Pentax K-1 II vs K-1 Noise Performance

PF Staff · 04-28-2018, 12:10 PM - **1 Like**

A hands-on comparison of the image quality of the Pentax K-1 and K-1 II, with a focus on noise.

Read more on the PF homepage...

awscreo · 04-28-2018, 01:03 PM

I see a bit of improvement, but that alone probably won't make me upgrade my K-1. Really looking forward to AF tests to see if there's a significant improvement there, I'm still struggling with some of my lenses sometimes in terms of AF (Tamron 70-200 especially), and I'm not sure if it's because the lens design is rather old.

Rico · 04-28-2018, 02:08 PM

The K-1 downloads are of the close up of the PCI card while the K-1 ii images are the full scene. It would be great to have access to both for each.

The slider comparisons PF set up are very useful. To my eye I am still seeing a better overall 3D quality from the K-1 ii images. The color is much better. Moving the slider the K-1 images have a shower curtain affect like there is a white film covering the image.

**BigMackCam** · 04-28-2018, 02:16 PM

Originally posted by Rico

The K-1 downloads are of the close up of the PCI card while the K-1 ii images are the full scene. It would be great to have access to both for each.

The slider comparisons PF set up are very useful. To my eye I am still seeing a better overall 3D quality from the K-1 ii images. The color is much better. Moving the slider the K-1 images have a shower curtain affect like there is a white film covering the image.

For the RAW files, everything is the same size - you just need to reset any develop settings in Lightroom to remove the crop and anything else (also remember to remove any sharpening and noise reduction applied by default when you do this). I've downloaded the files and I've been working on them

See below thumbnails in LR for all 24 images (12 for K-1, 12 for K-1II) in LR6, following develop settings reset.

Attached Images

awscreo · 04-28-2018, 02:25 PM

Originally posted by Rico

The K-1 downloads are of the close up of the PCI card while the K-1 ii images are the full scene. It would be great to have access to both for each.

The slider comparisons PF set up are very useful. To my eye I am still seeing a better overall 3D quality from the K-1 ii images. The color is much better. Moving the slider the K-1 images have a shower curtain affect like there is a white film covering the image.

I'm not sure i've ever noticed that effect with my files though

rawr · 04-28-2018, 02:54 PM - **1 Like**

Improvements are visible but subtle. Certainly no 'wow! - that's amazing' differences.

There must be some shooting scenarios (I hope) where the K-1 II is able to really stand-out relative to the K-1. A $500 question..

C_Jones · 04-28-2018, 04:52 PM - **1 Like**

I'm very happy with my K-1 II. I was shooting some college softball yesterday in some overcast weather and the detail in image crops at 800 ISO was really nice.

The AF for tracking birds is excellent.

For all of the above mentioned shooting I was using my Pentax 70-200.

**RGlasel** · 04-28-2018, 05:40 PM - **2 Likes**

Originally posted by Rico

The slider comparisons PF set up are very useful. To my eye I am still seeing a better overall 3D quality from the K-1 ii images. The color is much better. Moving the slider the K-1 images have a shower curtain affect like there is a white film covering the image.

I agree with you, the accelerator unit is reducing variations in colour values at the pixel level that are too small to be resolved by the human eye with a net result of visibly "cleaner" colours. Perceived sharpness is more distinct colour transitions, not a lines per something measurement of black on white.

I'm puzzled by the no big deal comments, the accelerator unit is adding a full stop of noise reduction and enhancing colour transitions for every lens used on the camera, at nearly every ISO value, without requiring any effort or time from the photographer. Any perceived loss of detail is only visible at a resolution that the viewer is never going to use (at least if they want to have any idea of what the entire image looks like) and who is to say that the extra detail seen in the non-accelerated image isn't just our brain doing some post-processing?

**rechmbrs** · 04-28-2018, 06:08 PM

Needs a do over in the processing end by aligning images using the ISO 100 pair. There is more distortion of what we are looking at from the scrolling than in the image pairs. Once aligned you might subtract the pairs followed by a consistent levels runs.

After that redo the text to match what you see. The text of the board should be very different but impossible to figure right from left with the misalignment.

RONC

photoptimist · 04-28-2018, 07:02 PM

Originally posted by RGlasel

I agree with you, the accelerator unit is reducing variations in colour values at the pixel level that are too small to be resolved by the human eye with a net result of visibly "cleaner" colours. Perceived sharpness is more distinct colour transitions, not a lines per something measurement of black on white.

I'm puzzled by the no big deal comments, the accelerator unit is adding a full stop of noise reduction and enhancing colour transitions for every lens used on the camera, at nearly every ISO value, without requiring any effort or time from the photographer. Any perceived loss of detail is only visible at a resolution that the viewer is never going to use (at least if they want to have any idea of what the entire image looks like) and who is to say that the extra detail seen in the non-accelerated image isn't just our brain doing some post-processing?

