[seliscan]

Hy guys,

I don't post very often because most of the time my ideas are very well presented by other forum members, so why bother ...

Like many of you I wondered myself what camera should I buy, because my old K20 was very good on his time but it fells outdated now. I can't afford a FF nor do I wish one even if I had the money to spare (I have my reasons but I don't want to debate now).

So, I thought about Sony A55, Nikon D7000 and Pentax K-5 as possible chooses. After carefully studying each camera (and still owning Pentax glass) I decided that K-5 is the choice. In my country the price is only 50 dollars more expensive than D7000 and because I see a difference in IQ between them, for me it is the logical choice.

I guess most of you are well in not very well informed about the K-5 capability's and it makes no sense to debate them all over again, but one ting which I discovered accidentally (actually it was more of a self provocation after GordonBGood insisted that Pentax k-5 was using NR above ISO 1600 in RAW files, and I could not believe the amount of detail still kept so I researched below ISO 1600 in ISO 100/200 territory).

My answers are cleared now, from what I've seen Pentax K-5 has indeed a stop advantage over D7000 even at ISO 100. In the image below I magnified 4 times the original crop from as a precise levels of gray as I could (the histogram for each image square has the peak almost in the same spot)...

The rest I think anybody can jug for himself. Anyway, similar tests can be made by anybody, so fell free to make your one conclusion, don't believe me.

I've done similar tests between K-5 and D700 (this time) and D700 was 1/3 or 0.5 stops better in the middle gray's than k-5 but k-5 has lower red/magenta noise at all ISO's in the blacks.

With best regards, Alexandru

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Last edited by seliscan; 11-01-2010 at 05:46 AM.

[melander]

Nice

[Boris]

Like many of you I wondered myself what camera should I buy, because my old K20 was very good on his time but it fells outdated now.

Pardon my being blunt here - but does your K20D takes worse pictures now that K-5 has hit the store shelves?

[aleonx3]

Nice to see the comparison... thanks for sharing!

[paperbag846]

Pardon my being blunt here - but does your K20D takes worse pictures now that K-5 has hit the store shelves?

I can sympathize with his feelings in that I would love to be able to go higher than ISO 1600 and not feel the sting... but I've decided to run my camera bodies into the ground, since they have no worthwhile resale value .

[seliscan]

Pardon my being blunt here - but does your K20D takes worse pictures now that K-5 has hit the store shelves?

Now that you've mention it, I've cheeked my K20 gallery (actually GX-20 gallery) and found the picture to be progressively lower in quality from the date K-5 was announced .