[monochrome]

Amazing. Everytime something is said that can in any tiny way be perceived as speaking negative of Pentax, the poster gets latched on and yelled at.

Not every time; not every poster; not every tiny thing.

He wasn't bashing the camera but the test, he even said so himself a couple of posts up. Pulling hyperboles like this is useless and only serves to undermine the credibility of the community.

Actually, the comment was to criticize Pentax for possibly applying noise reduction to their RAW files (a 'trick' which it was said they had done before).

I will give you this though, writing "appears" instead of "is" is a very clever way of CYA in case the statement turns out to be incorrect, while still strongly implicating the quoted poster.

An interesting use of subjunctive to qualify the reach from these screen posts to RAW files, considering we're viewing jpeg's. An effective method to inject FUD into a discussion without actually knowing anything about the actual subject.

And all things considered, while I don't know Ron personally, I've been here long enough to gather he isn't one to mindlessly talk **** about Pentax.

I guess you haven't been around so much recently then. The most famous quite recent *&%$ talk - an entire thread, actually - was why Pentax should abandon the K-1 altogether before it bankrupts them.

I seriously think this thread needs to be locked, if only because there are major flaws with the test linked in the OP.

I'm down with that.

[redpit]

My only complaint is that I can still read the quotes from people that are in my ignore list...

[npc]

But we have already seen two different preproduction firmwares, and this is the older, worse one. Tweaking things like ISO calibration, noise reduction, colour calibration, is something that can easily be changed even later. And while I don't know how indicative the firmware numbers are, it seems like 0,3 and 0,4 are still far from 1,0. And since this is preproduction we don't even know if the hardware will be all the same, much less the firmware. Because the point of preproduction is to find faults and fix them before the real product hits the shelves. Excessive banding, noise, are exactly the kind of things that would get worked on, I think, especially since such a large part of a camera review these days is just the sensor performance.

We can only speculate here. The way I see it is in a camera there are 2 major software features and they are AF/metering algorithms and image processing. Both are probably not done from scratch but are evolution over previous models since they are only partially dependent on to the hardware.To make analogy with companies I used to work for - if features of that importance are not fully ready we would rather reschedule the release rather than ship preproduction samples to external people. On the other side if say the astrotracer algorithms needed more work - then that would not be a showstopper.

That said, I don't really see anything disturbing with the samples here - output seems similar to K5 OOC jpegs which is what can be realisticly expected, and the banding does not really look to me like it's something caused by the camera but rather than some outside lightning condition (just a guess). I think if carefully processed from RAW the results will be much better at these ISOs.

[derekkite]

They were not taken i RAW.

Yes, and the banding is a bug in the post processing code.

I'm certain you are seeing a few flaws here and there in your testing, but generally are you impressed?

[Parallax]

I will give you this though, writing "appears" instead of "is" is a very clever way of CYA in case the statement turns out to be incorrect, while still strongly implicating the quoted poster.

Not CYA at all. I make it a practice to avoid making declarative statements that I can't substantiate. I prefer to ask questions or clearly present opinion as opinion.

[Rondec]

Can we just settle a little and wait for final firmware? It isn't as though it will be months away, it should be coming out very soon.

There will be plenty of time after it is released to complain if it isn't what it should be. At present, I think it looks promising, but not perfect. As I said before, I am not likely to shoot with iso 51K and if I would, I definitely would shoot RAW. End of story to me.

[repaap]

Can we just settle a little and wait for final firmware? It isn't as though it will be months away, it should be coming out very soon.

There will be plenty of time after it is released to complain if it isn't what it should be. At present, I think it looks promising, but not perfect. As I said before, I am not likely to shoot with iso 51K and if I would, I definitely would shoot RAW. End of story to me.

Agreed.

[Parallax]

There will be plenty of time after it is released to complain if it isn't what it should be.

Some people feel "you shouldn't put off until tomorrow what you can do today".

[Rondec]

Some people feel "you shouldn't put off until tomorrow what you can do today".

