[Anvh]

Why do you need to hold a camera to know what's inside it?
Besides the K30 demo's are running on K-01 firmware, that should be a big give away don't you think...
And we know the K30 and the K-01 uses the sony 16mp sensor and Prime-M processor sure there are differnces but non that has anything to do with the quality of the image processing.
So please tell me why the K-01 won't be a good estimated for the image quality of the K30, i explained myself now it's your turn.


About yet again, i posted a photo specially for you int the other thread with the aperture blades of the DA 40 but you not replying there tells me enough.

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Last edited by Anvh; 06-13-2012 at 07:48 AM.

[normhead]

Why do you need to hold a camera to know what's inside it?

I'm restraining myself from unleashing some unwarranted sexual innuendo, or worse.

[Ryan Trevisol]

I think it really depends on your frame of reference.

I'm coming from a K-x, and I think I'm going to upgrade this summer. I'm going to go with the K-30, because of the reasons WHY I'm upgrading from my K-x:

• Looking for better low-light AF
• When shooting manual flash, I really wish I had an AF Assist lamp
• Really miss focus viewfinder points
• The screen is pretty crappy. It often makes a bad shot look good, and I don't re-take it
• The viewfinder is a bit dark for me esp with glasses
• The K-x has always been too small for my hands
• Taller popup flash will help with the shadow cast by my 16-45

Both the K-5 and the K-30 will satisfy those issues. So when I look at the list of advantages the K-5 has over the K-30, only a few are tempting:

1. metal body - This one sounds important but I've never dropped a DSLR in 6 years
2. 14 bit RAW - Would be very nice to have, but I don't feel hampered by the 12-bit on my K-x in terms of DR or IQ
3. 80 - 51200 ISO - ISO80 would be nice to have, but native ISO100 on the K-30 will be better than the "fake" 100 I have now.
4. microphone jack - If I shoot something where audio matters, I'll have to record separately, but I don't have a need for it now
5. More effective self sensor cleaning - I got a spec of dust on my K-x for the first time last month. My Giottos' rocket got it off
6. K-5 has slightly better IQ at all ISO's, see DXO graphs - When you add the K-x to those graphs, the K-30 shows a significant improvement

Then I look at the advantages the K-30 has on the K-5

1. Likely improvement of AF
2. Focus Peaking
3. Prime M processor

Those are really important for me. The AF Improvement is one of the reasons I want to switch cameras, and the K-30 should be at least as good as the k-5 but will likely be better. The focus peaking will be good for when I use my beloved manual lenses.

But perhaps the biggest thing is the Prime M chip. Check out this link. Especially the Dynamic Range RAW graph. The crossover point where the K-01 becomes worse than the K-5 is right around ISO2000, which is the highest ISO I shoot with any frequency.

So in my case, the advantages of the K-30 outweigh the advantages of the K-5.

[Anvh]

Then I look at the advantages the K-30 has on the K-5

1. Likely improvement of AF
2. Focus Peaking
   
3. Prime M processor

Why is the Prime-M better?

[Ryan Trevisol]

Why is the Prime-M better?

Well if you read the link I posted, the K-01 with the same sensor and Prime M processing chip delivered better signal to noise ratio (more significantly in JPEG) and better Dynamic Range (particularly in RAW) at ISO under 2000.

And then if you remember the thread ron hendricks started, that you posted in, where he observed that the K-01 processed files even faster than the K-5? We already know the chip makes the playback much faster.

Or . . . read the DPReview review of the K-01, where the detail in the RAW is clearly as good or better in some cases than the K-5 . . .

But I get the feeling you're just antagonizing the point.

[Anvh]

If you look at DXO you see that isn't the case though, it's because of the 14bit of the k5 giving it more information therefore more dynamic range.
DxOMark - Compare cameras side by side

In the thread with Ron we talked about jpeg not RAW.
With jpeg it's indeed faster but with RAW things are still questionable, we will need to wait for a hands-on comparison.
Also Playback and image processing are different parts of the chip, the speed of one doesn't say anything of the speed of the other.
The D7000 for example does also playback faster then the K5 but the K5 process thee images faster.

[Ryan Trevisol]

Of course I've seen DxOMark on the two cameras. I find it interesting that TechRepublic used DxO's analyzer software and came up with the charts they published. Source. Even if they made a mistake when testing, Prime M has to be an improvement over Prime II. I work in computer software design. The Prime engine is a combination of hardware and software specifically designed for one another. The thing about computer hardware is that it never goes backwards. Processors always get faster, capacity increases, price of flash memory goes down, and software design gets better.