Exactly!

In dim light:

1. Every lens is now one stop faster without sacrificing DoF (or carrying heavy lenses).

2. One can now shoot at sharper closed-down apertures rather than wide open.

3. Shutter speeds can be one stop faster for stopping motion (and reducing the need to carry a heavy/bulky tripod).

4. Or one can shoot in even dimmer light.

It's awesome for anyone who is not a 100% daylight or flash photographer.

Rico · 04-28-2018, 08:07 PM

Originally posted by BigMackCam

For the RAW files, everything is the same size - you just need to reset any develop settings in Lightroom to remove the crop and anything else (also remember to remove any sharpening and noise reduction applied by default when you do this). I've downloaded the files and I've been working on them

See below thumbnails in LR for all 24 images (12 for K-1, 12 for K-1II) in LR6, following develop settings reset.

I knew it was something simple I was over looking.

This isn't a bad little test scene. It would be nice instead of the wide shot of the soft box to fill the frame with just the scene. A few pixel shift images that way from ISO range 100, 3200, 8000.

To my eye the Mark II takes the image quality to a different level. Looking forward to having my K-1 upgraded.

Now to just get Ricoh/Pentax to allow us to reprocess K-1 images in the K-1 MkII to apply the Accelerator Unit to those files. :^)

---------- Post added 04-28-18 at 11:10 PM ----------

Originally posted by Michaelina2

You are aware that LR needs to "recognize" a camera's precise make and model in order to work with it in a way that produces a fair representative image. The K-1 is a "recognized" camera by LR. LR's built-in array of unique and specialized profiles are time and taste tested to play nice with the K-1 images.

The K-1 MkII is NOT recognized (yet). Being "unrecognized", K-1 MkII images opened in LR are assigned a generic color palette and other settings that might produce wonky results.

Is it possible that getting in a huff over perceived differences between the way LR currently treats K-1 MkII images and any other camera's images is a bit premature?

Just askin'... M

K-1 MkII is being assigned the embedded profile the camera produces. You can switch the K-1 images to the embedded profile which brings them very much in line with each other.

**rechmbrs** · 04-29-2018, 01:14 AM

I copied the files for RAW ISO 100, 12800, and 51200 and aligned them for all to download and see at: Dropbox - ScrollerAligned.zip
I used Load to Stack script to load and also to align.

RONC

**Rondec** · 04-29-2018, 02:39 AM

I think the improvement looks significant to me. I guess the question is does this open up iso 12K to 25K to photographers who don't have amazing skills in noise reduction. To me, the answer is yes. The biggest thing is that the colors look a lot better on the K-1 II images as the iso goes higher. With the original K-1, the colors really start to wash out after iso 3200. Unlike noise, that's the sort of thing that is pretty tough to fix.

To me, the biggest negative of shooting high iso is the loss of dynamic range and it feels as though the K-1 II has better dynamic range throughout its iso range than the K-1.

biz-engineer · 04-29-2018, 03:22 AM

The advantage of reducing the noise in the RAW (like Sony are doing) is to cheat on the charts of DXO mark since they don't measure actual camera resolution unrelated to the glass. From a photographic standpoint, I don't do any noise reduction because I don't find it to improve rendering on prints or perceived image quality at normal viewing distance (the human vision filter out noise anyway). I believe the accelerator chip should improve AF tracking however, that is a lot more useful than reducing noise and details. I'm looking forward to the AF comparison between K1 and K1 II.

reh321 · 04-29-2018, 03:48 AM

Originally posted by biz-engineer

The advantage of reducing the noise in the RAW (like Sony are doing) is to cheat on the charts of DXO mark since they don't measure actual camera resolution unrelated to the glass. From a photographic standpoint, I don't do any noise reduction because I don't find it to improve rendering on prints or perceived image quality at normal viewing distance (the human vision filter out noise anyway). I believe the accelerator chip should improve AF tracking however, that is a lot more useful than reducing noise and details. I'm looking forward to the AF comparison between K1 and K1 II.

You're asking for a completely different chip - one like Nikon uses.

04-28-2018, 12:10 PM - 1 Like	#1
PF Staff Pentaxian Join Date: Sep 2014 Posts: 1,257	Pentax K-1 II vs K-1 Noise Performance A hands-on comparison of the image quality of the Pentax K-1 and K-1 II, with a focus on noise. Read more on the PF homepage...

