[BigMackCam]

I'm sure I must be doing something really stupid here (wouldn't be the first time!), but let's see if anyone can shed any light...

The K3 is my main camera, day-to-day, but increasingly I use my old K5 backup - usually fitted with a lens of complementary focal length so I have a choice without having to switch out lenses. When the K5 was my main camera, I shot JPEGs. For the last year, or thereabouts, I shoot only RAW. My processing is done mostly in Lightroom 6 - I have other software I sometimes use once the basic image development is done, but Lightroom is used to optimise exposure, contrast, colour, noise reduction, sharpening, lens corrections etc.

Fairly recently, I've been doing a lot of low light (without flash) experimentation. What I'm finding is this... when I import my K3 images into LR, usually my exposure is fine but sometimes I'll have some clipping of shadows. However, I can - almost without exception - recover those shadows so that there is no clipping whatsoever (if that's my choice). With my K5 images, though, I'm finding that I often can't recover the shadows on all colour channels; hence, I'm having to over-expose - sometimes to the point where I'm introducing clipping in the highlights that wouldn't otherwise have been there.

What am I doing wrong, folks?

---------- Post added 02-06-2016 at 09:39 PM ----------

I'm sure I must be doing something really stupid here (wouldn't be the first time!), but let's see if anyone can shed any light...

I think I may have answered my own question... dynamic range of the K5 at high ISO, yes? I'd read that the K5's dynamic range was actually a little better than the K3's, but I assume this was based on lowest ISO settings?

---

Last edited by BigMackCam; 02-06-2016 at 02:39 PM.

[Bruce Clark]

Assuming your exposures in camera are correct. Rough check by examining the histogram for all colour channels
Check for any process on import import settings in lightroom.

[BigMackCam]

Assuming your exposures in camera are correct. Rough check by examining the histogram for all colour channels
Check for any process on import import settings in lightroom.

Just taken another test image with both cameras. Exposures are good, and I'm working off the in-camera histograms to ensure near-identical spread for both K3 and K5 images. I should have mentioned, this is a high contrast scene - lots of black cloth, lots of very-brightly-lit walls / woodwork in the scene - and shot at ISO 12800, so quite extreme. What I'm finding, more often than not, is that with both K3 and K5, I have some clipping in both shadows and highlights. Highlights are recovered in both without problems, but with the K5, it seems the green channel shadows can't be fully recovered...

Interestingly - though not surprising based on what I've read - the noise performance is definitely better on the K5