[extravagrant]

I'm treating this as an exercise to train my critical eye, so I'm not reading other responses in the thread (sorry for any redundancy!) nor am I peeking at the EXIF data until I'm done, or opening the files up anywhere else.

...and I appreciate the exercise!

Exhibit A: JPG artifacts in the background

Exhibit B: Colors are flatter, chroma noise in the background, I can see a loss of detail in the texture of the table(cloth?) and on the sides of the bottle label, the "G" on the red chip in the foreground looks like a smudge instead of being crisply delineated, sharpening artifacts on the top of the bottle, the bottle seems to "disappear" on the right hand side above the label, the top edge of the chip rack on the right hand side disappears, the indentation on the white chip at the very left is gone, and overall, there's some graininess in the shadows

[rawr]

I would rather spend the money on full frame, and just take pictures, instead of spending countless hours manipulating images so people are impressed. I want them to look good straight out of the camera.

There are (at least) two implications in that statement that are unjustified:
(1) the K-5 can't produce images that look good SOC; and
(2) FF (of whatever sort) automagically produces images that DO look great SOC.

JohnBee is (I believe) doing these images not because he needs to do massive PP in order to get good images out of the K-5, but because he wants to test the boundaries of his PP skills and experiment with the capabilities of the K-5 as a high ISO image monster.

I also believe he has some experience with FF DSLR's... so his work and conclusions are very revealing.

[Rite]

I would rather spend the money on full frame, and just take pictures, instead of spending countless hours manipulating images so people are impressed. I want them to look good straight out of the camera.

=========================

The K200D allows a great bracketing range (Exposure bracketing ±0.5EV, ±1.0EV, ±1.5EV (0.5EV steps) or ±0.3EV, ±0.7EV, ±1.0EV (0.3EV steps).

You may want to check it out. You can really do some amazing works of art using bracketing, HDR, and Photomatix. It is time consuming, but very rewarding.

Couple of examples: Pentax K200D HDR photos | HDR Creme

How to take photos with the Pentax K-x | kxuser.com

[WerTicus]

I looked but before i looked i thought that

a: was a bit sharper, and a bit better white balanced.

[WerTicus]

instead of spending countless hours manipulating images so people are impressed.

Images out of the camera are never going to be as good as manipulated ones. Full frame or otherwise.

I have a full time job doing image manipulation, and we get plenty of medium format photos that need tons of work.

[monlitratista]

All I can say is WOW for the K5. May I ask what is your NR setting?

photo #1: f/6.3 | 1.3s | 55mm | ISO-200
photo #2: f/6.3 | 1/200s | 55mm | ISO-51200

WHOA!

[janneman]

I would rather spend the money on full frame, and just take pictures, instead of spending countless hours manipulating images so people are impressed. I want them to look good straight out of the camera.

I think you forget the giant leap this APS-C sensor made. At this ISO, to get these results, the current FF sensors would require a lot of work as well, maybe not as much but still a lot. If you want 128.000 or 256.000 straight out of the camera, you have to wait for another generation of FF and pay the price. I don't think the sensor technology now available with these stunning results will give you noiseless 128.000 on FF (ofcourse you willl be able to print that 128.000 practically noiseless on A4 but not much more I think.)

[Steelski]

I think that only 2 cameras before the K-5 went to 51200, The Nikon D3s and Canon 1DMKIV...... and I think only the D3s can say it performs better. At least from what I have seen.

[dgaies]

I would rather spend the money on full frame, and just take pictures, instead of spending countless hours manipulating images so people are impressed. I want them to look good straight out of the camera.

There are (at least) two implications in that statement that are unjustified:
(1) the K-5 can't produce images that look good SOC; and
(2) FF (of whatever sort) automagically produces images that DO look great SOC.

JohnBee is (I believe) doing these images not because he needs to do massive PP in order to get good images out of the K-5, but because he wants to test the boundaries of his PP skills and experiment with the capabilities of the K-5 as a high ISO image monster.

I also believe he has some experience with FF DSLR's... so his work and conclusions are very revealing.