04-28-2018, 06:08 PM	#9
rechmbrs Site Supporter Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Conroe, TX USA Posts: 423	Redo the prep of image going into the scroller dispaly Needs a do over in the processing end by aligning images using the ISO 100 pair. There is more distortion of what we are looking at from the scrolling than in the image pairs. Once aligned you might subtract the pairs followed by a consistent levels runs. After that redo the text to match what you see. The text of the board should be very different but impossible to figure right from left with the misalignment. RONC Last edited by rechmbrs; 04-28-2018 at 06:13 PM. Reason: Add more comments.

04-29-2018, 01:14 AM	#12
rechmbrs Site Supporter Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Conroe, TX USA Posts: 423	I aligned a couple of the RAW pairs I copied the files for RAW ISO 100, 12800, and 51200 and aligned them for all to download and see at: Dropbox - ScrollerAligned.zip I used Load to Stack script to load and also to align. RONC

04-29-2018, 03:22 AM	#14
biz-engineer Pentaxian Join Date: Feb 2015 Photos: Gallery Posts: 12,231	The advantage of reducing the noise in the RAW (like Sony are doing) is to cheat on the charts of DXO mark since they don't measure actual camera resolution unrelated to the glass. From a photographic standpoint, I don't do any noise reduction because I don't find it to improve rendering on prints or perceived image quality at normal viewing distance (the human vision filter out noise anyway). I believe the accelerator chip should improve AF tracking however, that is a lot more useful than reducing noise and details. I'm looking forward to the AF comparison between K1 and K1 II. Last edited by biz-engineer; 04-29-2018 at 03:27 AM.

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04-28-2018, 01:03 PM	#2
awscreo Veteran Member Join Date: May 2016 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 2,722	I see a bit of improvement, but that alone probably won't make me upgrade my K-1. Really looking forward to AF tests to see if there's a significant improvement there, I'm still struggling with some of my lenses sometimes in terms of AF (Tamron 70-200 especially), and I'm not sure if it's because the lens design is rather old.

04-28-2018, 02:08 PM	#3
Rico Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 1,204	The K-1 downloads are of the close up of the PCI card while the K-1 ii images are the full scene. It would be great to have access to both for each. The slider comparisons PF set up are very useful. To my eye I am still seeing a better overall 3D quality from the K-1 ii images. The color is much better. Moving the slider the K-1 images have a shower curtain affect like there is a white film covering the image.

04-28-2018, 02:16 PM	#4
BigMackCam Digitiser of Film Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: North East of England Posts: 20,670	Originally posted by Rico The K-1 downloads are of the close up of the PCI card while the K-1 ii images are the full scene. It would be great to have access to both for each. The slider comparisons PF set up are very useful. To my eye I am still seeing a better overall 3D quality from the K-1 ii images. The color is much better. Moving the slider the K-1 images have a shower curtain affect like there is a white film covering the image. For the RAW files, everything is the same size - you just need to reset any develop settings in Lightroom to remove the crop and anything else (also remember to remove any sharpening and noise reduction applied by default when you do this). I've downloaded the files and I've been working on them See below thumbnails in LR for all 24 images (12 for K-1, 12 for K-1II) in LR6, following develop settings reset. Attached Images

04-28-2018, 02:25 PM	#5
awscreo Veteran Member Join Date: May 2016 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 2,722	Originally posted by Rico The K-1 downloads are of the close up of the PCI card while the K-1 ii images are the full scene. It would be great to have access to both for each. The slider comparisons PF set up are very useful. To my eye I am still seeing a better overall 3D quality from the K-1 ii images. The color is much better. Moving the slider the K-1 images have a shower curtain affect like there is a white film covering the image. I'm not sure i've ever noticed that effect with my files though

04-28-2018, 02:54 PM - 1 Like	#6
rawr Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 11,913	Improvements are visible but subtle. Certainly no 'wow! - that's amazing' differences. There must be some shooting scenarios (I hope) where the K-1 II is able to really stand-out relative to the K-1. A $500 question..

04-28-2018, 04:52 PM - 1 Like	#7
C_Jones Pentaxian Join Date: Sep 2012 Location: NY Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 6,084	I'm very happy with my K-1 II. I was shooting some college softball yesterday in some overcast weather and the detail in image crops at 800 ISO was really nice. The AF for tracking birds is excellent. For all of the above mentioned shooting I was using my Pentax 70-200.