True. At least when it comes to bashing Pentax.

On the other hand...

I was going to go my first Procrastinator Anonymous meeting tonight, but I decided to put it off till next week.

[Parallax]

Personally, I believe in never putting off until tomorrow what I can put off indefinitely.

[kenspo]

Yes, and the banding is a bug in the post processing code.

I'm certain you are seeing a few flaws here and there in your testing, but generally are you impressed?

Yes, very impressed

[JimmyDranox]

I have checked all the pictures, from ISO 100 to 204800, with and w/o Standard Noise Reduction at 100%. I think that are good result. Until ISO 1600, someone have to look very hard to find some traces of noise, or detail lose, and will find almost none. At 3200 some small traces can be find, but hardly. At 6400 noise can be find easy, but resized at 50%, image is good to used in most cases. Even at 12800 and 25600, images can be used in some cases.

Interestingly, I find the images without in camera noise reduction more pleasant, more detailed, with the natural color. Standard noise reduction from camera turn the noise from points to big spots on black, and also change the colors, from black to greenish. But on other colors situation is a little different.

About the comparison with other brands, at this point I find it useless. At this moment, number of Pentax professional FF lenses is not sufficient to draw many Nikon, or Canon users to Pentax. Those who will came, will do it for features they can't find in other brands, like Astrotracer, or Pixel Shift, and a direct comparison in resolution or noise will not be relevant for them. At least this is my opinion.

Even so, in these samples, Nikon is more noisier than Pentax. On the other hand, the comparison with Sony makes me wonder (once again) if Sony is selling second grade sensors to their competitors?

[Giklab]

Not every time; not every poster; not every tiny thing.

True. It happens often enough though...

Actually, the comment was to criticize Pentax for possibly applying noise reduction to their RAW files (a 'trick' which it was said they had done before).

I didn't see that as criticism, but then again I missed the thread you mentioned and probably have a different point of view because of that.

An interesting use of subjunctive to qualify the reach from these screen posts to RAW files, considering we're viewing jpeg's. An effective method to inject FUD into a discussion without actually knowing anything about the actual subject.

Like I said, these are obvously JPEGs
You are right about the FUD though.

---------- Post added 21-03-16 at 09:14 ----------

Not CYA at all. I make it a practice to avoid making declarative statements that I can't substantiate. I prefer to ask questions or clearly present opinion as opinion.

That's great then. I'm just allergic because some moderators (not speaking about this forum) use this tactic to troll hard.

[beholder3]

As for the approach to testing:
Keep in mind, Nikon's marketing guys adjust ISO scores to deceive amateur customers.
On the top end, the actual sensitivity is about half a stop worse than advertised, so when comparing noise results you must not compare in M mode with equal setting, but adjust EV +0,5 on Nikon (e.g. longer shutter). Nikon D810 vs Pentax K-5 II vs Nikon D800E

About sensor technology levels:
Also keep in mind that the noise performance of the D810 sensor is exactly the same as the K-5 II sensor performance:
Nikon D810 vs Pentax K-5 II vs Nikon D800E. It's just larger. So when pixelpeeping at 100% you simply have to expect K-5 II level results, unless it's a brandnew sensor after the D810.

Minimum noise levels:
What's also worth noting is that the D800E sensor reaches the same levels of minimum noise performance as the D810, but earlier, with lower ISO / faster shutter speeds, which is clearly better. If you want minimum noise on a D810 you need to use one stop faster glass or twice the shutter speeds, since you are forced to go down in ISO settings.

Dynamic range also same on D810 sensor tech level as K-5 II:
Nikon D810 vs Pentax K-5 II vs Nikon D800E
And finally keep in mind, that the dynamic range on sensor is the same between the K-5 II and the D810, better than the D800E. And ISO 70 until ISO 1200 Pentax K-5 II implementation is even better than D810 by 1/3 stop.

