[Rondec]

I would disagree with the wildlife statement. IMO, a large, if not most all purchases for camera gear is not pros. I always assume they are gifted it, or get a discount. You can shoot sports, wildlife and pretty much anything with Pentax, most people aren't buying only FF, highest end glass available (the 70-200 or 150-300 DFA* $$$ would be awesome for wildlife), most are purchasing in between, what they can afford. With tons of old lenses available, you have many more options if you want them. Even sports should be able to be shot fine. You learn your equipment. I used to shoot fast sports indoors with a film body (for school, so not high end) with Tmax 400, pushed to 800 with a Tameron 70-200 f4. They came out, many weren't out of focus or blurry. It was all manual focus. Point is, sports, wildlife and between have been shot with most anything available. I would guess most folks, even some professionals aren't out shooting their gear and rather are always remastering their technique to improve.
Short version; I don't like the idea that any camera, or Pentax isn't "made for" or "designed to" do certain things. The cameras don't take the photos, we do.
I think there is safety in buying CanoNikon. Similar in technology, the saying, no one was ever fired for buying Cisco networking gear, similar could be said for CanoNikon. Other equipment can do the job and do it well, but there is a feel good safety factor for the user, going with industry standard.

Aside, I have an old Russian m42 mount 1100mm mirrored lens at f11 I've used for wildlife. It works, isn't awesome, but the Pentax body allows for metering, which is cool.

Yes, but Ian has thousands of dollars worth of long lenses, including a 600mm f4, if I recall correctly. He is a very serious photographer when it comes to these things and most of his lenses aren't replicable (except on the used market) in the Pentax universe. He isn't going to be happy with older manual focus lenses or mirror lenses.

I'm not saying that you can't shoot wildlife with Pentax, just that it is more difficult to find lenses that fit this bill and photographers who are willing to spend high dollars for really fast, long lenses will tend to gravitate away from the brand.

[Ian Stuart Forsyth]

Thanks Ian, and thank you for taking the time to do all this comparison work.

No problem as the work was done about a month ago and then applied to the IR images that really points to what I was seeing.

Just to make it clear the profiles I created are for a non converted mk1. and a mrk 2

[Ian Stuart Forsyth]

Ian good grief man which is it? The K-1MKII has "problems" with color or it doesn't. Now you are saying there is no problem they look the same. First it was the green channel with the dust "detail" and now the red channel now with this new elaborate comparison you are saying no problem exist at all with the color.

Never said the mk2 has problems with color. I however did say that I see a problem with NR and what it does, just as you could see in the green channel in the dust and how it removed a lot of the dust ( I will repeat this not a color issue) and I will say it again I see no issue with color and color accuracy. It how ever has to do with detail that is lost in NR.
Most of the work was done for your opinion that the issue that it was from how the cameras settings (wb, brightness and hue) that has no influence when using a raw file.

Ian this is a simple yes or no question have you not in the past set up similar comparisons between the K-1 and K-1MKII here at PF and on DPR asking people to give honest opinions. Then turned around to say you had mislabeled the images purposefully to trick people. Or not labeling them at all like you have done here.

It was done to trick someone into giving an opinion, and if you read the post you we see that I said not to use the images exif data as it would miss lead you if you where to use them.
" Remember not to use the camera information on the photo's to pass your judgment on the images as not to interject some preconceived bias to the images that may sway or miss lead your opinions and just focus on what you see "
Some people won't give their opinion until they feel confident that what they see doesn't conflict with what they feel. Would you have posted an opinion without the reassurance of the exif data?
you hadn't until there was exif data included.

There is a difference in "variance" between hue with respect to value with the files you posted but you purposefully mask that by first staggering the images which makes it harder for the eye to see the difference and b.

I staggered them so that you can see where one image starts and the other ends. The reason why you cannot see much of a difference is that there is very little difference and if you use a eyedropper tool you will see that the values of those patches be it Lab or prophoto RGB the difference falls bellow what we can see as shown in the red circles ?

you clipped off the grey background which would make it obvious one image is at least a half value to full value lighter or one is darker.

I had included the full grey scale patches found in the color checker target so that you can see the grey scale, these values range from 238,238,238 to 32,32,32. This covers white 9.5(0.05 D) to black 2 (1.5 D)
The value of the grey background falls between neutral 6.5 (0.44 D) and neutral 5 (0.70 D) patches. if we don't see any issues with those 2 patches you wont see anything in between them I don't see what you are taking issue with ?

It all depends on how you manipulated the files to sought your agenda.

