[reh321]

No, it does not rest on a 'shaky assumption' and definitely not on a 'control signal' being used.

My assessment rests on in-depth knowledge about modern digital components, as opposed to assuming that cameras are built using 1980's technology.

.......................................

The behaviour of a DSP is entirely controlled by firmware. It would be a piece of cake for Ricoh to change the behaviour of the 'accelerator' unit if it is a DSP, including making it behave neutrally for all ISO settings.

If we only had one more person familiar with modern electronics in this thread, they would have to agree with me immediately.

I'll leave it at this now and won't be responding to further posts from you that lack technical merit, unless you have a genuine question to me in which case I'd be happy to answer.

This technical detour began because of your unfamiliarity with the still-current terms 'signal' and 'pin-out', which someone familiar with modern electronics should understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinout

The shaky assumption is your belief that a 'simple' programming change would accomplish your goal. I have performed embedded programming, and I can tell you with certainty that embedded code is typically intricate and dense. Making a 'simple' change usually is not a simple task, hardly ever "a piece of cake".

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Last edited by reh321; 01-01-2019 at 09:23 PM.

[Ash]

Please express differences of opinion less personally if possible, people. Thanks.

[beholder3]

Well, if you agree that noise reduction will also remove detail, you agree that some detail is "killed off", right? Killing something off is harmful, no?

I have no issue at all with people not being the least concerned with detail being killed off.
They have every right to be OK with the "harmful" behaviour, but it nevertheless remains "harmful"/"destructive", no?

We are splitting hairs here, I guess we both understand the point the other is trying to make.

I see it all as a subjective cost/benefit decision. Calling any noise reduction application - including any person on the world ever using a software to do this - "harmful" is not how I see it. I'd call it "harmful" only in the cases where cost is bigger than benefit - a very personal decision. If 99% of test sample users do not see the lost detail but do see the reduced noise, then Ricoh made an understandable decision.
Though I fully agree that it would have been preferrable to have an option switch to activate it.

Sadly there are actually dozens of hardcoded behaviours in cameras which I'd prefer to have option switches for.

My guess is that this all is tribute to the cameras being mass market entertainment electronic gimmicks which have to be "foolproof".

[Culture]

All of this drama. If Ricoh was to put as much drama in their advertising maybe wont be here fighting each other about us getting screwed.

---------- Post added 02-01-19 at 13:43 ----------

Folks, let's keep this friendly and respectful, please. First day of a brand new year, and all that

Thank you!

With this cool head of yours, I wonder if your wife is ever able to goad you into a fight. The frustration alone trying must be annoying.....

[biz-engineer]

The bottom line is, confusing between new camera model and model update. The K1 II is a K1 with a tweak, and there is not need to split hairs. Taking a tweaked model of a good camera and presenting as worst camera model of 2018 based on the tweak not being big enough is not a fair review, especially when the third worst camera model is completely in a different league. Given the knowledge of how "loyal" Pentaxians are, there was an agenda with that review, likely aimed at provocation. The provocation worked very well, unfortunately, it was one more incomplete and inaccurate evaluation that contribute to damage the Pentax brand.

[BigMackCam]

All of this drama. If Ricoh was to put as much drama in their advertising maybe wont be here fighting each other about us getting screwed.

---------- Post added 02-01-19 at 13:43 ----------



With this cool head of yours, I wonder if your wife is ever able to goad you into a fight. The frustration alone trying must be annoying.....

I was married for 23 years and I imagine we argued as much as any couple... but only in private; never with an audience

[biz-engineer]

I was married for 23 years and I imagine we argued as much as any couple... but only in private; never with an audience

Pentax is more serious matter than that! Anyway, a Pentax K1 or K1 II unboxing may starve you other's from attention for a while. And we've never seen a Pentax K1 or K1 II complain about his owner.

[Rondec]

The premise is that the K-1 has been discontinued. The K-1 II replaced it. It is not an alternative offer.

As a result, if you want to buy a Pentax full-frame camera, you are forced to also buy and use the accelerator processing, lock, stock and barrel.

Maybe, right now, one would still be able to get a K-1 but what if you want the improved AF-C performance of the K-1 II?
What if you want to use the "Dynamic Pixel Shift" feature of the K-1 II?
If you want those perks, you have no choice but accept the non-optional "accelerator" processing as well.
Why would that have to be the case?
Why not give people the choice, so that they have access to all the K-1 II perks and can use them or not use them whenever they see fit?


That approach is a good solution if an impasse has been reached.

However, in our case, I believe our disagreement is based on a misunderstanding.
You don't have a problem with the K-1 II's mandatory "accelerator" processing for two reasons:

1. You feel it is only a positive.
2. You suggest anyone not liking it, should just get a K-1.

Regarding 2., see above; it's unfortunately not that easy.

