[clackers]

Sadly, the biggest disappointment most feel when getting the K-1 is that they don't suddenly become better photographers.

Yep, a variant of the 'If I buy a Nike top, I'll be able to play like Roger Federer" effect.

[Eyewanders]

For the most part, this seems to be true with a few exceptions. Some lenses that looked great on APS-C are a bit of a letdown.

[cricket... cricket... cricket...]

3-rding or 4th-ing here: which lenses are letting folks down (and which are the few exceptions)?

---------- Post added 05-30-16 at 07:28 PM ----------

Yep, a variant of the 'If I buy a Nike top, I'll be able to play like Roger Federer" effect.

I dunno... I 'm not too sure about this:
When I was younger and got my Viper pilot helmet I am fairly dang confident I pulled as many Gs and splashed just as many Cylon raiders as Starbuck.

[monochrome]

Yep, a variant of the 'If I buy a Nike top, I'll be able to play like Roger Federer" effect.

Sadly, the biggest disappointment most feel when getting the K-1 is that they don't suddenly become better photographers. Maybe the next camera will just choose the subject and lighting and take the picture for you?

It is a lot easier to focus manual lenses with the K-1, which improves one of my weaknesses anyway.

[Eyewanders]

It is a lot easier to focus manual lenses with the K-1, which improves one of my weaknesses anyway.

This I believe. I always breathe a sigh of relief returning to film bodies after using the digis. I will say the s-type screen improved my manual hit rate on the K-3 by at least 5x though.

How IS the viewfinder on the K-1 for you?? So much other talk going on I'm not sure I've read anything at length specifically about the finder and screen.

[volosong]

I'm happy. Below pictures snapped yesterday. Not the most exciting images, but they serve a purpose. Full-frame reduced resolution for web posting, and a full-size extract. Taken with a FA35/2.0 mounted on a K-1; Av, 1/60, ISO100, f/8, +1/2 EV.

[monochrome]

This I believe. I always breathe a sigh of relief returning to film bodies after using the digis. I will say the s-type screen improved my manual hit rate on the K-3 by at least 5x though.

How IS the viewfinder on the K-1 for you?? So much other talk going on I'm not sure I've read anything at length specifically about the finder and screen.

Much bigger and brighter. It's possible to actually see the focus. The gray focus points and horizon alignment indicator are hard too see though, and I haven't gotten accustomed to the constant light button yet.

[Simen1]

Hey, isn't this 36 MP sensor supposed to out-resolve all legacy Pentax glass???

What! That is the first time I have heard that. Who is the fool that told you that?

[Wild Mark]

It is worthy to note that the price of some legacy lenses on ebay seems to have risen of late - perhaps news is spreading that the good legacy stuff is worth having?

[jatrax]

Sadly, the biggest disappointment most feel when getting the K-1 is that they don't suddenly become better photographers.

Wait... What? Confused? Of course I'm a better photographer, I'm now using a pro camera..........................

[Eyewanders]

Much bigger and brighter. It's possible to actually see the focus. The gray focus points and horizon alignment indicator are hard too see though, and I haven't gotten accustomed to the constant light button yet.

That was my assumption, all things being equal and the fact that no one had complained. To me personally, that's nearly worth the price of admission.

---------- Post added 05-31-16 at 09:03 AM ----------

It is worthy to note that the price of some legacy lenses on ebay seems to have risen of late - perhaps news is spreading that the good legacy stuff is worth having?

Much of it was always worth having. But, I'm sure this will edge things up further as demand increases.

[Kerrowdown]

A bit of softness is more flattering for an aging lady anyway

I guess that depends on which side of the lens your on...

[MadMathMind]

That is pretty bold.

@MadMathMind, I do believe it is time to stand and deliver. A good place to start would be the list of lenses that were out-resolved by the K-7 sensor.

Seemingly most of them, actually. The K-7 is 14MPix and no Pentax lens has pulled a resolution that high on any camera.

The only place who really measure this stuff is DxO. Let's just pick a lens, say the DA*55. Let's look at its sharpness ratings on various bodies:
K-3: 11 MPix
K-5 IIs: 8 MPix
K-10D: 8 MPix

Now let's look at something else. We'll look at the Canon 35mm f/1.4L II. Here it is on various camera bodies:
5DS R: 37 MPix
6D: 17 MPix
1D Mark III: 9 MPix
70D: 15 MPix

The MP of those Canon bodies are 50MP, 20MP, 10MP, and 20MP. How about another really expensive Canon lens? The 85mm f/1.2L:
5DS R: 30 MPix
6D: 18 MPix
1D Mark III: 9 MPix
70D: 14 MPix

So what are we seeing here? We never get the entire resolution of the sensor from a lens but on the 1D Mark III, we get 90% of it. On the 6D, we also get ~90% from both of these lenses. One thing that is true is that the full frame cameras see higher effective resolution than the APS-C ones--look at the 6D (FF) vs. the 70D. That makes sense: resolution is a pixel-level measure. The lens needs to be able to resolve the individual pixels to have them count; 20MP on an FF camera are a lot bigger than the ones on an APS-C camera with the same number. But still, what we see from these two lenses is that they are capable of delivering most of the MP the camera offers, with exception of the 5DS R (because that thing is absurd).

On the Pentax side....not so much. The DA*55 pulls half the available pixels on the K-5 II, less than that on the K-3. But on the K10D, it's 80%--that's good! So what this tells us is that the DA*55 is not keeping up with better sensors. There was little improvement in resolution when the number of sensor MP increased. This lens is being out resolved by the sensor.