Agreed. The K5 produces excellent straight images out of the camera that don't require any NR manipulation. Images up to 6400, if shot and exposed well, don't require much of anything. Even images at 12800 and some 25600 images often just need a quick pass of light NR, which only take a minute or two. And yes, at 51200, you probably need to put some time into the PP to get a decent image noise-wise (John, please chime in and correct me where/if I am wrong). However, my understanding from speaking with John (who owns a D700) is that from a noise perspective, this is no different than the FF (albeit from FF sensors that are 1-2 years old at this point).

[bobmaxja]

STOP THis ios nothing to do with FF, he his asking question about the exhibit A & B.
You are killing these thread

[Xatnep_CJ]

@ Pentax
I think you have made a big leap forward into another dimension for APS-C. The IQ the K-5 delivers is just amazing in its class.

@ JohnBee
Really good PP-job. These shots are so close to each other that one might need a third look to find out the differences.
As far as I have understood your initial posting you will give us a tutorial on how to get such results? What I am also interested in is the question if there is still enough headroom left (PP-wise) to enhance colors and contrast. Or is it pushed to the limits?

[pspentax]

Okay so far we have:

• Detail loss
• Contrast
• Colors off

and first foto as more DOF than the second one and i don´t look to the exif.

this can be a optic ilusion regarding the more noise reduction aplaied to the second foto.


One more thing John, please post 2 or 3 100%crop from the 2 fotos.

[falconeye]

EXHIBIT A:

images courtesy of dgaies

EXHIBIT B:

images courtesy of dgaies

Thanks for playing

... the end

A has more fine grain detail and more coarse grain contrast (colors look a bit washed out in B).

Because the coarse grain difference isn't going away by reducing the image size, it is hard to say how much damage was done to the image. To really know, one would have to restore the tone curve of the original first.

The absence of noise is impressive (assuming we talk about ISO 25k+ here).

Nevertheless, with the current tone curve, I can see a loss of fine detail even at 800px width (50% your posted size). 800px is only 1/38th #pixels which shifts ISO down from 51k to ISO 1350.

I really question the merit of playing ISO games at web resolutions. That's not serious.

[NightPorter]

What's amazing ISO!!!
Photo A ISO 200 (F6.3 1.3'')
Photo B ISO 51200 (F6.3 1/200'')

It's that true??? How can you do that?
It's seem we don't need FF anymore!
Lucky, I will get my K-5 next week.

[JohnBee]

I think that only 2 cameras before the K-5 went to 51200, The Nikon D3s and Canon 1DMKIV...... and I think only the D3s can say it performs better. At least from what I have seen.

Though this particular thread isn't about that, I would agree with you on that.
And keep in mind that even the mighty D3S won't get by without IQ loss and limitations.

@ JohnBee
Really good PP-job. These shots are so close to each other that one might need a third look to find out the differences.
As far as I have understood your initial posting you will give us a tutorial on how to get such results? What I am also interested in is the question if there is still enough headroom left (PP-wise) to enhance colors and contrast. Or is it pushed to the limits?

With this particular sample, I've found headroom in the following areas;
Highlights
Shadows

Other than channel recovery, color and contrast seem mostly independent type of control points. And they all seem to work within normal parameters.

and first foto as more DOF than the second one and i don´t look to the exif.

this can be a optic ilusion regarding the more noise reduction aplaied to the second foto.

One more thing John, please post 2 or 3 100%crop from the 2 fotos.

I think you are right about the DOF effect(due to NR).

Also, which areas did you have in mind for crops?

A has more fine grain detail and more coarse grain contrast (colors look a bit washed out in B).

Excellent points thx!

I really question the merit of playing ISO games at web resolutions. That's not serious.

I would disagree...
I have printed hundreds of max ISO images from my K20D and plan to do make use of the K-5 in this same way.
I beleive passing-on this knowledge to others will prove to be a great asset to the community both personally and technically.
Especially if we keep in mind that we are not all here as publishers.

What's amazing ISO!!!
Photo A ISO 200 (F6.3 1.3'')
Photo B ISO 51200 (F6.3 1/200'')

It's that true??? How can you do that?
It's seem we don't need FF anymore!
Lucky, I will get my K-5 next week.

It is true and I have been hard at work on publishing a step by step tutorial on this very topic.
I'm still not quite sure how I will embed the article in the forum(it's quite long), and so I might have to host it on an independent website instead. However, I'll check in with Adam to see what options we have to work it into the forum first.