[Nicolas06]

Too brief, it is unclear to me if you are saying there is only a one stop ISO advantage to the k-1 from the k-3 or something else.

In fact my previous explanation was unclear (even if I respond for somebody else there). What was show here for noise? 100% crop. Was the noise visible on the full picture? No.

The "FF" is suppose to be better? Why? Bigger sensor. Ok.

But we speak of 100% crop here. The sensor size doesn't matter one bit. We get 2 1024 pixels crops. The only difference is the photosite size. K1 as similar photosite size to K5, K3 has smaller one.

The 1024px on the FF represent an 1.5 time wider surface area than on APSC. The gain is no longer 1.1 stop but 0.5 stop.

The difference between exposure and iso is 1.5 stop. This isn't that easy to hide. When a K3 get 1.5 stop higher iso, the noise also higher. image if you compared the K3 at 400 iso and 1200 iso. That basically what is done there.

[Nicolas06]

yes ,exactly. But this isn't what's being presented in image comparison between the Tamron 150-600 G2 and 500 f4 prime.

The 150-600 and 500 f/4 have a big problem: not easy to get on Pentax. So for us possibilities are more:
-A used 150-500 for 600-700€
-A bigma for 1000-1500€ euro depending of the shop.
-A DA*300 + TC for 1100-1400€ depending if you get used/new and were
- A 150-450...
- A DA560.

The 300 f/2.8 are expensive and the DA*200, even with TC only make sense on crop.

If you don't want/need/care FF, then obviously, you don't even have to thing about it. if you go FF and keep APSC or to invest in APSC, again, why care?

Now if you invested everything on FF, well maybe a 150-500 for 600-700€ is a quite good investment that'll get lot of great photos on an FF and for reach that still equiv to what a K5-IIs was providing anyway... I think that really the point. Or even nothing special, the K1 would do a great job with many APSC classical combination like DA*300 + TC, the 150-450, the 60-250 + TC...

If that allow you to sell your K3 for 500€, that isn't that bad. All the contrary. That maybe a way to get that K1 at more affordable price as you know there isn't only birding in life or even photography.

I am no FF advocate, all the contrary, but I am not neither for denying it can actually take great pictures.

I am sure that you take that top birding photographer and give him a K1 and a 150-500 or a 60-250 + TC, he'll get result that you most of us would never manage with a 300 f/2.8 or 600 f/4 whatever the camera. He may even do that with a 55-300 and a K30!

[biz-engineer]

if you go FF and keep APSC or to invest in APSC, again, why care?

It's not only about gear, and eventually it's not into more gear that one has to invest. You showed it with your DA55-300 with taking good photos in a safari setting. For me, I already have 630mm by sticking a TC on the DFA150450 and AF works incredibly well... (I don't know how Ricoh managed that, but f8 isn't a problem.. it can even do BiF AFC 9 points tracking!). At some point, the only thing that left to invest in is the photo technique, how to approach, where to be placed for the light and the background, where to go to get to see the kind of subjects you can realiably photograph, how to stabilize the lens...because any slight move of the camera at 630mm adds some blur.

[UncleVanya]

In fact my previous explanation was unclear (even if I respond for somebody else there). What was show here for noise? 100% crop. Was the noise visible on the full picture? No.

The "FF" is suppose to be better? Why? Bigger sensor. Ok.

But we speak of 100% crop here. The sensor size doesn't matter one bit. We get 2 1024 pixels crops. The only difference is the photosite size. K1 as similar photosite size to K5, K3 has smaller one.

The 1024px on the FF represent an 1.5 time wider surface area than on APSC. The gain is no longer 1.1 stop but 0.5 stop.

The difference between exposure and iso is 1.5 stop. This isn't that easy to hide. When a K3 get 1.5 stop higher iso, the noise also higher. image if you compared the K3 at 400 iso and 1200 iso. That basically what is done there.

I don't think that is the accepted definition. The MF users certainly have never agreed with that particularly when film is in use and the film is the same across formats. Total light is supposed to matter.