The K-5 uses the Prime II engine to great effect, and it does great at quickly processing RAW and JPG, but one thing it isn't too great at is video. Motion JPEG is terribly inefficient for disc space and post-processing, but it's easier for the Prime II engine (because it's essentially a string of 1280x720 or 1920x1080 JPEG's) to process. Prime M (the M probably stands for motion) if nothing else, incorporates hardware h.264 encoding, which is the de facto standard for video these days. That's a major improvement that I appreciate, and it means that some serious engineering went into the new engine.

In 2012, if I was buying a computer that I wanted to use for the next 3 years, I wouldn't go buy a computer with a Core 2 Duo when the Ivy Bridge Core i7 is available. Sometimes you need a latest-gen plastic HP Elitebook instead of a beautiful last-generation Macbook Pro.

Bottom line with all of this is - the K30 does at least nearly as well as the K-5, and much better than the K-x, with all the features I want. Even if you go by DxO mark, the only place the K-30 scores significantly lower than the K-5 is on the landscape test, which starts to evaluate the availability of 14-bit RAW. In every other test, the K-30 scores very close to the K-5, and significantly better than the K-x.

[Anvh]

But you know that for each function you also have different hardware and software, by the looks of it the Prime-M processor is aimed at the consumer level with his great JPEG function and speed with that and the h.264 video codec but if you look at the features, no HDMI out during filming for example with the K-01 which the K5 can do and no 14bit as of yet and the very low buffer estimate given by Pentax for RAW seems to support that thought.
So my guess is that the Prime-M is aimed for the consumers more at the jpeg shooters and i hope there will be a Prime-III aimed for the more professional market with more features and aimed at RAW performance since dual Prime-M doesn't look like an elegant solution.

About video, Motionjpeg is indeed memory hungry but it holds more information then h.264 and since i edit my videos i would rather have that.
And there are also some complains here about the video quality of the K-01 compared to the K5, i haven't looked into it myself but so far it does not sound hopeful.



ps. i'm not saying Prime-M is a bad processor i'm just saying that his focus/strength is different then the Prime-II and as such the advancement it makes is not that great in some situations.

[Ryan Trevisol]

Well, the Prime II engine was in the K-x, K-r, K-7, and K-5. They had different capabilities and buffers. The K-x did 4.7 fps, the K-r did 6fps, and the K-5 did 7 fps, all with the same basic underlying architecture, with different buffers and firmware. I doubt highly that they created an image processor architecture just for their lower-level cameras. The investment and development required in such an exercise would be cost-prohibitive if it didn't benefit them across their whole lineup.

Nobody has a finalized copy of the K-30 yet, do they? Do we have any hard numbers about its buffer size vs the K-5 or the K-01? None that I have seen. We're basing a lot of this on the K-01, which shares the same basic architecture and sensor as the K-30, however, it must be kept in mind that the K-01 is a significantly cheaper camera, and is not aimed at the same person as the K-30. The lower price alone would probably prohibit Pentax from putting as much high-speed flash ram in the K-01 as they could put in the K-30, or even the K-5, and certainly the K-3.

As proof, consider:
The K-01 does 6FPS in JPEG for 10 shots, and 2.5fps after that. The K-01 does 1FPS RAW.
The K-30 is spec'd to do 6FPS in JPEG for 30 shots, and 10 RAW.

Both with the Prime M engine. What do you think is the difference? Is the mirrorless, always-live-view mode of the K-01 slowing it down? Or is it given a smaller buffer, and possibly a lower-clock-speed version of the Prime M? It gets 100 more shots out of the same battery as the K-30, and its screen is on ALL the time.

It's also about marketing differentiation. Pentax knows that K-5 sales are going to drop off to nearly nothing once the K-30 hits. They'll sell out of their stock of K-5s while they finish the K-3. If the K-3 doesn't deliver significant advantages over the K-30, it won't sell well. The fact that they put the K-30 so close in capabilities to the K-5 says they have something BIG planned for the K-3 . . . think 2k video, 1080p@60fps, 10+fps burst, all at 20+mp. If it doesn't deliver much higher than the K-30, it won't sell very well.

Bottom line, I'm sure that the Prime M could be paired with a deeper buffer, and could handle 14-bit RAW, since it probably is based off of the Prime II. If the Prime M can't handle 14-bit RAW at least as well as the Prime II, that would just be stupid. They would have had to step backward to create the new chip, and no one does that.

If anything, the Prime M could just be a higher-clock-speed Prime II with a dedicated h.264 chip. I could be wrong, and they could introduce a Prime III with the K-3, but if they do, it would probably be a dual-core, high-buffer version of the Prime M.

