[Kiwizinho]

I drove a Tesla model X yesterday. I'm still grinning from ear to ear and it was 24 hours ago. In a word: Wow!

Not mine. A client of mine offered me the opportunity to drive his.

I think there's no question that electric motors pack more punch when it comes to torque than an ICE. It's just a question of cost and range/recharge time that need to improve.

Apparently the reason trains have been using diesel electric motors for decades is that it's simply not feasible to make a gearbox that's large enough and reliable for the size of engine they have, and then there's the question of actually engaging the gears.
With electric, it's possible to power up the motor and have the generator running at whatever power level is required then flick a switch and all that power is instantly available to the motors driving the wheels.

Speaking of trains, I'm a bit envious of those of you in the Wellington region. Apparently here in the South Island there aren't enough of us to deserve trains, although apparently cows, or at least their milk, do deserve them, as I think rail is about the only viable option to transport milk out of the West Coast.

At least whenever I get across Cook Strait, I take advantage of the trains, not just to keep my climate footprint down, but because I actually enjoy train travel.

[Class A]

Just got an email from CR Kennedys kindly telling me I could pre-order the k-3ll only 2800 shiny Australian dollars

That's a lot of money, but at least it seems to be comparable to international pricing.

It will be interesting to see whether the K-3 III will sell well at this price.

Have they just got 3 models now ? K70, K3, K1 is it.

Yeah, the KP was discontinued.
You can add the 645Z to the count, if you want.

My $nz2280 K-1 seems like a better buy as time passes

Quite the bargain!

[NZ_Ross]

Originally posted by Transit*
My $nz2280 K-1 seems like a better buy as time passes
Quite the bargain!

And he keeps talking about it

[Transit]

And he keeps talking about it

Don't get me started on the 43/1.9 :-)

[NZ_Ross]

Don't get me started on the 43/1.9 :-)

You are hurting me Pete

[Transit]

But you have the Zeissgeist Ross !

[Arpe]

Ah, you guys and your exotic gear!!

[Transit]

Ah, you guys and your exotic gear!!

Last decent shot I took was on the K-100D with the kit lens :-)

[NZ_Ross]

But you have the Zeissgeist Ross !

And no complaints there either Pete, very nice lenses

[zkarj]

For those of you who have eyed up my results with DxO PhotoLab 4's DeepPRIME noise reduction and camera/lens modules, but don't want to completely change your toolchain, there's a new product out. DxO PureRAW is these two elements only bundled up into a "black box" converter similar in concept to Adobe's DNG Converter.

It applies all of the lens corrections (distortion, aberration, sharpness) and the noise reduction and outputs a "Linear RAW" DNG file (or optionally JPEGs). You can choose from DeepPRIME, PRIME, or their "standard" HQ noise reduction, but I would just leave it on DeepPRIME. That's it, there are no other settings other than where to put the results. Once converted there are some simple options to "send" the results to other apps such as Lightroom, and you can also view a before/after comparison in the app. It's based on the same technology as in PhotoLab 4 so supports the same cameras and lenses (with excellent Pentax coverage back as far as the K10D and 99 different lenses [not all Pentax] on my KP).

I've given it a try (30 day trial) with a couple of folders of photos where I can judge sharpness (aircraft, of course) and noise reduction (Singapore night shots) and can report it is epic on both counts. I was worried the lack of control over the amount applied would be a downside, but at first glance it's not. This made me consider switching to something other than PhotoLab for my processing, but that's been a bit of a washout this weekend as testing of alternatives has shown up significant weaknesses in those I have tried even putting aside lacklustre RAW conversion.

The price seems a little steep — full price will be USD$129 — but at launch (until 31st May) you can get it for USD$89.99 which for what it achieves I reckon is a fair price. My workflow would be to have PureRAW pull the files directly from the card and output to their final resting place on disk before opening them in the processing tool of choice.

Had I determined I would switch processing software, I would absolutely have purchased. But as I already own PhotoLab 4 which already has this capability (exporting the Linear DNG with only NR and lens/camera correction) I will just use that for any experimentation with other tools.

Edit: I've uploaded an example. It's the same original shot I've posted before that shows off both sharpness and noise reduction. I've included the original RAW and the one output by PureRAW based on it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/k7uz06mbi657qqc/KP190144.DNG?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m614cwq28jnfccf/KP190144-DNG_DxO_DeepPRIME.dng?dl=0

[Kiwizinho]

The price seems a little steep — full price will be USD$129 — but at launch (until 31st May) you can get it for USD$89.99 which for what it achieves I reckon is a fair price. My workflow would be to have PureRAW pull the files directly from the card and output to their final resting place on disk before opening them in the processing tool of choice.

Had I determined I would switch processing software, I would absolutely have purchased. But as I already own PhotoLab 4 which already has this capability (exporting the Linear DNG with only NR and lens/camera correction) I will just use that for any experimentation with other tools.