DXO in particular shows about 1 1/3 stops for sports action shooting. 1200+ ISO vs 3200+ But I would be more interested to look at each sensors performance at the ISO used (dynamic range noise levels etc. ).

[reh321]

It's not only about gear, and eventually it's not into more gear that one has to invest. You showed it with your DA55-300 with taking good photos in a safari setting. For me, I already have 630mm by sticking a TC on the DFA150450 and AF works incredibly well... (I don't know how Ricoh managed that, but f8 isn't a problem...

Doesn't surprise me any. A few years ago I had Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 which I used with back-end doubler. A bunch of so-called experts told me AF would never work with this combination @270mm, because the effective aperture would be smaller than f/8, but my elderly Canon Rebel did just fine.

[biz-engineer]

Total light is supposed to matter.

Total light works when you downsize two photographs to the same size. If I take a K1 photo and zoom 100% I get the noise of a K5 image zoomed at 100%, as Nicolas mentions. Now, if I take a K3 photo and K1 photo and I downsize the K1 photo to 24Mpixels and then I zoom both at 100% , the K1 image is more "slick" than the K3 image. BUT... here is a take.. the downsizing ratio impacts the noise level. If I downsize 3 pixels to 1 pixel , noise is gone because of the maximum likelyhood takes 3 pixels and look at what the change of this extra level is noise. But if I downsize with pixel ratio of 2.3 to 1 pixels... I get some subsampling artefacts and the noise may not decrease as much as it could.

[Nicolas06]

I don't think that is the accepted definition. The MF users certainly have never agreed with that particularly when film is in use and the film is the same across formats. Total light is supposed to matter.

DXO in particular shows about 1 1/3 stops for sports action shooting. 1200+ ISO vs 3200+ But I would be more interested to look at each sensors performance at the ISO used (dynamic range noise levels etc. ).

But if you crop your MF film to 24x36, you don't expect more than on a 24x36 film.

The actual surface covered by a 1024 crop on K1 is 50% bigger than a 1024 crop on K3. Why would you expect more than what you can expect from 50% more light received ? (so approx 0.5 stop) ?

Dxo shows that the K1 as about 1.3 stop for sport action shooting, agree that is based on print score (full surface comparison). The detailled print measurement curve show it clearly: the K1 curve is much higher on all measurement than K5 and K3.
- The detailled screen score shows that basically a K1 has the performance of a K5 on crops and a bit better than K3, but the difference is much smaller than in print mode.

[normhead]

Doesn't surprise me any. A few years ago I had Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 which I used with back-end doubler. A bunch of so-called experts told me AF would never work with this combination @270mm, because the effective aperture would be smaller than f/8, but my elderly Canon Rebel did just fine.

That what i find all the time... people say you can't do this or you can't do that, but I find things that aren't supposed to work all the time. bsicly, if they haven't tried it with your lens and your camera, they don't know anything. These general laws to live by are for the most part non-sense. Get you hands n the equipment you want to exploit and try it out see if it works. My A-400 with the 1.7x gets posted to 680mm at ƒ9.3 and the AF doesn't work, even for focus confirmation. But if some guy wants to tell me his 400mm Canon words with a 2x TC, why would I argue with that? What works is what works and for a lot of stuff you don't know if it works if you haven't tried.

All we can do is report what we have and whether it works or not. That's what we know. The rest is speculation.

[Lowell Goudge]

It's not only about gear, and eventually it's not into more gear that one has to invest. You showed it with your DA55-300 with taking good photos in a safari setting. For me, I already have 630mm by sticking a TC on the DFA150450 and AF works incredibly well... (I don't know how Ricoh managed that, but f8 isn't a problem.. it can even do BiF AFC 9 points tracking!). At some point, the only thing that left to invest in is the photo technique, how to approach, where to be placed for the light and the background, where to go to get to see the kind of subjects you can realiably photograph, how to stabilize the lens...because any slight move of the camera at 630mm adds some blur.

Doesn't surprise me any. A few years ago I had Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 which I used with back-end doubler. A bunch of so-called experts told me AF would never work with this combination @270mm, because the effective aperture would be smaller than f/8, but my elderly Canon Rebel did just fine.

