[Rondec]

There are arguments on both sides. I do shoot jpegs for family occasions with snap shots, where the dynamic range isn't particularly high, I'm not pushing the iso way up, stuff like that. The jpegs are tweakable and so if you want a little more sharpening or saturation, that is easily possible.

That said, for shooting landscapes with high dynamic range, there is no comparison with shooting RAW. I've shot with jpegs and you just can't recover the highlights or bump the shadows much at all before images fall apart, whereas a K-1 RAW file can have 4 stops of shadow recovery added to an iso 100 image without having a bunch of noise.





Anyway, I think it is a bit of a tempest in a teapot, in that the differences are relatively small and shooting RAW isn't as hard as most folks make it out to be.

[mee]

These threads are like the debates I see on facebook and comment sections of newstainment websites.. everyone joins already with a fixed opinion, with each side attempting to 'convince' the other that they are WRONG!!!! throughout the multi-page train wreck (be it politely or not).

In the end, no one's mind has been changed despite the time and energy spent.

[MadMathMind]

No surprises on this test, except perhaps for Sony. I was curious regarding the comment in the video that they used the "natural" setting for all cameras. Default for Pentax is "bright" and if "natural" were chosen that might explain the lack of punch.

The contrast on "natural" is like zero. It's so...bland.

[stevebrot]

Coincidence how the outcome favours models with favourable profit margins and sales volumes for the dealer? Tough for dealers in a declining market.

Does it? I was not aware that margins have been published for the cameras featured on the video.


Steve

[stevebrot]

There's far more wrong with the Pentax JPEGs than the color. The contrast is poor, the image unsharp, noise reduction is substandard...the photos just look so unbelievably flat. They're pretty much close to unusable for anything serious, in my opinion.

I seldom shoot JPEG, but when I have, that has not been my experience.

I don't think Pentax JPEG is that bad.

Seeing the full spread of images on the video, I was surprised at how close the cameras were to each other. As mentioned above, I generally shoot RAW, but in one specific situation, the in-camera JPEG was superior to what I could do with the RAW in Lightroom. See below from the K10D:



No out-of-camera processing.



Steve

[pierovitch]

Does it? I was not aware that margins have been published for the cameras featured on the video.





Steve

Some things are not published on the internet!

[Doundounba]

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.

[Ian Stuart Forsyth]

It would be nice if pentax offered you software were you could use a PC with a calibrated monitor and build a custom picture control that then could be uploaded to your camera body giving you more control over the final jpeg image that the camera produces. For times where all I do is shot jpeg and hand over the memory card this feature is ideal. At least this should be available for their top of the line bodies like other brands.

[Rondec]

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.

I suppose it is all about vision and making your photos fit with your vision of what an image should be. It just has been my experience over the years that jpeg engines are a pretty blunt instrument for dealing with post processing. That is fine for snap shots, but not so good for a lot of other images. I do like to expose for highlights in my images and then bring up the shadows and maybe I do it a little too much at times, but if you expose for the shadows, the highlights are gone -- maybe you can get a half stop back, but that's it.

It isn't really even just about shadow areas, it is about having an image that fits the decisions that you make. Typically I do want to sharpen the foreground, but not the sky. Maybe I will apply a digital neutral density filter to darken the sky a little.

Anyway, RAW isn't for everyone and certainly jpegs can get you 99 percent of the way there with many images, I just hate when people act like the issue with images is the jpeg engine. As you say, you can tweak the jpeg engine to fit your needs -- if you like aggressive sharpening or more saturation or higher contrast, etc all of those can be pretty easily.

To Ian's point, probably the best way to figure out what works for you is to download the DCU and play with the jpeg engine there. You can pretty easily see what level of sharpening, contrast, saturation, etc to apply along with what base preset you like. Once you figure it out, it is a simple matter to dial those settings into the camera and you are good to go.

[wildman]

One of the premises of this shootout doesn't make sense to me.

The in camera jpg engine is just another preset auto RAW software processor. The result of what the base jpg engine generates as a final image, in camera, is more or less the result of what the Pentax programmers decided they wanted it to be. In other words they purposely decided they did not want it to be similar to the popular Nikon or Canon jpgs?

Why?

[sunCrm]

Is this JPEG conversion bad across all models, or is it any better with FF K1?
The development team should do something, i guess. And if i remember well, Pentax/Ricoh advertised K1 OOC images as "better than before"

[grahame]

The in camera jpg engine is just another, limited, RAW software processor.

Agree. Unless the light condition is very complex or extreme, the in camera processing settings are just some pre-adjusted processing Pentax engineers thought they might be good for most users under most situations.

I don't like heavily processed photos, maybe that is why JPEG from camera is usually close enough and I don't see them as useless. Indeed, I think pentax JEPG is much better than Sony's.

[Timd]

it all depends on your camera. The K200 needed very little pp to get a good image. Jpeg were good straight out the camera. The K5 needed much pp to make the image not bland. Raw was essential. The K1 needs very little to get a good image. After fiddling with raw, my images don't look much different to jpeg sooc. Well, that's my experience for normal lighting shots.

[stevebrot]

Is this JPEG conversion bad across all models, or is it any better with FF K1?

Bad? As noted on the video, it is mostly a matter of taste.


Steve

[sunCrm]

Bad? As noted on the video, it is mostly a matter of taste.


Steve

Indeed, bad is not the correct word here. You are right.
Lets say - less tasteful according to general view.