[Big G]

You obviously dont know what that can mean for your photography in the real world.

roflmao

My Flickr front pagers and prints that I have sold clearly have suffered at my ignorance.

You make me laugh. Hard.

[Rory]

Who is underexposing by three stops? All it takes a little underexposure at iso 1600/3200 for most camera sensors to start falling apart. As others have said, there are plenty of situations where this can happen, particularly with strong light sources directly behind the subject.

The same things can be done with the other cameras that have this sensor -- for instance the D7000. It doesn't change the fact that it is pretty cool to have that option.

All these tests are. That's what all these tests have been based on. Severe under exposure and if you can bring that back.

I would rather see examples like people were using as examples of taking advantage of a wide DR. I'm not arguing with them. I'm simply saying this isn't a real world way to demonstrate DR.

Also. What cameras made in the last two years fall apart at ISO 1600? BTW, a 645D doesn't look so hot at 1600. The K5 must be better.

The K5, in my opinion, is arguably the best crop SLR available. But the method of proving that that is argued gets you nowhere. These tests aren't what Pentax is about. Why start plunging into them now.

[claudioNC]

Hi, I am the author of the comparison tests posted in Flickr for Pentax K5, Canon 5DII and 550D.

The purpose of this test, as explained in the roll-on appearing menu, is not to determine which of the 2 cameras offer higher resolution in normal conditions, but only to show the dynamic capability.
In that test I have used the 200 ISO setting only using the over-under exposition stress metodology that says more than a thousand words.

A camera with such a large dynamic range can be useful to everyone not just those who photograph landscapes! Here Pentax K5 at today win by a wide margin over all currently on the market, except the Nikon D7000 we probably could put in second place, but very close to the K5.

The Canon 5DII, with good lenses, I am almost sure, offer more detailed images, and so, no surprise here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I make large panoramic images, everyone can take a look at Claudio Costerni Now, also with Gigapixel resolution coming from hundreds of stitched pics and so the small difference in resolution, for me, is not the more important thing.
And anyway even less large images, almost always, come from the composition of multiple images, even just a dozen and have a detailed poster resolution.

In other pages, there in Flickr, I have posted also a comparison between the K5 and Canon 550D, please go to see it, but the results are similar.
One page is this, but there are also other ones:
Pentax K5 vs Canon 550D - Collage 02 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

In my opinion the nice K5 miss at least 3 important things to be almost a perfect photographic tool:

1. Live view with an effective resolution, the resolution in pixels that stated by the manufacturer.
It is very difficult to focus precisely because the close view with the zoom function does not show all the points of the sensor, it is like an interpolation apparence, a preview that makes the point of focus very uncertain because of the confused details.
The recent Canon, Nikon, Sony and Panasonic are a lot better here.

2. Greater speed in responding to some menu commands.
For example, there is an annoying delay between pressing the buttons to select-confirm-delete the photo and the actual completion of each step.
You always have the temptation to re-press certain commands because they are too out of sync with representation/execution on the menu screen.

On the other hand has an excellent capacity for continuous shooting with a very large buffer memory and, with faster memory cards as SanDisk Extreme 30MB/s, a very good recording speed.

3. Last thing, the K5 is not stellar of ergonomic, as someone say.
The buttons are too small for a camera designed for use even in difficult conditions.
With cold fingers that become insensitive or worse with, even light gloves the use becomes very uncertain and uncomfortable.
The small jack port for remote control is placed on the right, next to the rubber handle: absolutely wrong, stupid position.

For those who want to leave the wireless receiver on the slide of the flash and connected with the cable to the camera remote port, has to endure discomfort in the handle with the protrusion of the connector: this is absurd!

Best Regards ,
Claudio

[Frogfish]

Also. What cameras made in the last two years fall apart at ISO 1600?

Pentax K7

Claudio - great test, thanks very much for taking the time to run and post it.

[Rory]

Pentax K7

Claudio - great test, thanks very much for taking the time to run and post it.

Yeah, I suppose that may be an example. I didn't consider the K7, since it used a sensor older that the model; however, they chose to release it that way. I was able to get some shots that were workable at 1600, but anything over did have issues. You're correct on that.

[Rondec]

Yeah, I suppose that may be an example. I didn't consider the K7, since it used a sensor older that the model; however, they chose to release it that way. I was able to get some shots that were workable at 1600, but anything over did have issues. You're correct on that.

It's actually the current sensor in the Samsung NX series of cameras. I think Micro four thirds also performs about the same.

That said, there are plenty of times that you shoot a land scape and want to bring up shadow levels somewhat and can see the effects of wider DR. You can get the same effect shooting three shots and doing an HDR effect, but if you can do it with one shot in RAW without the effort of HDR processing, who wouldn't want to do it?

