[Dewman]

I'm curious. Does the new K-3 have a different sensor than the K-50? I've always had a problem rendering reds.... in particular the red in roses, with my K-50 and before that, with my K2000. So, I was wondering if that issue had been improved upon with the K-3. I've been told that that's a common issue with Pentaxs in general.


I must say though, I've found a way to improve on the problem quite a bit by setting the custom image to "muted," and decrease the saturation and contrast a little. Still not like I would prefer, but much better. The problem with my "solution" is, other colors - particularly greens - suffer for it.

[jatrax]

Does the new K-3 have a different sensor than the K-50?

Short answer is yes.

K-3 and k-3II both use a completely different sensor than was used in the k-30, k-50, k-5, k-5II, k-5IIs. When I first got the k-3 I was severely dissappointed in the image quality because I was still using my k-5 develop pre-sets. Only once I tossed those out and started over did I start to get image quality I liked out of the k-3. That sensor needs a completely different develop routine.

[Adam]

I'm curious. Does the new K-3 have a different sensor than the K-50? I've always had a problem rendering reds.... in particular the red in roses, with my K-50 and before that, with my K2000. So, I was wondering if that issue had been improved upon with the K-3. I've been told that that's a common issue with Pentaxs in general.


I must say though, I've found a way to improve on the problem quite a bit by setting the custom image to "muted," and decrease the saturation and contrast a little. Still not like I would prefer, but much better. The problem with my "solution" is, other colors - particularly greens - suffer for it.

Tweaking your custom image profile and/or shooting in RAW will help you get better reds. It's really only an issue if you stick to the default JPEG profiles.

[Dewman]

Tweaking your custom image profile and/or shooting in RAW will help you get better reds. It's really only an issue if you stick to the default JPEG profiles.

I must admit, and somewhat embarrassingly so, that I have yet to shoot one single image in RAW. I was an old time film photographer since the mid-60's, but had let photography fall by the wayside for a long, long time. I didn't enter into the digital world until about four years ago, so I've been on a very steep learning curve for some time. It has taken me quite a while to UNDERSTAND - and put into practical use - what I've learned so far, but I think I'm FINALLY at the point that I feel comfortable entering into the RAW realm. THEN, maybe I won't turn the other way when I see a red rose!


Thanks for the information. It's very encouraging.

[Bob from Aus]

I was an old time film photographer since the mid-60's, but had let photography fall by the wayside for a long, long time.

there is plenty of us in your club of being old school from way back when. What software do you use to process your images? I found using DNG RAW and Lightroom to process a very nice combination. If you like B&W film you might appreciate what lightroom can do to turn your colour images into B&W.

[Dewman]

there is plenty of us in your club of being old school from way back when. What software do you use to process your images? I found using DNG RAW and Lightroom to process a very nice combination. If you like B&W film you might appreciate what lightroom can do to turn your colour images into B&W.

Right now, I have Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop and Olympus Viewer II. Unless you've used the Olympus Viewer program, don't scoff at it. It has proven itself the best - BY FAR - when processing JPEG images..... at least for these old, myopic eyes. Now RAW? That's a whole new ball game and totally uncharted territory for me.


I don't shoot film and unless they outlaw digital, I can't ever see myself using film EVER again! The Olympus Viewer does a wonderful job of converting color images to B&W. There's a free on-line download for it, although it's a "new, improved" version, but I've been sucked into that before, so I can't speak for the new version. I'm perfectly happy with it and as long as I shoot JPEGs, I can't see any reason to change. I say that, having never used one of the more modern, technically advanced programs. Old dogs, new tricks syndrome, I suspect. I'm slow to change from something that has worked well for me. I'd still be using Windows XP if it was possible!

[Bob from Aus]

Olympus Viewer II

Thanks for the advice on the software. I'll have a look at it. While I might not use it myself, I help a few people get started with photography and it's great to know about some alternatives. I also liked Windows XP. I would say a combination of small hard drive if you are still running XP and RAW would cause issues very quickly filling up your drive. On top of that Lightroom on a small C drive was a disaster for me and I had to up grade my computer.

I have accumulated more than a cubic metre of slides. I do my best to avoid them and very much prefer accessing my photographic material via a computer.

[patrick9]

My DL struggles with reds. Funny thing is My K-30 struggled with greens . I had to adjust the parameters a little bit in the custom image settings "I use natural" ( I pulled a into the magenta side a tad ) to get realistic greens along with the rest of my colors

[narual]

There are a lot of threads on this issue. The problem exists with most dslrs to some degree or another. It exhibits most obviously with red flowers on green backgrounds on sunny days. There are basically two factors that combine to cause it.

One is related to near infrared not being completely filtered out; one is related to the way the camera meters. The easiest fix is to turn on your RGB histogram view (the combined histogram won't help) and expose so the red channel isn't blown out. Spot metering on the rose can help with this. Sometimes even changing the white balance can make a difference in bringing visible detail back into the image if you've already blown it out a bit.

While they're more for recovering from awful red concert lighting, there are some great lightroom presets that cost a whopping $5 that can help with this, too.
International Music Photography, Band Portraits & Tour Photography by Australian Rock n' Roll Photographer Benon Julius William Otto Koebsch

[savoche]

The easiest fix is to turn on your RGB histogram view (the combined histogram won't help) and expose so the red channel isn't blown out.

This is what I do.

I wonder if the camera favors greens when metering light, which leads to blown reds. Just speculations on my part.

[jatrax]

So this discussion caused me to take a look ant my color profile and see if it really was working correctly. This is all for RAW by the way, using Lightroom.

With the k-5 I used the Adobe Standard Camera profile because the Embedded one over saturated the reds badly. When I moved to the k-3 I continued that practice at first but after testing discovered I liked the embedded profile much better and shifted to that as part of my develop preset on the k-3. Now with the k-3II I noticed that I am again getting way over saturated reds. So I decided it was time to look into a custom profile. I've had the x-rite Colorchecker for some time but it looked too complicated and I was happy with what I was getting so it sat on the shelf.

I downloaded the Adobe Profile Editor software: Adobe - DNG Profile Editor : For Windows and got to work. I found that far from complicated it was quite simple and took only minutes. I shot the Colorchecker in both studio lighting and outdoors with bright but not direct morning sun.

So here is the result:
1) The Embedded profile
2) The Adobe Standard profile
3) My custom Colorchecker profile for daylight

[Wingincamera]

For my old eyes with my laptop I like #3 the best, with the Colorchecker.

[narual]

Another option is to acquire the appropriate Huelight color profile for your camera model. Huelight is considered the 'gold standard' by which other profiles are measured.

http://www.colorfidelity.com/pentax.htm]Huelight Pentax Camera Profiles

Works great... M

No, the "gold standard" would be using an XRite or some other calibrated card to create a custom profile.

Hue light just makes some cool profiles that work well to add extra pop to images.

And yes, the camera favors green light. So do your eyes. This explains a bit about how the sensor understands colors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter

[ChristianRock]

There's just so many advantages of shooting in RAW. It doesn't mean you need to spend a lot of time processing pictures. This one was about 1-2 minutes tops (half the time was spent applying a preset or two, and verifying that the "auto levels" in my software all blew up the reds, so I had to just do some manual adjustment).



And that was the K20D... I'm sure you get way more information to work with, with the K-3 24MP 14-bit files.

[stevebrot]

Right now, I have Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop and Olympus Viewer II.

FWIW, my experience has been that the RAW converter in Paintshop Pro sucks. Adobe Camera Raw in either Lightroom or Photoshop is much preferable.


Steve