@sincze I've got some buck converters that regulate 12V to 3.3V without any pain. I use it for my gesture controlled lamp. Works like a charm.
Well I'm by far any export on this field. But I'm working on a node which I couldn't get stable. The Node crashed after 6, 8 sometimes 12 hours. I've added a watchdog, which works great, but after the watchdog did it's work some sensors on the node just couldn't work. Although I've powered them externally.
To make this story shorter ;-). I found out that it's better to always power the radio externally. For some kind of reason it consumes more power than my ProMini 3.3V can provide. This symptom occurs when you add multiple sensors to an Arduino. It took me a long time to investigate what the problem was. But my conclusion is, just don't power anything from the Arduino and use an external power adapter if possible.
Except for dedicated Arduino's that can be found on openhardware. My sensebender has been running for 4 month on the same batteries without any problems.