So whatever Nikon fanboys try to tell you that the D810 sensor itself is a significant hardware difference to the D800E should first prove (and that is beyond the "I read" or "I heard" myths or self-important blogger opinions) it with proven facts.
DxOmarks is not really a reliable source, but according to what they publish the K-5 II would then be a Sony sensor engineered to Pentax specifications as much as as the D810 mythically being a different variant of the D800E one.
The K-5 II sensor differences and advantages versus D800E/D810 sensor are of the same (un-) significance.

From the facts you can just deduce there are tiny differences between the results measured and it's not a far call to say that the winning recipe is the firmware driven processing alone.

Let's have a larger version of the K-5 II sensor with Pentax very good processing and we'll all be fine.

By the way:
There is also the measuring margin of error. Just look at two times the exact same sensor done by the same maker:
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R II vs Sony A7R II
Still some deviations exist up to 0.8db on noise. Go explain this, Ken Dumbwells of the world.

[redpit]

As for the approach to testing:
Keep in mind, Nikon's marketing guys adjust ISO scores to deceive amateur customers.
On the top end, the actual sensitivity is about half a stop worse than advertised, so when comparing noise results you must not compare in M mode with equal setting, but adjust EV +0,5 on Nikon (e.g. longer shutter). Nikon D810 vs Pentax K-5 II vs Nikon D800E

About sensor technology levels:
Also keep in mind that the noise performance of the D810 sensor is exactly the same as the K-5 II sensor performance:
Nikon D810 vs Pentax K-5 II vs Nikon D800E. It's just larger. So when pixelpeeping at 100% you simply have to expect K-5 II level results, unless it's a brandnew sensor after the D810.

Minimum noise levels:
What's also worth noting is that the D800E sensor reaches the same levels of minimum noise performance as the D810, but earlier, with lower ISO / faster shutter speeds, which is clearly better. If you want minimum noise on a D810 you need to use one stop faster glass or twice the shutter speeds, since you are forced to go down in ISO settings.

Dynamic range also same on D810 sensor tech level as K-5 II:
Nikon D810 vs Pentax K-5 II vs Nikon D800E
And finally keep in mind, that the dynamic range on sensor is the same between the K-5 II and the D810, better than the D800E. And ISO 70 until ISO 1200 Pentax K-5 II implementation is even better than D810 by 1/3 stop.

So whatever Nikon fanboys try to tell you that the D810 sensor itself is a significant hardware difference to the D800E should first prove (and that is beyond the "I read" or "I heard" myths or self-important blogger opinions) it with proven facts.
DxOmarks is not really a reliable source, but according to what they publish the K-5 II would then be a Sony sensor engineered to Pentax specifications as much as as the D810 mythically being a different variant of the D800E one.
The K-5 II sensor differences and advantages versus D800E/D810 sensor are of the same (un-) significance.

From the facts you can just deduce there are tiny differences between the results measured and it's not a far call to say that the winning recipe is the firmware driven processing alone.

Let's have a larger version of the K-5 II sensor with Pentax very good processing and we'll all be fine.

By the way:
There is also the measuring margin of error. Just look at two times the exact same sensor done by the same maker:
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R II vs Sony A7R II
Still some deviations exist up to 0.8db on noise. Go explain this, Ken Dumbwells of the world.

In addition to your words, I like that Pentax makes its comparisons with the K-5 performance:

"PENTAX achieved a combination of 16 effective megapixels and ISO 51200 with the PENTAX K-5, which was highly acclaimed for its outstanding image quality. In terms of pixel pitch, the PENTAX K-1’s image sensor is almost at the same level as that of the PENTAX K-5, and offers some extra room over the PENTAX K-3’s 24-megapixel sensor. This was where PENTAX’s expertise, gained over many years in the industry, became valuable for the development of this 35mm full-frame camera. After repeated fine-tuning, PENTAX successfully output RAW-format image data with very little noise. The next issue was how to make the best use of this RAW-format image data. The task of harmonizing high image quality with high sensitivity was left to the image processing team. "

Challengers | PENTAX K-1 Special site | RICOH IMAGING