04-28-2018, 05:40 PM - 2 Likes	#8
RGlasel Site Supporter Join Date: Sep 2013 Location: Saskatoon Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 3,228	Originally posted by Rico The slider comparisons PF set up are very useful. To my eye I am still seeing a better overall 3D quality from the K-1 ii images. The color is much better. Moving the slider the K-1 images have a shower curtain affect like there is a white film covering the image. I agree with you, the accelerator unit is reducing variations in colour values at the pixel level that are too small to be resolved by the human eye with a net result of visibly "cleaner" colours. Perceived sharpness is more distinct colour transitions, not a lines per something measurement of black on white. I'm puzzled by the no big deal comments, the accelerator unit is adding a full stop of noise reduction and enhancing colour transitions for every lens used on the camera, at nearly every ISO value, without requiring any effort or time from the photographer. Any perceived loss of detail is only visible at a resolution that the viewer is never going to use (at least if they want to have any idea of what the entire image looks like) and who is to say that the extra detail seen in the non-accelerated image isn't just our brain doing some post-processing?

04-28-2018, 07:02 PM	#10
photoptimist Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2016 Photos: Albums Posts: 5,122	Originally posted by RGlasel I agree with you, the accelerator unit is reducing variations in colour values at the pixel level that are too small to be resolved by the human eye with a net result of visibly "cleaner" colours. Perceived sharpness is more distinct colour transitions, not a lines per something measurement of black on white. I'm puzzled by the no big deal comments, the accelerator unit is adding a full stop of noise reduction and enhancing colour transitions for every lens used on the camera, at nearly every ISO value, without requiring any effort or time from the photographer. Any perceived loss of detail is only visible at a resolution that the viewer is never going to use (at least if they want to have any idea of what the entire image looks like) and who is to say that the extra detail seen in the non-accelerated image isn't just our brain doing some post-processing? Exactly! In dim light: 1. Every lens is now one stop faster without sacrificing DoF (or carrying heavy lenses). 2. One can now shoot at sharper closed-down apertures rather than wide open. 3. Shutter speeds can be one stop faster for stopping motion (and reducing the need to carry a heavy/bulky tripod). 4. Or one can shoot in even dimmer light. It's awesome for anyone who is not a 100% daylight or flash photographer.

04-28-2018, 08:07 PM	#11
Rico Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 1,204	Originally posted by BigMackCam For the RAW files, everything is the same size - you just need to reset any develop settings in Lightroom to remove the crop and anything else (also remember to remove any sharpening and noise reduction applied by default when you do this). I've downloaded the files and I've been working on them See below thumbnails in LR for all 24 images (12 for K-1, 12 for K-1II) in LR6, following develop settings reset. I knew it was something simple I was over looking. This isn't a bad little test scene. It would be nice instead of the wide shot of the soft box to fill the frame with just the scene. A few pixel shift images that way from ISO range 100, 3200, 8000. To my eye the Mark II takes the image quality to a different level. Looking forward to having my K-1 upgraded. Now to just get Ricoh/Pentax to allow us to reprocess K-1 images in the K-1 MkII to apply the Accelerator Unit to those files. :^) ---------- Post added 04-28-18 at 11:10 PM ---------- Originally posted by Michaelina2 You are aware that LR needs to "recognize" a camera's precise make and model in order to work with it in a way that produces a fair representative image. The K-1 is a "recognized" camera by LR. LR's built-in array of unique and specialized profiles are time and taste tested to play nice with the K-1 images. The K-1 MkII is NOT recognized (yet). Being "unrecognized", K-1 MkII images opened in LR are assigned a generic color palette and other settings that might produce wonky results. Is it possible that getting in a huff over perceived differences between the way LR currently treats K-1 MkII images and any other camera's images is a bit premature? Just askin'... M K-1 MkII is being assigned the embedded profile the camera produces. You can switch the K-1 images to the embedded profile which brings them very much in line with each other.

04-29-2018, 02:39 AM	#13
Rondec Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Gladys, Virginia Photos: Gallery Posts: 27,652	I think the improvement looks significant to me. I guess the question is does this open up iso 12K to 25K to photographers who don't have amazing skills in noise reduction. To me, the answer is yes. The biggest thing is that the colors look a lot better on the K-1 II images as the iso goes higher. With the original K-1, the colors really start to wash out after iso 3200. Unlike noise, that's the sort of thing that is pretty tough to fix. To me, the biggest negative of shooting high iso is the loss of dynamic range and it feels as though the K-1 II has better dynamic range throughout its iso range than the K-1.

04-29-2018, 03:48 AM	#15
reh321 Pentaxian Join Date: Nov 2014 Location: South Bend, IN, USA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 23,177	Originally posted by biz-engineer The advantage of reducing the noise in the RAW (like Sony are doing) is to cheat on the charts of DXO mark since they don't measure actual camera resolution unrelated to the glass. From a photographic standpoint, I don't do any noise reduction because I don't find it to improve rendering on prints or perceived image quality at normal viewing distance (the human vision filter out noise anyway). I believe the accelerator chip should improve AF tracking however, that is a lot more useful than reducing noise and details. I'm looking forward to the AF comparison between K1 and K1 II. You're asking for a completely different chip - one like Nikon uses.