[Crust]

For those who use jpeg vs shoot in raw:

What do you use for your k-70?
Which lens do you use the most with those settings?

Using the 18-135 kit lens:
I use neutral with plus 1 saturation and sharoness set to extra sharpness. I turned on all lens corrections and leave all the other setting to default.

I'm still not happy as I can't get the images to look sharp with pop without looking artificial. For some reason, I preferred the k-01 jpeg engine, but maybe I haven't been able to dial everything in. I wanted to try out some of what you folks have found.

[Adam]

I'm still not happy as I can't get the images to look sharp with pop without looking artificial.

Because the K-70 doesn't haven an AA filter in front of the sensor, applying sharpening to the image can actually backfire and make it look worse. Try turning the sharpness slider partially or all the way into negative territory.

That said, you'll always be able to gear a clearer image from the RAW file. Pentax's engine likes to distort fine details for some reason, such as leaves and trees. I've toyed with this myself and while reducing the sharpness helped, it never made things perfect.

[Crust]

Adam,

Thanks for the tip WRT sharpening.

[Crust]

Nobody?

[lithedreamer]

I think most of us prefer to work with raw files...

[Adam]

One other tip I have is to import your photo into the Pentax Digital Camera Utility software and experiment with settings until the photo is to your liking. Then, you can manually import those settings into the camera.

But yeah, with card sizes these days, it doesn't hurt to go for RAW+.

[lithedreamer]

One other tip I have is to import your photo into the Pentax Digital Camera Utility software and experiment with settings until the photo is to your liking. Then, you can manually import those settings into the camera.

But yeah, with card sizes these days, it doesn't hurt to go for RAW+.

Great tip. Oh yeah, with the K-1 I'm finding that my 32GB cards might be a little too small for raw files. Do we ever see discounts on packs of 2 or 3 SD cards? I really like the Sandisk Extreme Pro cards, but there's still a bit of sticker shock over something like the 256GB or 512GB...times three.

[Adam]

Great tip. Oh yeah, with the K-1 I'm finding that my 32GB cards might be a little too small for raw files. Do we ever see discounts on packs of 2 or 3 SD cards? I really like the Sandisk Extreme Pro cards, but there's still a bit of sticker shock over something like the 256GB or 512GB...times three.

There have regularly been $5 discounts on 2-packs of 64Gb cards. I'd consider 64Gb to be the minimum (per card) for the K-1.

Now that SanDisk is about to market its 1Tb card, I'd expect there to be deals on 128Gb cards as well.

[reh321]

Nobody?

I was out of town until last night, and I don't use a K-70 yet, so I didn't reply at first; however I do use mostly JPEG files, so I decided I should reply. I'm more interested in a realistic appearance than in getting the picture to "pop", whatever that means to you. I do sometimes have gimp make an auto WB adjustment, or alternatively make small manual adjustments to brightness and contrast to make it look better to my eyes; my experience is that if the original was saved as the best JPEG available from the camera and the replacement is saved as the best JPEG available from gimp, no detail is lost through this process as long as it is done only once.

[Doundounba]

I don't shoot K-70, but on the K-3 I shoot Natural with +1 on Saturation, High/Low Key and Contrast. I also have Highlight Correction set to On and Shadow Correction set to the lowest non-auto level. I usually add a little contrast and brightness in post using GIMP and sometimes play with the curves a little too. I almost never touch the white-balance in post. I suppose I could, for example, push the contrast higher in-camera, but I don't want to "overcook" the file in-camera and prefer to push it a little further with GIMP to get a touch more pop... (It's very hard to gauge how much to make an image "pop" while trying to keep a somewhat natural look, IMHO.) Also, I always keep the original JPG, so that if I want to reprocess I can restart from the original and I'm not creating a JPG from a JPG more than once for any given file.

[Crust]

Thank you for the details.

[Rondec]

I don't typically shoot jpegs for anything important, but for snaps, I tend to use what Doundounba suggests. Bright to my eyes tends to over saturate colors, while natural doesn't. You can always bump vibrance a little in post if you decide you need to.

Adam's suggestion is really the way to go. Open in a RAW file in the DCU that comes with the camera and apply the different presets while bumping sharpness down a little or whatever. Once you find a recipe that works for you, just dial it into your camera.

[ffking]

Now that SanDisk is about to market its 1Tb card

Didn't know that, but I suppose it was going to come sooner or later - although it would be very pricey at first, it would be great for trips abroad if you had one of them in the camera (even K-1) and write to both cards, keeping that one in the camera and downloading the other (say 64Gb) daily.

[Adam]

Didn't know that, but I suppose it was going to come sooner or later - although it would be very pricey at first, it would be great for trips abroad if you had one of them in the camera (even K-1) and write to both cards, keeping that one in the camera and downloading the other (say 64Gb) daily.

They unveiled a prototype at photokina. Doesn't look like it's available to consumers yet, but it's definitely right around the corner

This puts us really close to the 2Tb theoretical limit for SDXC. New standard incoming!

[Crust]

Hello everyone,

Here's the thing.

1. I tried using DNG and using Darktable (I only have Linux on my home computers). I have concluded I'm terrible at using Darktable. No matter what I do, I prefer the jpeg output of the camera vs what I did in Darktable. I used Darktable 2.2 rc1. I don't think it has full compatibility with the K-70 yet as the camera is not listed on the lens correction list. (Let me know if I'm wrong).
2. I still prefer greatly the jpegs from the K-01 even though I see the potential from the K-70 (high ISO is much better). I use the K-01 in Portrait with contrast and sharpening at both +2.
3. When I try the above setting on the K-70, the colors look quite different (too bluish on the K-70) and also too strong and artificial (due to contrast and sharpening)
4. I've tried Natural - I like the colors of Natural but everything look so washed out. I tried +1 saturation. I like the colors better but everything looks hazy. When I increase contrast - it just looks like the contrast is too strong but still no "pop". I played around with the clarity setting and I like it off. I worked with the sharpening setting and I honestly can't see a huge difference. I've tried fine and extra sharpening at -3 like some here propose. In the end, I chose 0 sharpening at fine sharpening.
5. With the above settings, I still think the settings yield dull jpegs. Any suggestions? Also, what's the best tutorial for darktable?

Thanks.