[Kunzite]

There's one thing about the comparison image - are both of the images "100%" crops? If so, the difference is lesser than it first appears. But it's still nice!

[Wheatfield]

People talk about noise, but DR and color fidelity are also issues - the KP is better in all three at higher ISO values, and I think viewers will be satisfied with how the K-3iii handles all three.

I was specifically addressing the noise issue that Class A brought up. Had he brought up dynamic range or colour fidelity, I would have written exactly the same post.

[reh321]

I was specifically addressing the noise issue that Class A brought up. Had he brought up dynamic range or colour fidelity, I would have written exactly the same post.

my point was that people seem to focus on noise, but DR and color fidelity are just as affected by higher ISO,
and the ‘accelerator’ seems to counter all these effects without eating stars.

[beholder3]

without eating stars.

IRL how many % of your photos do contain stars sized around 1-2 pixels and and at the same time being very important for the artistic content of the photo?
For me that is: 0%.

There is a whole noise reduction software group. And 100% of these softwares "eat stars" big time.

Anyone ever moving the noise reduction slide away from 0 in LR does worse than just "eat stars".


Theory and real life are not the same.

[reh321]

Theory and real life are not the same.

The astronomy site didn't like the 'accelerator' for what appears to be theoretical reasons
Pentax K-1 Mark II Astrophotography Review – Lonely Speck
but they reported no detail lost.
That is real life.

[RobG]

IRL how many % of your photos do contain stars sized around 1-2 pixels and and at the same time being very important for the artistic content of the photo?
For me that is: 0%.

For those who want to do astrophotography (or night shots with stars in the background) it's a problem if the processing is applied to the raw image and can't be disabled. I seem to recall that this was a complaint with the KP. Does anyone know whether the image processing can be disabled in RAW? Or does it not apply to RAW? Given the high ISO performance, night photos are certainly something I planned to use the K3iii for.

---------- Post added 03-03-21 at 11:34 AM ----------

The astronomy site didn't like the 'accelerator' for what appears to be theoretical reasons but they reported no detail lost.
That is real life.

Maybe that answers my question?

[reh321]

For those who want to do astrophotography (or night shots with stars in the background) it's a problem if the processing is applied to the raw image and can't be disabled. I seem to recall that this was a complaint with the KP. Does anyone know whether the image processing can be disabled in RAW? Or does it not apply to RAW? Given the high ISO performance, night photos are certainly something I planned to use the K3iii for.

The 'accelerator' comes between the sensor and the processor, so it affects 'raw' as well as JPEG files.
It cannot be turned off - much discussion on that subject once it was included in the K-1ii - basically the KP was ignored.
If we keep talking about the lack of a "flippy" LCD on the K-3iii, we may eventually expend as many words as were wasted on the 'accelerator' for the K-1ii.

[RobG]

The 'accelerator' comes between the sensor and the processor, so it affects 'raw' as well as JPEG files.
It cannot be turned off - much discussion on that subject once it was included in the K-1ii - basically the KP was ignored.

OK, so I guess the question is - has there been a real world impact of the accelerator on astrophotos or night shots with stars on the K1? I didn't intend to rehash past discussions, I just don't know what the conclusion was, since I don't have a K1 and no plans to buy one (nor do I have or intend to buy a KP). I have two working cameras; a K5iis and a K3 which I can use for Astro if the K3iii turns out to be unsuitable, but others may not have that luxury (and frankly I will probably sell one of the old cameras after getting the K3iii).

[Class A]

...has there been a real world impact of the accelerator on astrophotos or night shots with stars on the K1?

The K-1 does not feature an "accelerator unit". The K-1 II's "accelerator unit" does not eat stars (like some Sony models did) but its image processing (starting at ISO 640) will destroy some information that exists near the noise threshold.

For a single exposure or "shallow" stacks of images, the K-1 II will produce more pleasing results. For deep stacks (64+ or so images to be combined), the K-1 should produce images that retain some finer detail. As far as I know, nobody has confirmed this with an experiment, though.

Having said that, astrophotography can require rather low ISO settings to avoid overexposure at wide apertures so the K-1 II should still be as good as the K-1 for many astrophotography applications.

The K-3 III, however, has been announced to apply image processing starting with ISO 100. Although I'm unaware of any concrete information as to whether the processing of RAW files will be optional, the expectation has to be that it will be mandatory. Although the latter policy forgoes the possible "win win" strategy of giving everyone the option they prefer and would in particular avoid negative press from the likes of DPReview, it might be a matter of pride for Pentax to not allow the processing to be optional. Having the scheme mandatory certainly helps nurturing ideas of the processing to be anything else but in-camera post-processing that does not benefit from any information present during capture only.

[Class A]

I think it's plausible that the camera's embedded software/firmware has very specific things it does to correct for noise, color fidelity, etc that other external software would not be able to.

For this to be plausible, the camera would have to have access to information during capture that the post-processing software does not have access to.

We know that the Sony sensor in the K-1 II produces a digital output stream. There are no analogue values from which one could substract background noise, or similar.

There is no known signal in the K-1 II that is used to inform the in-camera processing. As a matter of fact, K1 vs K-1 II comparisons have shown that with post-processing the final results can be made to look very, very similar.

Occam's razor suggests that in the absence of any proof that the "accelerator unit" uses any special input only available during capture, it is more reasonable to assume that it does not.

[RobG]

The K-1 does not feature an "accelerator unit".

OK, laziness on my part not to add the "ii". Sorry. Rather than spend a lot of time here on speculation, I might ask the folks in the Astro group whether they've done any comparisons between the K1 and K1ii.

[reh321]

Occam's razor suggests that in the absence of any proof that the "accelerator unit" uses any special input only available during capture, it is more reasonable to assume that it does not.