That what i find all the time... people say you can't do this or you can't do that, but I find things that aren't supposed to work all the time. bsicly, if they haven't tried it with your lens and your camera, they don't know anything. These general laws to live by are for the most part non-sense. Get you hands n the equipment you want to exploit and try it out see if it works. My A-400 with the 1.7x gets posted to 680mm at ƒ9.3 and the AF doesn't work, even for focus confirmation. But if some guy wants to tell me his 400mm Canon words with a 2x TC, why would I argue with that? What works is what works and for a lot of stuff you don't know if it works if you haven't tried.

All we can do is report what we have and whether it works or not. That's what we know. The rest is speculation.

...many years ago, in 1991 to be exact, Pentax wrote in the manual for the AF 1.7X converter, that the maximum aperture had to be F2.8 or faster. I tried my vivitar 70-210/3.5 and it worked so I bought one. It proved to work with my PZ1 for my 300/4 as well but not with my 500/5,6

With DSLRs people have always said they could used it on a 500/4.5 although in the early days they claimed it was not 100% reliable in low light

In bright light I can get it to focus with my K5 on a tamron 200-500/5.6.

So over time, the sensitivity of Pentax AF has improved, from about F6.9 to about F9 as a smallest maximum aperture.

I can't say what cannon can do, so it is dangerous to compare outside Pentax

[Ian Stuart Forsyth]

The 150-600 and 500 f/4 have a big problem: not easy to get on Pentax. So for us possibilities are more:
-A used 150-500 for 600-700€
-A bigma for 1000-1500€ euro depending of the shop.
-A DA*300 + TC for 1100-1400€ depending if you get used/new and were
- A 150-450...
- A DA560.

The 300 f/2.8 are expensive and the DA*200, even with TC only make sense on crop.

If you don't want/need/care FF, then obviously, you don't even have to thing about it. if you go FF and keep APSC or to invest in APSC, again, why care?

Now if you invested everything on FF, well maybe a 150-500 for 600-700€ is a quite good investment that'll get lot of great photos on an FF and for reach that still equiv to what a K5-IIs was providing anyway... I think that really the point. Or even nothing special, the K1 would do a great job with many APSC classical combination like DA*300 + TC, the 150-450, the 60-250 + TC...

If that allow you to sell your K3 for 500€, that isn't that bad. All the contrary. That maybe a way to get that K1 at more affordable price as you know there isn't only birding in life or even photography.

I am no FF advocate, all the contrary, but I am not neither for denying it can actually take great pictures.

I am sure that you take that top birding photographer and give him a K1 and a 150-500 or a 60-250 + TC, he'll get result that you most of us would never manage with a 300 f/2.8 or 600 f/4 whatever the camera. He may even do that with a 55-300 and a K30!

If you are interested I am in the process of testing the sigma sport against the 300 F2.8 and for the test I have handicapped the sigma sport shooting it 1/3 of a stop from wide while the 300 F/2.8 is stopped down to F/6.3 just to see how they compare https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/76-non-pentax-cameras-canon-nikon-etc/332...00-lenses.html
Next test they will be stopped down to F/9

---------- Post added 10-31-2016 at 11:45 PM ----------

...many years ago, in 1991 to be exact, Pentax wrote in the manual for the AF 1.7X converter, that the maximum aperture had to be F2.8 or faster. I tried my vivitar 70-210/3.5 and it worked so I bought one. It proved to work with my PZ1 for my 300/4 as well but not with my 500/5,6

With DSLRs people have always said they could used it on a 500/4.5 although in the early days they claimed it was not 100% reliable in low light

In bright light I can get it to focus with my K5 on a tamron 200-500/5.6.

So over time, the sensitivity of Pentax AF has improved, from about F6.9 to about F9 as a smallest maximum aperture.

