[rawr]

Interesting PP wizardry guys. Very impressive.

For those of us without such skills, I hope Adobe will profile the K-5 and K-r as well as they have profiled the K-x. It's really impressive how well K-x high-ISO images emerge out of LR3, with lots of detail and minimal noise. If Adobe do the same good job on the K-5 profile, lots of wedding photographers (amongst other photogs) are going to find the K-5 a great tool.

[aleonx3]

You guys are way out of my league. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and skills. I am excited.... and when the timing is right, I will add the K-5 and my K10D be demoted as my third camera (sold my K100D).

[imtheguy]

Many thanks to FS999 for giving us all something to drool on this weekend. Compared to my K20D it looks as if my wildlife shots can gain TWO STOPS with the K-5 for similar IQ. I am looking at the iso3200 compared to my iso800. OMG, that means those active critters I am suffering at 1/400s on cloudy days and teleconverters may now be a sharp 1/1600s if needed. Oh yes!

[photogerald]

Wow, thanks so much fs999!

Judging from these in-camera JPGs, it looks like I could easily use ISO1600 in place of ISO800 on my K20D, and maybe even ISO2000!

But even more important, the lower ISO's should also show improvements. Very exciting!!

[photogerald]

Many thanks to FS999 for giving us all something to drool on this weekend. Compared to my K20D it looks as if my wildlife shots can gain TWO STOPS with the K-5 for similar IQ. I am looking at the iso3200 compared to my iso800. OMG, that means those active critters I am suffering at 1/400s on cloudy days and teleconverters may now be a sharp 1/1600s if needed. Oh yes!

Lee, I was thinking the same thing re: ISO3200. But the in-camera NR at this setting is starting to become obvious. That said, the WB is spot-on and there are no colour casts or banding. And the DR looks good too. It's definitely a big improvement for us K20D owners!

[photogerald]

Ron - I also wanted to thank you for the 645D shots.

[imtheguy]

Lee, I was thinking the same thing re: ISO3200. But the in-camera NR at this setting is starting to become obvious. That said, the WB is spot-on and there are no colour casts or banding. And the DR looks good too. It's definitely a big improvement for us K20D owners!

Hopefully we can turn off NR for jpeg at 3200 and do our own processing. I can shoot RAW if needed...just never learned to process them correctly!

[jpzk]

Thanks
I too tried Noiseware Pro and a host of other NR tools. Mainly to see how they would response to the image grain. However, after a few trials, I settled on a blend of ACR Chroma/Luma and finished off with Denoise afterward. So a little of both.

One of the main issues I've found with reference to the grain in this particular sample is that external noise reduction systems don't seem to recognize the noise patterns as actual noise. If I had to guess, I'd say that the grain(cross hatch noise) is too large to be effectively identified as noise by the actual software.

So to test this theory, I interpolated the image to 26MP in ACR, to effectively shrink image grain size and ended-up with the following:

K-5, ISO51200 (ISO102400 equivalent), Early ACR sampling:


It's not a huge leap over the previous sample, though it is an improvement.
So at least we will have that much to look forward too, when better samples do come around

Well, John, this looks actually better than the previous PP job.

I can see that NoisewarePro deosn't quite equate the results which you are gaining from Denoise.
Which also tells me that my NR software isn't quite up to par. One reason more to get it.
I did a couple of adjustments, using ACR in Chroma/Luma and also increased the exposure a bit. Then of course, importing the image into NoisewarePro and trying to tweak the noise didn't do much at all, as I mentioned earlier.

One thing that I don't understand is how you "interpolated" the image to 26Mb in ACR. I do realize that you's therefore decrease the grain "size" and that would make, possibly (?) make the software now recognize it as "real noise", grain being not so large.

EDIT: Actually, I tried the "Forensic Photoshop" method with using a resizing job based on opening the file as a Smart Object, which allows to resize without adding/removing anything from the original.
That works to a certain degree, however, once again when it is imported into the NR software, things don't get much better.
So that may confirm the fact that Denoise might be the final choice.

I'm not trying to rob you of your workflow, John; just trying to understand the principles behind it.

Keep up the great work!

Cheers,

JP

[JohnBee]

So to test this theory...

Another try with a few more angles on getting more out of the file. The main issue is always(of course) under exposure and the effects of added noise for raising eV in Camera Raw. Though I starting to beleive that there may be enough detail in a properly exposed file to actually remain useful.

v3 w/ .85 eV push and a little brightness correction.


