Been shooting with a KP since early October. Got it in large part because of its high-ISO abilities, and after some struggles, I love it.
I've wondered myself about the idea of baked-in RAW manipulations. When I go back and look at my RAW files shot at 20000 or more in DarkTable, I don't find anything to object to. Not every photo is perfect, but for the most part the KP files at high ISO are about as good as what I get from a FF Canon 6D, though some are better and some are worse. I don't find any weird artifacts or other problems that might indicate clumsy processing in the camera.
So whatever the accelerator unit is doing, I approve. My personal opinion is the objection to extra processing is overblown. ALL digital images are processed to some degree by the time they become a RAW file. Pentax has apparently figured out how to do that better. That's fine with me.
I think the KP has, in fact, been somewhat ignored by the market, largely because it goes off in an unexpected direction, trying to capture a bit of mirrorless vibe and not addressing the big, in many minds, Pentax flaw -- its relaxed autofocus system. I didn't like the KP at first when I rented it for a week last spring. It's a bit weird and different from the K-5, and the battery life is ridiculous. (The battery on my rental went dead on me after about 200 shots.) But after the camera had gone back to LensRentals.com and some time had passed and I had looked back again and again at the pictures I had made with it, I decided to buy one.
The RAW files, cooked or not, sold the camera. (The camera JPGs, by the way, are pretty excellent, too -- they do a good job of cleaning up hi-ISO noise that's still in the RAW files.)
Last edited by bkpix; 02-18-2018 at 10:48 PM.
Reason: one more thought