We have no information about signals to/from the ‘accelerator’, so we have no information about how it works - no way of applying Occam’s Razor. You are dressing our ignorance in fancy language.

[JPT]

I think it’s interesting to look at this topic from the perspective of Pentax as a camera maker. As we know the camera market has been declining for a number of reasons, but I think one of the main ones is that sensor performance in not moving forward fast enough to compel people to upgrade. I felt this with the K-3. It wouldn’t enable me to do anything my K-5 IIs wouldn’t so I passed it over.

Until the K-5 era, Sony Semiconductor was coming out with successively better sensors, but then they swallowed up Toshiba’s business and Samsung pulled out. Sony has basically been a monopoly in sensors for close to ten years, especially APS-C. Now they are doing what any monopolist is tempted to do - milk the market for what they can without putting much development into it. Where they are moving forward, it is in the area of video, on-sensor AF and full frame pixel count to support their sister company. For a company like Pentax that prioritises still image quality at APS-C, this is a difficult situation to be in.

The first Pentax body that tempted me after the K-5 IIs was the KP, and that was because the higher ISO performance would help me in a specific situation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that is when the accelerator came in. The samples and accounts of high ISO performance on the K-3 III so far look very tempting. I think I will be buying that camera fairly soon after release.

If Pentax is just going to serve up whatever they can get from Sony as is, that seems like a dereliction of duty to me. If the “unaccelerated” 24mp output of pre-KP cameras didn’t convince me before, the unaccelerated output of the 26mp sensor is not likely to convince me either. Pentax is right to apply new technology to improve image quality.

With the K-3 III, we are seeing reports of a 1.5 stop advantage over the K-1 II. That means the Accelerator II outperforms a sensor one size up, which already has the previous generation accelerator by 1.5 stops. That’s unprecedented and it implies there is something much more sophisticated in the camera than before. The interesting thing this time is that there are no other cameras with this sensor on the market. It may never be possible to see how much of this improvement is from the sensor and how much from the accelerator.

[repaap]

I think it’s interesting to look at this topic from the perspective of Pentax as a camera maker. As we know the camera market has been declining for a number of reasons, but I think one of the main ones is that sensor performance in not moving forward fast enough to compel people to upgrade. I felt this with the K-3. It wouldn’t enable me to do anything my K-5 IIs wouldn’t so I passed it over.

Until the K-5 era, Sony Semiconductor was coming out with successively better sensors, but then they swallowed up Toshiba’s business and Samsung pulled out. Sony has basically been a monopoly in sensors for close to ten years, especially APS-C. Now they are doing what any monopolist is tempted to do - milk the market for what they can without putting much development into it. Where they are moving forward, it is in the area of video, on-sensor AF and full frame pixel count to support their sister company. For a company like Pentax that prioritises still image quality at APS-C, this is a difficult situation to be in.

The first Pentax body that tempted me after the K-5 IIs was the KP, and that was because the higher ISO performance would help me in a specific situation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that is when the accelerator came in. The samples and accounts of high ISO performance on the K-3 III so far look very tempting. I think I will be buying that camera fairly soon after release.

If Pentax is just going to serve up whatever they can get from Sony as is, that seems like a dereliction of duty to me. If the “unaccelerated” 24mp output of pre-KP cameras didn’t convince me before, the unaccelerated output of the 26mp sensor is not likely to convince me either. Pentax is right to apply new technology to improve image quality.

With the K-3 III, we are seeing reports of a 1.5 stop advantage over the K-1 II. That means the Accelerator II outperforms a sensor one size up, which already has the previous generation accelerator by 1.5 stops. That’s unprecedented and it implies there is something much more sophisticated in the camera than before. The interesting thing this time is that there are no other cameras with this sensor on the market. It may never be possible to see how much of this improvement is from the sensor and how much from the accelerator.

I just thought that there should be Fuji using this sensor. Atleast I’v seen some guys posting about it. So we will be able to do some comparison. I would think that accelerator is here to stay as it is mk. II already. So far as you said evidence is there that it is effective already with K-P.

What is interesting is that Ricoh seem to be able to make very good result still with what they’v got. Reason might be that they do take their time when they are building new cameras. Improvements with video and on sensor AF will benefit Pentax too. Not in so big frame, but all in all.

I’m so far very impressed by specs so far what we have seen. And future does indeed look bright as has been said before.

[JPT]

I just thought that there should be Fuji using this sensor. Atleast I’v seen some guys posting about it. So we will be able to do some comparison. I would think that accelerator is here to stay as it is mk. II already. So far as you said evidence is there that it is effective already with K-P.

What is interesting is that Ricoh seem to be able to make very good result still with what they’v got. Reason might be that they do take their time when they are building new cameras. Improvements with video and on sensor AF will benefit Pentax too. Not in so big frame, but all in all.

I’m so far very impressed by specs so far what we have seen. And future does indeed look bright as has been said before.

Yes. I know Fuji has a very closely related sensor, but it can't be exactly the same because it has a different color filter on it and has some pixels devoted to AF, while the Pentax variant doesn't have those. So it will never be a direct comparison. To compare like to like, I suppose you could compare a Fuji 24mp sensor to a Fuji 26mp sensor. The 26mp one was not a dramatic improvement in ISO performance in the fuji world, so I'm guessing that the improvement in the Pentax is mainly due to the accelerator.

Ultimately, I'll be happy if it solves my specific situation where I want to use fast shutter speeds to capture action at festivals in the evening. This image is with a K-01 and the FA 77mm Limited. From what I'm seeing so far, it looks like the K-3 III will enable me to get a much better hit rate with cleaner results, even with a zoom. I'd probably get the 50-135 f.28 for this.