The price is the thing that struck me. It's cheaper, but not significantly so for the amount of features lost compared to PhotoLab 4. Based on your recommendation, I took advantage of the PhotoLab 4 30 day trial, then ended up purchasing it after putting it through its paces. I waited till the 'Black Friday' sale, and I think it was 50% off the regular price, so reasonably affordable.
For probably around 80% of my photos, Light Room is perfectly adequate as I typically shoot at base ISO, and noise is not really an issue.
There are several areas where I find PhotoLab 4 is great; noise reduction when it's needed, automatic lens profile correction, and control points for selective lighting adjustment. Although Lightroom has radial filter and adjustment brush, I find control points in PhotoLab are typically a lot more useful, and less likely to end up with undesirable artefacts along edges. Of course I could use control points with Nik Effects but that was not a non-destructive process, and if I wanted to go back and change and edit, I'd have to start over, whereas with PhotoLab, I can just bring up the image and tweak adjustments.
I think rather than being a Lightroom replacement, in my case, PhotoLab has ended up becoming a replacement for most of what I was doing in Nik Effects, although there are some of those plugins I'll still use occasionally, raw sharpening and lighting adjustments for situations too complicated for Lightroom were the main reason I'd use Nik plugins.

Apart from allowing me to work non-destructively on raw files, PhotoLab saves me a heap of disk space compared to Nik, because it saves its edits as small sidecar files, and I'm quite happy exporting just jpgs back to Lightroom, as I still have the original raw file in my catalog, and I can easily make adjustments and export them again from PhotoLab. Previously, If I wanted to send something to Nik from Lightroom, I'd end up with a massive tif file in addition to the original raw file, and as already mentioned, the edits to this file were destructive, as I couldn't revert edits in Nik once saved. Nik does have some effects that go beyond what PhotoLab can achieve, but a lot of those additional effects can be pretty over the top, and getting more into the realm of redefining an image as something different to what it originally represented. Silver Efex Pro might be one I'd consider for monochrome conversion, although Lightroom offers adequate options for this in most cases.

[zkarj]

Based on your recommendation, I took advantage of the PhotoLab 4 30 day trial, then ended up purchasing it after putting it through its paces.

Good one! Their discounts can be pretty decent if you pick the right time. I expect PureRAW will be the same in time.

You say you only use it for noise reduction tasks. The key feature of PhotoLab that I take advantage of for most of my photos is the sharpness. The lens-and-camera-specific sharpening in their demosaicing is far superior to anything I've tried before — including Lightroom though that would have been a few years ago now. I've had two "free upgrades" to my cameras in the last 5 years — first was using an Apple "Retina" screen, second was getting PhotoLab. I'm sure I've mentioned before that I've been back over old photos and reprocessed them (over 1000 so far) because they come out so much better than the original processing in Lightroom or Luminar that I used before PhotoLab. I don't think I have ever used an unsharp mask on a RAW file in PhotoLab.

That's what excited me so much about PureRAW — the choice of any processing tool with the crisp sharpness and, when needed, amazing noise reduction. Try grabbing an example RAW image that will benefit from tack-sharp rendering (my test cases are generally aircraft with lots of rivets and panel lines and small stencilled markings) and send it from PhotoLab using the Export to Lightroom option with the setting "Export as DNG (Denoise & Optical Corrections only)". Of course unlike PureRAW you have the option of tweaking the settings before doing this.

Here is another example pair of DNGs. The panel lines and rivets on the rear fuselage and the grime on the side of the jetty (behind the aircraft float) are areas where it shows.
Dropbox - KP203266.DNG
Dropbox - KP203266-DNG_DxO_DeepPRIME.dng

[MarkJerling]

Good work, Alistair. Very interesting.

[richandfleur]

Last decent shot I took was on the K-100D with the kit lens :-)

K-100D was our first move into Pentax digital, where Fleur kept her film body and we supplemented it with the new digital.
Had a lot of time for that camera, it was genuinely really good.



(Only issue was the focussing from memory, which started my long battle with Pentax back focussing under autofocus conditions, no matter where you pointed the one centre focus point )

---------- Post added 04-21-21 at 09:28 AM ----------

That's a lot of money, but at least it seems to be comparable to international pricing.

It will be interesting to see whether the K-3 III will sell well at this price.

Agreed. Concern has always been who will buy Pentax products, and if there is a need to pull in new buyers or simply sell to the existing userbase.
As a current Pentax owner, I won't be buying new at that price but may revisit in 3 years when it's either on discontinued runout or second hand options become more affordable.

[Kiwizinho]

Agreed. Concern has always been who will buy Pentax products, and if there is a need to pull in new buyers or simply sell to the existing userbase.
As a current Pentax owner, I won't be buying new at that price but may revisit in 3 years when it's either on discontinued runout or second hand options become more affordable.

I'm sure I'd enjoy a K-3 III, but at the price it's going for, I'd put it in the 'Pro' realm. Put in context, I guess if I could convince 30 people to pay me $100 each for a photo, then it would definitely be on my shopping list, as it would be self-funding, but it's not just the camera industry that's been in free fall, but also the photography industry in general, with free stock sites like Unsplash, and other microstock sites like 123rf that I see Radio NZ and Stuff are increasingly using that license images starting from $3.00 USD per image per month on a subscription plan, and go down from there based on volume.

Of course people have other more expensive hobbies than photography like flying aeroplanes or motor racing, and other such things, so I guess put in perspective, around $3,000 spread out over several years of enjoyment is actually reasonably economical, but it's still quite a lot of money for many people.