[Anvh]

I'm not talking about the size of the buffer but the differnce in how many jpegs vs how many RAW it can hold comparing the two processors.
Look at how many JPEGS there can be shot continuously with for example the K30 and compare that with RAW, now separately compare the same with the Kr or K5 and put the result of those together.
The JPEG increased a lot with the Prime-M processor there is no doubt about that but RAW processing is hardly changed according the specs so we need to wait for the real camera performance to see if there is any improvement at all in fact.


These are numbers from Pentax self.
K30
- Continuous Hi: Approx 6.0 FPS (30 JPG, 8 RAW)

kr
- Approx 6.0 FPS (Continuous Hi: 25 JPG, 12 RAW)

You see what i mean, Prime-M better JPEG performance Prime-II better RAW.
I'm not saying these are real world performance but so far the indication seems to be like i'm saying.
I know the Kr is 12mp and k30 16mp but we are talking about the balance between the jpeg and raw photos nothing more.
With the Kr you get 50% of the performance with RAW compared with jpeg and with the K30 that is 30%



The Prime-II is a Fujitsu Milbeaut M-5 the M-6 is quite a step up if we look at the specs it's not close to what the Prime-M puts out.

[madbrain]

Anvh,

These are numbers from Pentax self.
K30
- Continuous Hi: Approx 6.0 FPS (30 JPG, 8 RAW)

kr
- Approx 6.0 FPS (Continuous Hi: 25 JPG, 12 RAW)

You see what i mean, Prime-M better JPEG performance Prime-II better RAW.

The K-30 is a 16 MP camera, and the K-r is 12 MP. That's 33% more data per image.
Thus, the JPEG data rate is much higher - 30*16 / (25*12) = 1.6 , ie. 60% higher on the K-30.
Surprisingly, the opposite is true for RAW.
8*16 / (12*12) = 0.88 , ie. 11% slower on the K-30.

IMO, this is probably an error in the quoted specs and we should wait for the production model .

I'm not saying these are real world performance but so far the indication seems to be like i'm saying.
I know the Kr is 12mp and k30 16mp but we are talking about the balance between the jpeg and raw photos nothing more.
With the Kr you get 50% of the performance with RAW compared with jpeg and with the K30 that is 30%

The Prime-II is a Fujitsu Milbeaut M-5 the M-6 is quite a step up if we look at the specs it's not close to what the Prime-M puts out.

IMO, it's extremely unlikely that Pentax has taken a step backwards with their new chip. As has been stated before, nobody out there does that.
Chips are generally getting more powerful, smaller, and more power efficient. It's possible they cut the buffer size, though, but that seems unlikely.

[Anvh]

Who said the processor is a stepbackwards, it might cost half of the money the prime-II cost so getting roughly the same RAW preformance and far better jpeg for half the price is a stepforwards if you ask me.

[ihasa]

Had a little play with a couple of ISO400 RAW samples downloaded from dpreview - gave them an extreme treatment of +100 fill light and +100 brightness in ACR, to see what sort of noise you get from both with this extreme treatment. K-01 left, K5 right.

[Anvh]

Download the ISO100 samples to make 14bit vs 12bit more aperent

[RonHendriks1966]

These are numbers from Pentax self.
K30
- Continuous Hi: Approx 6.0 FPS (30 JPG, 8 RAW)

kr
- Approx 6.0 FPS (Continuous Hi: 25 JPG, 12 RAW)

You see what i mean, Prime-M better JPEG performance Prime-II better RAW.

These numbers are mainly about the sensorperformance, in this case identical, namely 6 fps output on sensor and onboard A/D conversion and the dept of the buffer.

I did a test with RAW+jpg with all lenscorrections set ON. So giving the processor the maximum workload. I did this with 645D, K-5, K-01 and Q. So taking the K-01 as equal to K-30 this is to messure up:

K-5: in buffer 18 images (about 3 seconds) and up to one minute again 18 images (total of 36 images). It took 53 seconds to clear the buffer after stopping taking new images.
K-01: in buffer 3 images (also 3 seconds, but number three could also be a little delaid) and then 39 images up to one minute (total of 42 images). It took 3 seconds to clear the buffer.

So my rough guess:
K-01 39/57=0.684 fps after full buffer; 3/3=1 image/s processed (this where the error is, since the buffer is probably just two images and one image at the start was processed during the image taking and again processing speed is 2/3th image/s).
K-5 18/57=0,316 fps after full buffer; 18/53=0,340 images/s processed (correction here would be 17/53=0,321 image/s).

On the processor:
This a little bit rough, since there are many different things that can happen here depending on choices Pentax made on the firmware and type of processing. K-5 has 14-bit RAW where K-01 has 12-bit RAW, but both have 8-bit jpg.

K-01 is maybe twice the speed of K-5, but the chips can't be the same!