[victormeldrew]

Ok guys, I have a clear idea what you are saying, it is part of the rules of photography

Not rules...it is part of the challenge of creating the image you want, by making decisions on how to achieve it. The camera can't read minds...it takes a guess at what you want, but unless you take control and tell it, it will often be wrong. In your case it thinks you probably don't want a lot of deep shadow, and that the sky is not of interest so can be allowed to blow out...while that is the case for most casual users, it isn't in your case.

In the K-1 you have close to the best tool you can have for the job, not many cameras will handle dynamic range as well, certainly not without spending MUCH more.
What you need to do now is to learn to use the tool, which is a pretty big job, but very rewarding. Start by reading up on exposure...Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson is a book I got a lot from, and there are plenty of others on the subject.

[squareeyes]

I work mostly in raw, but I verified this thing also working in jpeg.
With the setting in M, photographing a landscape, for example, the sky always appears very bright, over-exposed and difficult to fix in PP, while the rest of the image is perfect.
Also in the picture, areas of the face illuminated by the sun appear almost burned, and you can not distinguish the traits.
Obviously I take care of the exposure in shooting over most of the image, including the sky or parts of the face most illuminated.

Ciao Nunzio,

I have never heard a consistent complaint about Pentax overexposing highlights. It seems they do EVERYTHING to avoid extremes in their jpgs. So much so that "flat" "washed out" and "dull" are the adjectives I associate with them.

Personally, I shoot my jpgs with reverse film simulation on to punch 'em up. Then I can email them to my hearts content.

But for any prints (ANY prints) it's RAW exclusively.

(rant follows. Please stop reading if this is off topic.)

For the life of me, i can't imagine spending money on a tool and expecting it to read both my mind and the scene before it and come out with a "perfect" result.
Don't tell me "I used to shoot 25 speed Kodachrome and got perfect exposures every time." I don't want to hear about Portra or Tri-X or any of 'em.

No photos exist in RAW or jpg or tiff or DNG or any of them. The result is entirely dependent on the viewing condition whether the viewing is a RAW interpreter, a video card or a printer. Mastery of each of the succeeding steps in photography is necessary. A "perfectly exposed" slide viewed against a candle is going to look somewhat different from the same slide viewed against the sun.

My conclusion is to work to get the best RAW file for my intent, then PP it with my viewing circumstance in mind. In all my dozen or so digital cameras, I have not yet had one that gave me universally satisfying jpgs. OK jpgs, Not Bad jpgs. even Pretty good! jpgs. But for my photographs RAW gives me the best chance to capture (or stretch) the range to my taste.

Good luck getting 15 EV steps from your jpgs.
And thanks for your patience.

[UncleVanya]

Maybe I'm confused. If the problem is overexposing highlights and highlight protection is on - don't we expect some degree of underexposure bias from the camera? Is that feature implemented the same in the K-3 series? I don't have the K-1 and I don't recall using this feature on the K-3 so I don't know how much it biases the results when trying to preserve highlights. Is there any adjustment to this to change the amount of correction it applies?

I assume this is the real heart of the complaint, camera is setup to avoid blowing out highlights but still does. I also assume that the camera can only adjust so much within the constraints of a given metering result. As others pointed out it isn't a mind reader - once it establishes a baseline metering result it must then bias it somewhat to try to preserve headroom but it isn't going to expose the entire scene to bring the highlights into proper exposure if they are too far from the calculated exposure. Right???? There is some limit to how far it can adjust and still preserve the rest of the photo. The photographer can manipulate this by where and how they meter and by exposure compensation (manually or via compensation modes).

[Mattox]

I think there is little balance between light and dark.
Even in your photo, the sky over the sea has a part over-exposed, at right, which does not stand out at all; only light.

Brilliant image

[nunzio]

The discussion gets interesting. I hope you will forgive my English.
All of you have said just and logical things and I thank you. The camera can not read minds, but our mind must be able to handle the camera.
Ok, I agree to the fact we have to work in PP if we take in raw, but I must have a chance to correct the over-exposed parts. The point is this; the over-exposed areas are completely burned, this areas appear as flat, full of light and can not be recovered even with the most sophisticated softwares (By the way, Digital Camera Utility is painful).
These areas are irretrievably lost as a negative film that takes light. While for the low lights is possible to raise the brightness level up to obtain good results for the dark areas, this is not possible for the highlights.
I do not like a picture, with the sun or the flash light on the nose or cheeks, create flat spots light, within which you can not make out anything at all.
I'd be curious to see how they behave Nikon and Canon in this respect.
Also, I think if the camera should have the ability to adjust the highlights on several levels, as the lights low.