[DogLover]

3. Last thing, the K5 is not stellar of ergonomic, as someone say.
The buttons are too small for a camera designed for use even in difficult conditions.
With cold fingers that become insensitive or worse with, even light gloves the use becomes very uncertain and uncomfortable.
The small jack port for remote control is placed on the right, next to the rubber handle: absolutely wrong, stupid position.

For those who want to leave the wireless receiver on the slide of the flash and connected with the cable to the camera remote port, has to endure discomfort in the handle with the protrusion of the connector: this is absurd!

While I disagree with this statement in general, I do agree that the remote port is on the wrong side. The rest of the K5 ergonomics suit me just fine. Smaller buttons are a function of a smaller body, and I definitely wouldn't want to change that.

[manishved]

K5 wins hands-down!!!

[Zafar Iqbal]

I found the comparisons to be very useful. Nice work, Claudio

[Eruditass]

roflmao

My Flickr front pagers and prints that I have sold clearly have suffered at my ignorance.

You make me laugh. Hard.

Your credentials don't matter, if you can't consider a situation where it would be helpful then you are being close minded. You might not need it, but there are plenty of situations where it is helpful.

Here is one from this weekend where it helped: he just happened to turn such a way that the second light was hitting him more from the side and his hand blocked it from his face:





Thankfully I could dodge his face 3 or so stops from the blackness. Sure there are things that could've been done beforehand, but things were constantly changing.

[DogLover]

Your credentials don't matter, if you can't consider a situation where it would be helpful then you are being close minded. You might not need it, but there are plenty of situations where it is helpful.

Here is one from this weekend where it helped: he just happened to turn such a way that the second light was hitting him more from the side and his hand blocked it from his face:





Thankfully I could dodge his face 3 or so stops from the blackness. Sure there are things that could've been done beforehand, but things were constantly changing.

Pretty cool shot!

[Ash]

Good objective observations Claudio.
Some of those issues you note regarding the K-5 have subjective relevance - some users would be bothered by the remote cord below the grip and yet others won't be. I myself am not overly concerned with the location as I tend not to shoot with mixed handheld and corded remote shutter releases. Granted, that small time delay from keystroke to camera acknowledgement and prompt can be a slight drag.

However my own pet peeve with the K-5 is the inability to keep the on-board LED light AF assist beam working despite having a hotshoe-mounted flash that has its own AF assist spotbeam. I have had the K-5 tested in quite low light settings at an outdoor night-time function and the AF was frustrating with the kit lenses - quite difficult for it to lock on to the subject. That flash spotbeam is quite ordinary, unreliable and slow, whereas the camera's AF assist beam is much faster and able to lock on to focus more reliably. Pity there isn't a feature in the menus to keep the AF assist light working in spite of the flash...

[JohnBee]

Pity there isn't a feature in the menus to keep the AF assist light working in spite of the flash...

I too would like to see this.
Fortunately... I don't do enough flash work to warrant being bothered by it. But the thought had crossed my mind during recent testing.

Another thing I'd like to see if the option to toggle the AF assist beam via button. Because there are times when the AF module just doesn't seem to lock in semi-low light conditions, and so that might prove to be a quick fix in cases such as those.

Does anyone know if there is an official request list going out to Pentax from the forums with respect to FW updates?

[Big G]

Your credentials don't matter, if you can't consider a situation where it would be helpful then you are being close minded. You might not need it, but there are plenty of situations where it is helpful.

I never said that having headroom to be able to bring out detail was a bad thing; I've never had a problem with any of my cameras being able to lift shadow detail or dodging areas to lift a shot. What I was objecting to was another pointless and deliberate, full shot underexposure that has forum twerps creaming their pants. It's been done, discussed and analysed to the n'th degree.

[Eruditass]

I never said that having headroom to be able to bring out detail was a bad thing; I've never had a problem with any of my cameras being able to lift shadow detail or dodging areas to lift a shot. What I was objecting to was another pointless and deliberate, full shot underexposure that has forum twerps creaming their pants. It's been done, discussed and analysed to the n'th degree.

So are you admitting it's useful? Then it's useful to measure and compare cameras on that ground.

If one thing is important in comparing this ability, its comparing it in a controlled situation: deliberately underexposing.

Even better if its shown with examples instead of just graphs.

And personally, I hadn't seen a controlled comparison with examples/samples of the K-5 and a full frame, though you might have. And if you've seen enough of them, you could always do what I do and not click on the thread. I mean this is a K-5 forum.

The fact is that the K-5 can do it better than the ones before it. This might not matter if you shoot at low ISO as these tests, but it certainly does if you're shooting at high ISO and still want to pull from shadows.

Sure, it's not the only thing that's important, in fact I might not be keeping my K-5 for other reasons. But controlled tests that isolate different factors are helpful since everyone has different weights on requirements.