Regarding 1., that's fine for you personally, but surely you are willing to grant others a different evaluation of the pros and cons of the "accelerator" processing, right? That's why you are using argument 2. as well, correct?

So, overall, I don't see why we should agree to disagree. I think we should just agree that only having the K-1 II as a choice is not ideal for everybody.

I don't think you hear me correctly. With regard to 1, I think it just isn't a big deal to most people. To me, it is much akin to small or even moderate differences in DXO Mark scores. Those are real things, but despite them, Canon continues to sell cameras, even though their sensors have trailed Sony's for quite awhile. These are good Forum fodder for discussion, but most photographers just don't care as long as the camera focuses decently and exposes images correctly and is nice and sharp through normal iso range.

With regard to 2, there are still both new and used K-1s on the market. If someone is bothered by this processing, they can still easily purchase an original K-1 and save money, in particular, if they purchase used. Both of these cameras are probably due to be replaced in the next year to year and a half and so this discussion will perhaps go away at that point.

I just feel strongly that this is a molehill standing beside some mountains. Pentax doesn't sell because of lack of marketing, lack of presence in stores, and perhaps lack of some key features, not because they have an accelerator on the K-1 II that kicks in at iso 640.

[Breakfastographer]

We know that the "accelerator" unit doesn't perform any denoising at ISO 100. So there's your solution, even in the completely implausible case that there wouldn't be a better way to avoid the "accelerator" processing. No need for an "off/on signal line".

Let's, for argument's sake, see how far that can take us, assuming ISOlessness. The K-1 II allows -5 EV in exposure compensation, so assuming you were going to expose normally to start with, you could get to an equivalent of ISO 12,800 in this way. Beyond that, you'd need to go manual.

It is my understanding that you can't cheat using exposure bracketing mode, either - at least on some older bodies, exposure bracketing will refuse to go lower than the limit of what's shown on the display - in this case, -5 EV in toto.

[MMVIII]

First, as has been told repeatedly, dpr's take on this case was flawed from the beginning and resulted now in a very defensive, not to say insecure agressive, reaction from their side, trying to put themselves in the victim role against a constructed mass. Nothing more to say here.

On the second topic discussed here: the point is, that the amount of alteration is completely misrepresented in comparison to the drama - which was ignited exactly by this flawed evaluation.

I'm in aerial photography and I'm used to play with various parameters if I have to achieve a certain level of detail of the final product I photograph from the air. The resolution on the ground level is given as the Ground Sampling Distance. If I need to recognise objects or features of a certain size the GSD has to be at an appropriate dimension. I would assume that the same could be applied to other objects, be it stars, or hair and fur etc. If the focal length, the distance to the object, the resolution of the sensor, the focal plane, the lenses resolving power, the position in the frame, the amount of available light, the motion blur, the raw convertor or the PP are not suitable for the task, there might be problems.
It seems almost impossible to get images in daily life which don't differ in more than one of these parameters. The studio scene might exclude some, but is still far from a consistent setup that would allow the evaluation of one single parameter. This is why noone complained about the IQ of the KP with the AC. A comparison amongst different systems shows the top notch quality that is achieved, and that is the sole point of the system as it was designed.

In case of the K1/II it was possible to do a closer comparison, due to their similarity in many parameters. But the initial assessment was flawed, and any differences where highly inflated.

The argument, that there might be a future development which might give you better results with your raw collection if it would not pass the AC is purely academic, and I consider it as a non issue in real photography. If you did not take your photos with the right parameters to achieve the desired results now, you have done something wrong and hoping for a future deus ex machina to save you would be not very sensical, IMHO.

[normhead]

Exactly. I based my opinion on this topic exactly on such a comparison. It is obvious that the theoretical, even if measurable by fourier transformation analysis, "loss of detail" is something that would be almost impossible to observe in everyday photography and is masked by multiple parameters by a high factor. The focusing, resolving power of the lens and by a huge amount by the demosaicing algorithm of the raw convertor. The last does produce horrible results for the Sony, that should have an resolving advantage due to the sensors resolution, which is in some parts completely lost.

This seems to be also the biggest source of disagreement between the reviewers and the actual users. The reviewers jumped to conclusions after they thought they nailed the "detail loss" by using Bill Claffs analysis and supporting it with images. When it became obvious that the images were technically insufficient and could not be used to support such a claim they started to get defensive and still insisted that this sensor would be a "star eater on steroids", which also turned out to simply not being true. That it would be practically impossible to see "data loss" is supported by the fact of the initial assessment of the KP image quality and the praise for it "boxing in a higher class"...

