Originally posted by MadMathMind The contrast on "natural" is like zero. It's so...bland.
Go into the color profile selection menu and with Natural selected, hit the Info button, and a bunch of sliders appear. One of the seven tweakable parameters there is for contrast. (You might see only five parameters - turn the front wheel one click and you'll get seven.) That being said, I agree with your earlier comment about NR not being great. I've read that NR might be an area where the K-70 represents a step forward. I'm also in agreement with Rondec that RAWs are obviously much more pliable, and that if you try to pull up deep shadows from a JPGs in post it will quickly fall apart. (Do note that the in-camera engine has a setting for that too - Shadow Correction). But pulling up shadows is an aesthetic I'm a little unsure about, personally. It's trendy, for sure, because it showcases the technical abilities of the camera - something more tech-minded photographers love to do. But aesthetically, I often find the results less than pleasing. Like HDR, it
can be done well, but often is not, IMHO. But anyway, obviously if you
enjoy doing tons of post, and
want to deliberately under-expose by several stops in order to see the awesome power of your sensor to recover the shadows, you should shoot raw, and more power to you!
I just think it's possible to tweak the Pentax JPG engine such that not much post is needed to get really nice colors for decently exposed shots. And for my (current) taste, of course, as exemplified by
my flickr stream, which I don't think of as bland, though I guess YMMV.