How I set my data ( image processing) was to set the white 9.5(0.05 D) to 238,238,238 and let how the grey scales fall into place, if you call that an agenda then its my agenda to set grey scale tonal values with the known target values. This is what one would normal do

So which is it now Ian? The K-1MKII has problems with the Green Channel. The Red Channel. Both the Green and the Red Channel. Maybe it is really the Blue Channel causing the problems with the Red and or Green Channels. Just maybe it is the long coveted Yellow Channel. Or is there really no problem with the color for the K-1MKII.
Serious minds want to know.

To say it again, I don't see any problems with color accuracy it is the NR and what it does to the detail and more importantly its detail in the red and how it uses surrounding photo site information to reduce noise. This smears information from the green and blue channels as seen with the dust in the image that was shown in other threads.

---------- Post added 07-04-2018 at 11:38 PM ----------

including a 600mm f4,

I can only wish

---------- Post added 07-04-2018 at 11:51 PM ----------

He is a very serious photographer when it comes to these things and most of his lenses aren't replicable (except on the used market) in the Pentax universe. He isn't going to be happy with older manual focus lenses or mirror lenses.
I'm not saying that you can't shoot wildlife with Pentax, just that it is more difficult to find lenses that fit this bill and photographers who are willing to spend high dollars for really fast, long lenses will tend to gravitate away from the brand.

It was the used market in Nikon and pentax that swayed me from pentax, the abundance in the used market. when I sold my sigma 300 2.8 in pentax mount( private sale) I did so at the price I could have picked up in a camera stored used sigma 150-300 2.8 OS and still be left with $100 dollars in my pocket I frowned because that's the way of the used market for anything in pentax mount with long and fast, but it work for me because I got top dollar for the 300mm

I picked up a used 45 TS for $1500

[blackest]

Thanks for this thread a lot to chew over, the odd thing is Pentax france is offering the k1 mkII for €1900 currently but most K1's used are around €1350 upwards and about €2300 new !

I'm still torn I don't want noise reduction that I can't turn off or sky high grainy ISO 's either. I'm so close to being able to buy a K1 this month, it'd be really tight but my heart just wants to go for it but the heads saying leave it a month to have something in reserve...

[BigMackCam]

Thanks for this thread a lot to chew over, the odd thing is Pentax france is offering the k1 mkII for €1900 currently but most K1's used are around €1350 upwards and about €2300 new !

I'm still torn I don't want noise reduction that I can't turn off or sky high grainy ISO 's either. I'm so close to being able to buy a K1 this month, it'd be really tight but my heart just wants to go for it but the heads saying leave it a month to have something in reserve...

Honestly, those of us who've been discussing the K-1II's mandatory noise reduction and "detail loss" at length are mostly looking at 100% reproduction images, 30 - 50cm from our screens. Those really aren't usual reproduction size and viewing distance conditions for any photo. I firmly believe that 99.9% of photographers won't see a detail difference in real world use, but they'll certainly benefit from the lower noise levels - colour noise especially - if they use higher ISO settings. Personally, I'd prefer that the noise reduction were switchable... but in reality, I honestly don't think it matters all that much.

I can't recall who else said this recently - it may have been @normhead - but if I was buying a full-frame Pentax body right now, it would be the K-1II... even though I've been one of those people discussing potential detail loss.

[blackest]

Honestly, those of us who've been discussing the K-1II's mandatory noise reduction and "detail loss" at length are mostly looking at 100% reproduction images, 30 - 50cm from our screens. Those really aren't usual reproduction size and viewing distance conditions for any photo. I firmly believe that 99.9% of photographers won't see a detail difference in real world use, but they'll certainly benefit from the lower noise levels - colour noise especially - if they use higher ISO settings. Personally, I'd prefer that the noise reduction were switchable... but in reality, I honestly don't think it matters all that much.

I can't recall who else said this recently - it may have been @normhead - but if I was buying a full-frame Pentax body right now, it would be the K-1II... even though I've been one of those people discussing potential detail loss.

It might make a difference for astro tracing, if it denoises out stars

[BigMackCam]

It might make a difference for astro tracing, if it denoises out stars

It might, though I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the K-1II doesn't show the same star-eater problem as Sony became known for. But it's down to the individual photographer to confirm and decide whether it's likely to be a problem.

