Ah, the sweet memories! The K20D was easily one of my best-ever Pentax bodies. I did eventually fall into the trap of wanting to update, thinking back the incredible high ISO improvements drove that for me. I eventually went through a K-5 and K-5 IIs in succession, landing on my current K-70. Having said all that nd being really happy with the K-70, I went on a trip to memory lane recently, revisiting Pentax raw files in PEF format going all the way back to my first K110D body (eleven years ago!).
I found I could do better today than I did back then in terms of raw processing and image editing so I decided to randomly pick a few shots I had always liked and redoing them with today's tools. The difference is stark! Using Darktable 2.4.4 and Gimp 2.10.6 is like driving a Ferrari compared to the VW Beetle I used back then (mostly Pentax's own software on Windows - when I still used it occasionally - and UFRaw/Gimp on Linux).
So here are some shots from Ottawa, Krakow, Bucharest, Milan and Prague if memory serves me, all shot in PEF with the K20D. What I especially appreciated this time were DT's integrated lens corrections (LensFun library) wich really do a world of good to the shots I took with the DA16-45mm lens which had quite a bit of distortion and other issues. On some shots, the automatic keystoning does way better than I was ever able to do manually in "ye old days" which is especially visible in the B&W shot of what I think was the staircase of the Museum of Natural History in Ottawa but benefitted almost all of my architecture shots to some degree. (I'm a crooked shooter, have always been. Can't get straight lines straight even if I haven't had a drop to drink).
There are even some files, shot at the edge of what I could get away with on the K20D ISO-wise which I can now process with modern, profiled noise reduction techniques and those shots have suddenly become very nice where back then I rejected them due to image noise.
I appreciate the chance to share as well as getting an incentive to go over more of the K20D files of 2009-2011, it's so much fun to see all the places my work took me. And yes, it was mostly boring airport-hotel-office but I always managed to sneak a few hours of walking time into those 2-3 day visits. Hope you enjoy as much as I did redoing these!