[goatsNdonkey]

Dave, I remember when you were preparing for some visitors, who were going to borrow your camera for pictures while touring your locale. You were experimenting with the settings for in-camera jpegs that would have the best results with the lighting and colors of common subjects of interest in your area. I suspect that I'm not the only person who remembers just how good the pictures were you posted that were using the settings you arrived at!

Another way to think of this is that when one of us buys a Pentax dslr, we are paying for and getting a Raw image processor right in it. If we find a the internal settings that result in processing the sort of jpegs we like, that isn't much different from finding those settings in a post-processing program. If keeping things simple works, it works.

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K-R update:

I'm trying the Portrait option, with the Hue slider inside of it set at +1. Several early morning shots at least didn't present any obvious strange surprises. Of course, with the sun low, and yellower, I don't know how much effect it was having. Although, I suspect that the Auto white balance mitigated some of that.

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Last edited by goatsNdonkey; 01-03-2019 at 07:52 AM.

[paulh]

Maybe we should convince Ricoh to add a "CCD" profile to DCU for CMOS cameras...

I believe @BigMackCam did just that last year, albeit for Lightroom. Scroll through the posts here or try a forum search.

Taken on a street corner in downtown Fillmore, CA last July. DA18-55 on K10D:

[ChristianRock]

When I had the K-r, I basically only used the Portrait option, the Natural was too washed out. I'm not a big fan of the K-50 jpeg engine either, but I find it to be much improved in the K-S1 (which is probably even better than the K-3 from what i see, but not as good as the K-70/KP engine).

With the K-r you really have to shoot RAW*. Then open the files in Darktable (it's free!) and use the profile "01_NWAL_Basics_settings" that you can download from dtstyle.net (I have some profiles that I uploaded to that page but that one's not mine). I guarantee that most of the time, the image will look better than the in-camera JPEG (you can always shoot RAW+ and test it). I can edit a day's worth of images with my presets (I have uploaded some to the site, but not most. Mine are some like Landscape Pop, Landscape Slide Film and Desaturated Portrait).

With the K10D I also shoot RAW. As good as the JPEG engine is, I get more from the RAW files, and they're not large, so they're very fast to edit.


(*) Forgot to add, when we go out as a family, we have to shoot in JPEG because that's the wife's wishes... must be instantly shareable on social media. But when shoot for myself, I shoot RAW. Usually.

[Piotrek K]

With the K-r I use Portrait mode plus set Sharpness to Fine Sharpness. I use RAW on the DSLRs and like colors from PDCU. If you try to fine tune settings like this in your camera Pentax software starts with them. Also its auto WB is much better! I still use my CCD-cameras, esp.K200 D, but the main driver is now the focusing screen that I have in it for manual lenses, not the colors.

[goatsNdonkey]

My latest K-R settings, that seem to be working well (looking more like what I am used to with my K10D), are:
--Portrait mode
--Hue +1
--Saturation -1

The dropping of saturation slightly seemed necessary when a couple of my middle-of-the-day sky shots made the sky looked like it was made of melted Crayola medium Blue crayon, in other words, a way too dark, artificial blue. The K-R's Portrait mode seems to be the equivalent of 2 or more Saturation steps deeper than its Natural mode, so backing it down still gives deeper color than the Natural setting.

The slight hue change has taken the raspberry color out of reds.

(I don't mess with sharpness settings. I figure that is usually my responsibility, especially when I focus my manual focus lenses. I also don't want faked sharpness making my bokeh look nervous.)

[Dartmoor Dave]

You can definitely get very acceptable jpeg results straight from the camera with the K10D, once you've got your preferred settings tuned in. I always extract the jpeg previews from my raw files and use them to choose which ones to process, and a lot of the time I'm left wondering why I bother with raw at all.

I've never been able to quite get there with jpegs from the K-S1 though. I shoot jpegs with it when I'm doing publicity stuff for my charity, but I always run them through the Perfectly Clear plug-in to give them a bit more oomph. That lets me make any adjustments I want with a couple of clicks, and the results are plenty good enough for website and local newspaper use. It's worth giving the free trial a go if you're a regular jpeg shooter. (Although it's slightly embarrassing to have to admit that I actually learned something useful from Ken Rockwell.)

[ChristianRock]

You can definitely get very acceptable jpeg results straight from the camera with the K10D, once you've got your preferred settings tuned in. I always extract the jpeg previews from my raw files and use them to choose which ones to process, and a lot of the time I'm left wondering why I bother with raw at all.

I've never been able to quite get there with jpegs from the K-S1 though. I shoot jpegs with it when I'm doing publicity stuff for my charity, but I always run them through the Perfectly Clear plug-in to give them a bit more oomph. That lets me make any adjustments I want with a couple of clicks, and the results are plenty good enough for website and local newspaper use. It's worth giving the free trial a go if you're a regular jpeg shooter. (Although it's slightly embarrassing to have to admit that I actually learned something useful from Ken Rockwell.)

I used Perfectly Clear back when I used Corel Aftershot Pro (so nothing to do with the infamous Mr Ken ) In fact that's about the only reason one would use Aftershot Pro these days... it's cheaper than buying Perfectly Clear separately

I'm getting JPEGs that I like with the K-S1 now, I have to admit. Even the Bright setting can give good results if you tone down the saturation. I find it has a warmth that reminds me of the K10D. I also use that setting out in sunny conditions with lenses that would lower contrast and saturation with all that bright light. In the evenings and nights I use the Muted setting with contrast and saturation slightly bumped up a bit, as I find that the K-S1 has a tendency to oversaturate everything if the light is low.
The wife is happy with the JPEGs

I've yet to figure out the K50 JPEG engine, that one's the most difficult for me so far. Sometimes it can be great, sometimes the colors are just completely off.

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Last edited by ChristianRock; 01-04-2019 at 08:05 AM.

[paulh]

December oak - F35-80 on K10D:

[Dartmoor Dave]

One from this afternoon (baked from raw). I seem to be enjoying more of a casual wandering around with the 18-55mm WR style of snapping so far this year.

[goatsNdonkey]

Tamron Adaptall-2 23A SP 60-300mm + K10D

OOC Jpeg -- Sky is obviously deeper than life, but merely the product of metering only sky, leading to the blue reading as a medium, not a light tone as it would in the typical landscape.

---------- Post added 01-04-19 at 12:24 PM ----------

Just for comparison, here's a copy of the same image, adjusted using my usual technique. My aims: (1) Bring more brilliance into the clouds, (2) lose as little of the strands of detail in the clouds as possible, (3) keep the trees mostly silhouetted, (4) not worry about what happened to the sky color lightness level. I raised the overall exposure level to my tiff copy, then played with dialing down the highlight brightness while watching how that effected priorities 1, 2, and 3. It's a little better, but not a great deal different from the OOC Jpeg.

[paulh]

F35-80:

[paulh]

dark picnic - F35-80:

[subsea]

A couple of shots from 2013, of Edinburgh Castle on an overcast day. Pictures taken near dusk with a K-10D and a FA 28-80mm lens.

[niblue]

Kayaks at Applecross in Scotland. K10D & Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6

[ChristianRock]

Kayaks at Applecross in Scotland. K10D & Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6

I love it! Great colors from that Sigma (and the K10D of course).