Many, many photographers on these forums get very worked up about tiny issues that will never actually affect them in day-to-day photography. They'll hear something about a particular camera, and worry about it, when in reality it will probably have a minor impact on a tiny percentage of photographers - and even then, almost certainly no material impact in terms of what the viewing public will see and enjoy in the photos. We digital photographers can be our own worst enemies... If we look for problems at 100% reproduction with any camera, we'll surely find something

If astro photography is your main interest, or one of your main interests, then do some further research and talk to those who are doing the same thing with the K-1II before you decide. Don't, however, miss out on the K-1II because there's a chance that, one day in the future, you might just visit a "dark skies" location and take a handful of photos, and one or more of those might be missing one or two very small and dim stars out of a hundred, that no-one except for a dedicated astronomer would actually notice. People are taking fantastic astro photos with the very Sony cameras that are shown to be "star eaters". Unless you're counting stars, does it really matter?

---

Last edited by BigMackCam; 07-06-2018 at 04:24 PM.

[reh321]

It might make a difference for astro tracing, if it denoises out stars

It doesn't. An astronomy periodical was quite clear on that: "Most importantly, the problem is not detrimental to star details and does not present the same problem as the Sony star-eater issue."


Pentax K-1 Mark II Astrophotography Review – Lonely Speck

[interested_observer]

.....If astro photography is your main interest, or one of your main interests, then do some further research and talk to those who are doing the same thing with the K-1II before you decide. Don't, however, miss out on the K-1II because there's a chance that, one day in the future, you might just visit a "dark skies" location and take a handful of photos, and one or more of those might be missing one or two very small and dim stars out of a hundred, that no-one except for a dedicated astronomer would actually notice. People are taking fantastic astro photos with the very Sony cameras that are shown to be "star eaters". Unless you're counting stars, does it really matter?

Astro was the main thrust for getting the K1. Since I acquired it, astro has been just terrible for me. Clouded and weathered out in Feb, March and April. Was able to get some great shots in May. June was spent at the hospital with my mom, and July is shaping up to be weathered/clouded out again with the monsoons here in Arizona. This is par for the course for astro. Get something new and your are weathered out. For me, what I do is less astro, and more Milk Way over night landscape photography. The Milky Way is more of an attraction of the eye to the night landscape with the textures and colors - which brings the viewer to ask, how can this be done?

With the Milky Way moving substantially more south/west this month - I need to move the focus of my shooting locations from the east, up to the north in order to get the views and angles I need and want. I have 8 to 9 locations all scouted out with google maps / earth and stellarium up in Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon. I am all ready to go shoot - locked & loaded. I just need some night clear dark skies. I'm really hoping to get some additional locations shot - with different light conditions so as to see a wider range of results.

So, from my outings in May, the results have shown that the K1 is everything I was expecting and more. I really could not be happier. Yes, there is a bit of down side with the white dots - sensor read noise, but I can mitigate that with LENR (long exposure noise reduction) - for really clean high image quality night landscapes under the stars.

The absolute greatest surprise is the amount of color (which to me is astounding), I'm able to capture at night (as in O'h dark hundred - can't see your hand in front of your face type dark). Pulling the reds, oranges and browns out of the mountain sides, the green in the trees and brush is absolutely amazing. I've been bouncing around the Sedona area for several years now, shooting with the K5 and not getting what I really wanted. I've also looked at various Professional Photographers work (Milky Way over various Sedona landscapes) and I'm sorry, but I am convinced that it's crap compared to what I can capture with the K1, particularly in terms of landscape color at night. Yes, their work is a couple of years old, using the 5DIII and 5Div, D800 and D810. They just capture blobs of dark silhouetted landscape objects with the MW overhead, or day landscape shots composited in. To me, the colors are slightly different, muted and much more pleasing - especially with the darkness and shadowing providing a 3D effect. That's the real difference I am seeing with the K1 and the results it's bringing to the table. I just need more images from a wider selection of locations to really demonstrate all of this. To me, it changes the game.

What the K1 has provided me is the ability to move from ISO 1600 to ISO 800, which increases my dynamic range (improving image quality) while enhancing the colors I'm able to capture in the stars and MW core. With the decrease in ISO, the advertised improvements offered by the Mark II would really not provide any improvements. So, it's really has become a moot point for me, now. I've kept up with the reading and with each successive review, sets of image comparisons, better discussions and understandings of exactly what the acceleration chip brings to the table in terms of actual results. I was really wanting to see some possible improvement in the lower ISO image quality. The current quality for me is excellent - beyond my expectations, but if I were able to capture more - then why not. That said, that is not what the Acceleration Chip is aimed at. The review of the Mark II by Ian Norman - Lonely Speck, provided me with the bottom line assurance that there is no star eater issues. Prior to this, I felt that it was a such a non issue that I really did not want to spend any time there. My experimentation is over - I feel I have an excellent work flow for capturing the images. In fact, I have several complementary approaches now that I am happy with. I've always felt that I had a dozen really great images I could shoot. I have the tools and techniques, the locations and knowledge along with a lot of K5 experience - I just need to go out and execute.