I can't say what cannon can do, so it is dangerous to compare outside Pentax

With another brand I have had no issue using a 400 F4 with both the 1.4 and 1.7 for things like BIF and sports. With the 1.4 I am able to keep 3d tracking ( little to no trouble having 1 out of 10 shots missing), no trouble while using 1.4 tc on a F4 zoom tracking 100km vehicles coming head on until they are close enough that I would have no use for the image from an artistic stand point. With the 150-600 I have had no problems with it under the same conditions that I would use a 400 F4 and a 1.4 tc and would have to say that sigma 150-600 is faster
So yes I would say that we have come along way with AF

---------- Post added 11-01-2016 at 12:11 AM ----------

Too brief, it is unclear to me if you are saying there is only a one stop ISO advantage to the k-1 from the k-3 or something else.

For get ISO for now.

Think it through the sensor is 2.25 times larger, if you have the same density of light falling on the sensor ( F/2.8) while holding the same exposure time ( shutter speed) then how much more light will that image contain ?

2.25 times more light right

Now lets say we want to put that same amount of light onto a cropped sensor what will you do?

If you hold the same density of light falling on the sensor and to make up for that 2.25 times area you have lost you can increase the exposure time by that 2.25 time. This gives you a visual representation of more light, the shutter is open for 2.25 times longer.

now we can bring in iso

because we have adjusted the shutter speed to allot for 2.25 time more light we have to decrease the iso by 2.25 stop to avoid that exposure from clipping your high lights, To do that if you are shooting iso 225 you would have to adjust it to iso100 just little over 1 full stop.

[UncleVanya]

For get ISO for now.

Think it through the sensor is 2.25 times larger, if you have the same density of light falling on the sensor ( F/2.8) while holding the same exposure time ( shutter speed) then how much more light will that image contain ?

2.25 times more light right

Now lets say we want to put that same amount of light onto a cropped sensor what will you do?

If you hold the same density of light falling on the sensor and to make up for that 2.25 times area you have lost you can increase the exposure time by that 2.25 time. This gives you a visual representation of more light, the shutter is open for 2.25 times longer.

now we can bring in iso

because we have adjusted the shutter speed to allot for 2.25 time more light we have to decrease the iso by 2.25 stop to avoid that exposure from clipping your high lights, To do that if you are shooting iso 225 you would have to adjust it to iso100 just little over 1 full stop.

This assumes no improvement in performance for sensors by generation which isn't accurate in reality - however it may be true that such changes are relatively minor and we have hit a plateau. I had thought that wasn't the case but I could be wrong.

[normhead]

I'm not really clear on why the DA*200 and TC only makes sense on the crop sensor. Where does this stuff come from? The DA*200 with TC is is of interest to anyone who wants 476mm and ƒ6.3 in a nice lightweight combination whether if be a Q or a K-1 or and APS-c sensor.

This assumes no improvement in performance for sensors by generation which isn't accurate in reality - however it may be true that such changes are relatively minor and we have hit a plateau. I had thought that wasn't the case but I could be wrong.

Apparently the new processing chip in the K-70 has moved the K-70 up into FF low noise at high ISO territory... despite the insistence of many that this is impossible. That being said, I'll believe it when I see it. Still, it's a viable possibility. You can't prove a negative. It's looking like someone in the photo industry realizing you were not going to change noise at the sensor level, decided to deal with it in internal post processing, and designed a chip just for that purpose, and that Pentax incorporated it into the K-70.

The funny thing about that is, instead of flocking to the K-70 for it's low light performance, everyone is waiting for the same tech to come out in the next APS-c flagship. The consumer mentality of camera purchases is apparently no different from car buyers. Features are only considered "essential" if they come in a package that is consistent with one's self defined social standing in the community.

With the 1.4 I am able to keep 3d tracking ( little to no trouble having 1 out of 10 shots missing), no trouble while using 1.4 tc on a F4 zoom tracking 100km vehicles coming head on until they are close enough that I would have no use for the image from an artistic stand point. With the 150-600 I have had no problems with it under the same conditions that I would use a 400 F4 and a 1.4 tc and would have to say that sigma 150-600 is faster
So yes I would say that we have come along way with AF

But then you work with a system where AF tracking actually works well enough to care.

