Originally posted by Al_Kahollick Interesting that everyone seems to think Pentax dropped the highest setting by going from 4 stars to three. It's much more likely they dropped the lowest, after all, you can't start numbering things with two!
I've just done a couple comparisons of the star ratings on a k5iis, the 4 star rating is on the absurd level of extra MB for miniscule quality gain. On one of my images, the 4 star gave a 9.6MB image, 3 star gave a 6.3MB image. I stacked them in photoshop and had it take the difference of the two versions. 54.3% of the pixels matched, 87.77% were off by 1 level or less, 97.48% were off by 2 levels or less, 99.59% were off by 3 levels or less. Results may vary depending on the content but in practical working terms, there's not much difference for the image I used...
The difference between 4 and 1 star is also pretty small (31% of pixels matched, 92% were off by 3 or less, 99% were off by 7 or less), just flicking between the two at 100% it takes some staring to tell the difference. I was going to complain about the 1 star setting being called 'good' and not 'crappy', but it actually is pretty good. They don't have an in-camera jpeg setting that majorly gimps you with compression.
I believe the default setting on the k5iis was 3 stars. There's not much to be gained going to 4 (that's not to say some people might find it worth it
). I wouldn't be surprised if they chopped 4 stars, but as sterretje and I have conjectured they could easily have moved the other star ratings around. It's tough to compare, but a k3 saving jpegs at 14mp compared to the k20 might be illuminating.