I believe that the MarkII is an excellent camera, but with an existing K1, I see no advantage in upgrading.

[LennyBloke]

.....Many, many photographers on these forums get very worked up about tiny issues that will never actually affect them in day-to-day photography. They'll hear something about a particular camera, and worry about it, when in reality it will probably have a minor impact on a tiny percentage of photographers - and even then, almost certainly no material impact in terms of what the viewing public will see and enjoy in the photos. We digital photographers can be our own worst enemies... If we look for problems at 100% reproduction with any camera, we'll surely find something ....

Very well said

[Mikesul]

It might, though I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the K-1II doesn't show the same star-eater problem as Sony became known for. But it's down to the individual photographer to confirm and decide whether it's likely to be a problem.

Many, many photographers on these forums get very worked up about tiny issues that will never actually affect them in day-to-day photography. They'll hear something about a particular camera, and worry about it, when in reality it will probably have a minor impact on a tiny percentage of photographers - and even then, almost certainly no material impact in terms of what the viewing public will see and enjoy in the photos. We digital photographers can be our own worst enemies... If we look for problems at 100% reproduction with any camera, we'll surely find something

If astro photography is your main interest, or one of your main interests, then do some further research and talk to those who are doing the same thing with the K-1II before you decide. Don't, however, miss out on the K-1II because there's a chance that, one day in the future, you might just visit a "dark skies" location and take a handful of photos, and one or more of those might be missing one or two very small and dim stars out of a hundred, that no-one except for a dedicated astronomer would actually notice. People are taking fantastic astro photos with the very Sony cameras that are shown to be "star eaters". Unless you're counting stars, does it really matter?

I was most impressed by the middle paragraph but I quoted the whole thing because I really wish more posters would consider BigMackCom's ideas. Nitpicking is a personality trait, I believe, and is probably satisfying to the nikpicker but it does not provide good analysis of a complete subject. I have long believed, based on considerable experience of helping people sort out their problems, that we make our decisions on all levels more from emotion than reason. Reason is important for sorting out the data but in the end we make an emotional choice. Nitpicking does not help with that choice, it just allows some to criticize the choices of others with a patina of reason.

[blackest]

I was most impressed by the middle paragraph but I quoted the whole thing because I really wish more posters would consider BigMackCom's ideas. Nitpicking is a personality trait, I believe, and is probably satisfying to the nikpicker but it does not provide good analysis of a complete subject. I have long believed, based on considerable experience of helping people sort out their problems, that we make our decisions on all levels more from emotion than reason. Reason is important for sorting out the data but in the end we make an emotional choice. Nitpicking does not help with that choice, it just allows some to criticize the choices of others with a patina of reason.

When I get my K1 it will be the most expensive thing I have ever bought. Currently Pentax seem to have k1 II new for €1900 and the K1 as a refurb for €1600 both out of reach this month although I have found one I might just be able to afford if I can avoid eating for the month

I can't figure out Pentax's pricing for the 2 cameras why does the 'older model' sell for more than the new one, new...

I'm pretty sure i want the K1 just because you can't turn off the noise reduction on the k1 II, even comparison sites are scoring the K1 higher than the mark II version. The improved AF of the mark II isnt enough of a plus to make me want the k1 MK II over the K1

[Mikesul]

Blackest,

The K-1 is generally listed for a couple of hundred dollars less than the K-1ii.

[blackest]

Blackest,

The K-1 is generally listed for a couple of hundred dollars less than the K-1ii.

You would expect that wouldn't you but Pentax european website has the price higher for the k1 than the k1 Mk II

PENTAX K-1 body only €2299

PENTAX K-1 with 24-105 €2099

PENTAX K-1 II €1899 for K1 mk II to the end of August.

[Mikesul]

You would expect that wouldn't you but Pentax european website has the price higher for the k1 than the k1 Mk II

PENTAX K-1 body only €2299

PENTAX K-1 with 24-105 €2099

PENTAX K-1 II €1899 for K1 mk II to the end of August.

Ok. maybe in Europe but not in US. Check B&H or Adorama. If you care.