Of course, this is if you want to put high stock in these tests. Given how lenses are used and how artificial these tests are, they're not gospel. But they do tell us something.

The bigger thing is, though, is it reasonable? The two Canon lenses cost $2200 and $1600, respectively. The DA*55 can be found for $569 now. Let's pick a Canon lens comparable in price, the 50mm f/1.4 ($385):
5DS R: 22 MPix
6D: 15 MPix
1D Mark III: 8 MPix
70D: 12 MPix

This lens can't keep up with the cameras either, with exception of the 6D. It fares no better than the DA*55. Moral of the story: you do get what you pay for. There's a point to those expensive lenses. Whether those prices are worth it...well, I don't think they are necessarily, since most of what most of us do is keep for ourselves and post on the web--Facebook sure makes all that resolution good for nothing.


On another forum, a guy suggested that perhaps a 20MP sensor would have been better for Pentax, that the current crop of lenses would have done better with that than with the 36MP. I didn't understand him and thought he was nuts. He may be right. Unfortunately, Canon doesn't have a ~36MP camera--everything was 20MP or 22MP until the 50MP monster that is the 5Ds. Let's do a quick check with an inexpensive Nikon lens: the 50mm f/1.4G. Here it is on a few bodies:
D810 (36MP FF): 21MP, 58%
D750 (24MP FF): 18MP, 75%
D4 (16MP FF): 12 MP, 75%
D7100 (24MP APS-C): 13 MP, 54%
D7000 (16MP APS-C): 10 MP, 62.5%

The D810 and D7000 have about the same pixel pitch (like K-5 and K-1). We see that the resolution as a percentage of available pixels is about the same! The lens cannot resolve objects to an area below 2.4 micrometers^2. Now, it doesn't quite work exactly linearly like that (because the sensor is more than just its pixel counts) so we do see slight increases in resolution as we increase the number of MP but there are costs: frame rate, file size, etc.

I guess we should expect the DA*55 to get about 16MP on the K-1. The equivalent pitch to a K-10D in FF is 22MP. We'd could see 17.6MP with that--a higher number! At 20MP, we may actually have gotten more from our lenses than we do at 36MP simply because most of what the 36MP is giving us is lost on our old lenses.

End thought: it's not all about pixels. But it is a bit annoying to pay a high file size and processing speed price for pixels that are ultimately going to waste. I may start downsizing my TIFFs simply because there isn't 36MP of resolution in there and the HDD space is fantastic. 22MP seems to be a good number for me so far--that's what I'm exporting my JPEGs at because there's no point to going any higher. I'm not seeing better quality than at 22MP.

[monochrome]

@Digitals ? @falconeye ?

[normhead]

Sadly, the biggest disappointment most feel when getting the K-1 is that they don't suddenly become better photographers. Maybe the next camera will just choose the subject and lighting and take the picture for you?

Someone make me disappointed. I can handle it.

Does anyone actually know exactly how DxO comes up with their numbers?

On the resolution charts at Imaging Reousrces a K-3 can resolve 2700 lw/ph probably using a Sigma 70 macro. Using the same lens the Canon 6D can resolve, 2400 lw/ph. A D810 can resolve 3600 lw/ph. A 5Ds shows 4000 ;w/ph.

These are test scores that are easily comparable and verifiable. It's easy to see what they mean. No on knows what the DxO data means. But you have to ask, what happens to all these resolution numbers in the DxO tests? Why do cameras that produce such high resolution numbers fare so poorly at DxO, when if you look at the test images actually taken over at Imaging Resources, their evaluation lines up with the images provided.

The cool thing is, at Imaging Resources, you can look a the test swatches, and see exactly what they are talking about. DxO. Not so much. Given the wealth of available "check it out yourself" data at Imaging Resource, and the complete poverty of such data over at DxO, no credible person could take their claims seriously. It's sad to see someone building such a complex analysis on such shoddy data.

DxO data are at complete odds with any site that tries to determine exactly which camera gives you the best image, and as for which has the best resolution to actual pixels ratio. The would be the Panasonic DZ1000 with a 20 MP 1 inch sensor, that is a quarter the size of APS-c, that at 100 ISO will give you 2600 lw/ph on a one inch sensor at 100 ISO. A one inch sensor 1/8 the size of a 6D . DxO is like a sports analysts who looks at a bunch of metrics, and declares some team the best team in their power ranking, even though they don't win a lot of games. DxO has gotten so caught up in their own favourite metrics, like the above sports analyst, they are talking about a reality that exists only in their own minds.

I have no idea what DxO is talking about, but I'd suggest , only some really bad data , or intentionally manipulated data, could lead to the kind of conclusions made above.

FZ1000 @ 80 ISO , 6D @50 ISO
The FX 1000 with a sensor 1/8 it's size kicks it Full Frame Butt..


Let the mental gymnastic to explain this away start.

Or how about this...

According to Dx0 K-3 11mp, 6D 17 MP yet look at the fabric detail in the orange fabric K-3 vs 6D.


MY question, (and if you wish to have even a shred of credibility you need to answer this for yourself, forget about us), is how do the DxO numbers create such a false impression?

What you have here is imaginary DxO self promoting commercial hogwash, stacked up against real world images. Are you going to believe the hogwash? Or your eyes?

At the end of the day, do you want to win some sports writers power rankings? Or do you want to win the World Cup?

[stevebrot]

Does anyone actually know how DxO comes up with their numbers.

My understanding is that it involves equal parts of peyote and mezcal...and dice...


Steve