It's quite clear that the file would require at least a full stop of exposure to recover, However since that equivalent an ISO102400 image, I figured there's little realism behind such an edit.

However, in the lighter areas of the original image(ie. shirt collar), the level of detail preservation through NR seems quite positive.

[jpzk]

Photogerald and Lee:

I am too looking forward to having the means to shoot at higher ISO without having to worry about shutter speed and noisy issues with wildlife shots.

By the looks of it, the K5 this far is just what I needed, ISO-wise.

Now, one main, and last, issue I would really like to see is that the K5 will somehow REALLY have a better AF.
This will likely show up soon with Adam's testing of the K5.

Cheers.

JP

[traderdrew]

ISO 51200 looks like it'd be fun to try to use at concerts with black and white images. I wonder what sort of shutter speeds you could get away with

Good point. I've noticed some shots with my K-7 where I had a low shutter speed and higher iso and the low shutter speed seemed to help reduce the noise. I think the longer exposure let more light in thus, it sort of burned away the noise.

[JohnBee]

One thing that I don't understand is how you "interpolated" the image to 26Mb in ACR. I do realize that you's therefore decrease the grain "size" and that would make, possibly (?) make the software now recognize it as "real noise", grain being not so large.

When you open a file in Camera Raw, there is an option at the bottom to select image resolution. My theory is/was that if you raise the resolution, that ACR will effectively reduce the pixel size which in turn would allow the noise reduction software to treat the image differently.

At this point, I can't honestly say if it improved things much, but it seems to of changed final output in some ways.

On a same note, I've noticed the Kx shares many of the same attributes as the K-5 when it comes to high ISO noise patterns. In the sense that it too presents a sort of ceiling to which NR management begins to loose it's effect on noise patterns in high ISO images. I suspect this is all relative to the way the NR software filters or identifies noise in an image and at which point, it noise becomes to prevalent, the software can no longer distinguish between noise and that of veritable image data.

Though one thing I've noticed is where this type of noise(Kx and K-5) is quite consistent or uniform. Which may actually end-up being a good thing as may allow for a specific filtering systems to better target and separate noise from actual image detail. In which case, if you look over the ISO51200 RAW image carefully, you'll notice that there is a good deal of detail within the RAW image despite the noise patterns. Which tells me that we may see yet more major advancements in noise reduction in the near future.

To which I'd say... who knows how far this could go. ISO102400 may be a reality much sooner than we though

[wll]

This "IS" the camera I've waited for !!!!

High ISO is out of this world, I was not expecting the high ISO to be better than the K-x especially with more MP.

Outstanding !!!!


wll

[jpzk]

When you open a file in Camera Raw, there is an option at the bottom to select image resolution. My theory is/was that if you raise the resolution, that ACR will effectively reduce the pixel size which in turn would allow the noise reduction software to treat the image differently.

At this point, I can't honestly say if it improved things much, but it seems to of changed final output in some ways.

On a same note, I've noticed the Kx shares many of the same attributes as the K-5 when it comes to high ISO noise patterns. In the sense that it too presents a sort of ceiling to which NR management begins to loose it's effect on noise patterns in high ISO images. I suspect this is all relative to the way the NR software filters or identifies noise in an image and at which point, it noise becomes to prevalent, the software can no longer distinguish between noise and that of veritable image data.

Though one thing I've noticed is where this type of noise(Kx and K-5) is quite consistent or uniform. Which may actually end-up being a good thing as may allow for a specific filtering systems to better target and separate noise from actual image detail. In which case, if you look over the ISO51200 RAW image carefully, you'll notice that there is a good deal of detail within the RAW image despite the noise patterns. Which tells me that we may see yet more major advancements in noise reduction in the near future.

To which I'd say... who knows how far this could go. ISO102400 may be a reality much sooner than we though

Thanks again John.
Yes, I saw this and gave it a try.
Again, NoisewarePro cannot handle the noise as well as I would like.
((See my previous post above)).
Looking at the RAW file, indeed there is a whole lot of details within all of that noise!
If one could only "remove" the noise, and not just "washing it out", the image would probably become very, very clear.
But let me tell you that your method of noise reduction always amazes me.

Cheers.

JP

[photogerald]

Now, one main, and last, issue I would really like to see is that the K5 will somehow REALLY have a better AF.
This will likely show up soon with Adam's testing of the K5.

Given that improvements to AF have been touted by Pentax, I think we will be happy.