Now there is only the fact, that some are still following the idea of "pureness" of the raw, and they see this endangered by the K1IIs implementation. But this is a matter of principle and probably not possible to come to any common conclusions on that.

Trying to sum it up:

If your photos would suffer or become only slightly less usable because of the accelerator unit you should be alarmed and have changed multiple other parameters before you could blame this chip.

^One of my favourite posts, thanks for posting.

One of my first big endorsements for digital photography was an aerial photographer who shot images of people's cottage lots for their walls. The fact that he'd switched to digital for the resolution, which in his case was all important, let me know, sooner or later I was going to want to.

What many don't understand is that, people who work with the technology actually have a much better understanding of what these things mean than website camera reviewers who essentially aren't qualified to babysit your kids, forget about understand the parameters necessary for camera evaluation, and the limitations of such evaluations.

The only thing that would make these guys more believable would be a thorough description of the limitations of their evaluations like the side effects for medications. Essentially, if you don't know where you're going wrong, you have no idea how to improve your evaluations. Web site analysts are little better than snake oil salesmen.

What's more irritating than that is people who go looking for a problem, who do something no photographer would ever do to demonstrate a "problem" then claim there was something wrong with that the manufacturer did. If you discover a problem, that no one will ever come across in daily use, honestly, no one cares.

[Breakfastographer]

The argument, that there might be a future development which might give you better results with your raw collection if it would not pass the AC [...]

As I have shown, there is such a case RIGHT NOW, not in the future.

[reh321]

It seems almost impossible to get images in daily life which don't differ in more than one of these parameters. The studio scene might exclude some, but is still far from a consistent setup that would allow the evaluation of one single parameter. This is why noone complained about the IQ of the KP with the AC. A comparison amongst different systems shows the top notch quality that is achieved, and that is the sole point of the system as it was designed.

In case of the K1/II it was possible to do a closer comparison, due to their similarity in many parameters. But the initial assessment was flawed, and any differences where highly inflated.

The argument, that there might be a future development which might give you better results with your raw collection if it would not pass the AC is purely academic, and I consider it as a non issue in real photography. If you did not take your photos with the right parameters to achieve the desired results now, you have done something wrong and hoping for a future deus ex machina to save you would be not very sensical, IMHO.

As I said earlier, I was surprised when the K-1ii was released with the 'accelerator'. Use of the 'accelerator' makes most sense for those of us who plan to create JPEG's directly from the camera, for those of us who used Kodachrome back in the age of film and thus are more comfortable with the thought of getting what we want the first time and not assuming adjustments in PP.

I don't know how the Japanese home market has reacted to these issues .... which is what will inform design of the camera I expect to see in less than eight weeks now.

[Wheatfield]

Pentax lost. We lost.
Do you know who won? DPR.

You know what they say about winners on the internet.

[normhead]

As I said earlier, I was surprised when the K-1ii was released with the 'accelerator'. Use of the 'accelerator' makes most sense for those of us who plan to create JPEG's directly from the camera, for those of us who used Kodachrome back in the age of film and thus are more comfortable with the thought of getting what we want the first time and not assuming adjustments in PP.

I don't know how the Japanese home market has reacted to these issues .... which is what will inform design of the camera I expect to see in less than eight weeks now.

Actually, the case for the accelerator is based on the simple fact, that most of us use noise reduction on our high ISO images. JPEG or not doesn't really enter into it. I don't even do the noise reduction. Apple's raw importer adds noise reduction without my input based on camera profiles. The profile for the K-1ii will almost certainly apply less noise reduction than that applied to the K-1. I'm not sure that they'd even look any different once imported. And I never do custom imports now to maximize resolution. I've tried on several occasions and not been able to match the results of the Apple profiles. Maybe some of you take the steps necessary to bypass camera import profiles and work straight from unprocessed raw.

That would seem to me, again, based on my trials where I deliberately bypassed the import profiles to be a complete waste of time. I'm not listening to any complaints from purists claiming there's something wrong with what the accelerator chip does, unless they have work flow that bypasses all import profiles. We've had a lot of lazy folks blaming Pentax for not letting them do, what they already don't do. "ya, I didn't do it before, but now that Pentax has made it so I can't. i really, really want to." Ya, sure thing.

Where as to me, unless they are bypassing all import profiles, complaining about the accelerator chip is nothing but the height of hypocrisy. You can't seriously complain about DxO or Apple (or any software developer) not having import profiles soon enough and then complain about the accelerator chip.

The preferred end game here is that at some point the accelerator chip becomes so advanced, 3rd party noise reduction becomes completely unnecessary. This is just the first one, lets talk once the third generation chip comes out.