I've seen amazing demonstrations of high end Canon systems tracking systems tracking baseball players going from second to third. But he knew exactly where the player was going to run, he had the perfect angle in the photographer's bay to cover it, and he paid a lot of money for that system. You have to have some pretty compelling circumstances for tracking to even be a thing, when most of us can't even keep fast moving objects in our viewfinder. As far as I can tell , tracking is just way over rated for most shooters. That's why most of us at least in Pentax land, won't buy a system based on it's tracking ability. it's a "nice to have", not a "have to have."

I remember the Nikon F4 and it's 6 FPS and amazing tracking with film. a buddy of mine, a very successful wedding photographer who worked part time at my high school and ate lunch with me when he was in the school, showed me images of his brother Bunji Jumping, taken from the ground as he fell towards the camera. Really impressive. His name was also Norm. I asked, " So Norm, have you actually found any commercial use for this feature?" He looked kind of sheepish. For him it was a really exciting thing, but it was amusement. My guess is amazing tracking is pretty much that for most people. But it's so expensive, it's one of those things I'll investigate if I ever have a lot of extra time and a lot of extra money.

Tracking is so 1992.

Since I got my K-3 a couple years ago, I've had occasion to use it twice, and one of those was for a "discussion" with Ian.

The other time it worked just fine.


I have User 1 set up with my tracking settings, ( which is a really good thing because i want it so infrequently, I'd never remember them) but it's basically been a waste of a preset.
But hey... that's just me. I'm sure now I'll hear from every one who's life would be ruined if they didn't have great tracking. But honestly, there shouldn't be anyone like that shooting Pentax.

It is really cool having your camera track something though, in this case the bird on the right. You're sitting there going "da , da , da" and your camera is going nuts keeping up with a moving target. it's very entertaining, possibly even addictive for some, just not terribly necessary for most photographers.

[biz-engineer]

'm sure now I'll hear from every one who's life would be ruined if they didn't have great tracking.

You life is ruined two times: one time before you buy this $12K Canon lens, and a second time when you realize that the guy next to you get the same photo with his $800 Tamron 150-600 :-)

[normhead]

You life is ruined two times: one time before you buy this $12K Canon lens, and a second time when you realize that the guy next to you get the same photo with his $800 Tamron 150-600 :-)

A while ago after shooting a Pine Marten I saw the look they get on their faces. Them with their Canon and Nikon 500 or 600 ƒ4s, me with my DA* 60-250. It's a look something between shock and horror. A couple of guys insisted on seeing what I was getting with my little $2500 toy to compare to their $15,000 systems. First they refused to believe I had anything at all. Then after they saw my back screen, silence and the end of mirth and teasing. It kind of killed the mood for them.

There some images you can only get with the fastest AF and the heavy glass, but most of us are never in a position to take those images.

[Nicolas06]

You life is ruined two times: one time before you buy this $12K Canon lens, and a second time when you realize that the guy next to you get the same photo with his $800 Tamron 150-600 :-)

A few more times when you discover that in your area, there not that many interresting wildlife subjects anyway. Say you live in Paris or London for example. But even in the coutry, almost anywhere in western countries, outside of a reserve, you have to put lot of effort for most often quite average results.

I should be happy, living in Antibes, near Nice, I have the alps nearby on top of the sea... But finding some real wildlife is a challenge outside of most common birds...

The worst is that a not so experienced wildlife photographer like me can get nice shot with a consumer zoom, not that much practice, no hide no whatever else. As long as you don't focus too much on birds and go to the right place, it is actually very easy to get at least some acceptable shots.

In some places, you stop and you understand that it is not even possible to count the number of animals nearby. There just hundred of them, thousand up to the horizon from a dozen species. You don't get them scared of whatever, all the stuff about fancy hide or whatever you don't care. The problem you have in fact is because the lion decide to go under you car to get some shade and the driver doesn't know how to move without harming it.

Before going, I didn't think it would be that easy!

As long as you got something decent. Say any APSC DSLR and at least a 300mm lens, even a consumer zoom, you are good to go!