor. On surface area this makes the APS-C sensor something like 90 percent larger. An APS-C sensor is not that far away from double the size.

So the 4/3 sensor could almost be referred to as, but is not that I have ever seen, a ‘quarter frame’ sensor.

There are many contributing factors but in the final analysis the bigger the sensor with the larger sensor sites the better the image quality.

Now all I have to do is put together $1,300 for a new K-3. Sigh.