---------- Post added 12-09-2016 at 10:51 PM ----------

I used all modes of exposure.

[unkipunki]

The discussion gets interesting. I hope you will forgive my English.
All of you have said just and logical things and I thank you. The camera can not read minds, but our mind must be able to handle the camera.
Ok, I agree to the fact we have to work in PP if we take in raw, but I must have a chance to correct the over-exposed parts. The point is this; the over-exposed areas are completely burned, this areas appear as flat, full of light and can not be recovered even with the most sophisticated softwares (By the way, Digital Camera Utility is painful).
These areas are irretrievably lost as a negative film that takes light. While for the low lights is possible to raise the brightness level up to obtain good results for the dark areas, this is not possible for the highlights.
I do not like a picture, with the sun or the flash light on the nose or cheeks, create flat spots light, within which you can not make out anything at all.
I'd be curious to see how they behave Nikon and Canon in this respect.
Also, I think if the camera should have the ability to adjust the highlights on several levels, as the lights low.

---------- Post added 12-09-2016 at 10:51 PM ----------

I used all modes of exposure.

I cannot speak for Cannon or Nikon precisely, but Pentax have pulled incredible dynamic range out of the Sony sensors. However most of this range is in the shadow end and can be pulled back in PP. It is not possible to get back information from light that is beyong the right hand side of the histogram as it recorded as white. You can turn white to grey, blue, or any other colour but it will not give you any detail back. To expose for the highlight preservation you have to ensure the highlights are within the bounds of the histogram. That is non negotiable. If you fail to do that it will be white and that is the end of the story. Metering with EV compensation set to zero will largely set the average within the metering area to mid grey. Or on a 1 - 10 scale 5. If the difference between the metered area of the scene and the highlights is greater than 4.999999 recurring (on that scale) the highlights will be at 10 (white). With the Sony sensors that Pentax use there is a lot of information stored effectively at zero on the scale, but straight out of camera the zeros to 1 will look black and only PP will bring out the information. So if you want your highlights to be at 9 on the scale you absolutely need to inform the camera that is your intention. Use spot metering on the brightest thing in the scene with +4 EV compensation dialled in and the AE lock. This will fix the brightest part of the image at 9 on the 1-10 scale. If the shadows fall at 1 or 2 or thereabouts then the scene captured by the camera is likely to come out as jpeg from camera looking great. However, if the shadows are all below 1 then the highlights will look good but the shadows will be dark and no info will be visible without PP. Try this out on a few high DR scenes and see what happens.

[UncleVanya]

I have shot Samsung, and Pentax in APSC recently and Panasonic in M43 and 1/1.7" formats. The smaller formats have less dynamic range but all of these behave the same way. If you shoot a mixed lighting scene you need to either meter as indicated in the previous post (meter the highlights in spot) or underexpose the shot by a set amount based on your experience to preserve the highlights. You can shoot with the histogram enabled and see when you are likely to bump up against the brick wall that is the top of the dynamic range. This is called Expose to the Right - you expose so that the highlights are preserved and then use post processing to adjust the remaining light. You can also try using in camera HDR if you are using a tripod - this will let the camera shoot a wider dynamic range and perhaps keep enough detail in the bright spots.

[beholder3]

I think there is little balance between light and dark.
Even in your photo, the sky over the sea has a part over-exposed, at right, which does not stand out at all; only light.

Dear nunzio, would you be so kind to share the raws of the first three images you did present as JPGs here?

Talking about "overexposure", there is no way to do any serous discussion without having access to the raw files. JPGs simply dont tell a story.

In 9 out of 10 cases in the end it turns out as user error in not using the right settings or right development of raws or misjudging personal preferences for "over/under"exposure. The weaknesses of raw development software also come into play here.

In this case I am especially curious as to my own K-1 is mostly set to +1/3 or +2/3 in exposure compensation and still there are no overexposures happening.

[victormeldrew]

Did we ever work out what metering mode is in use? When talking about exposure issues, this is by far the biggest factor, not a few clicks of exposure compensation.

[lithedreamer]

Did we ever work out what metering mode is in use? When talking about exposure issues, this is by far the biggest factor, not a few clicks of exposure compensation.

Nope. Nunzio never mentioned it. :/

[beholder3]

Did we ever work out what metering mode is in use? When talking about exposure issues, this is by far the biggest factor, not a few clicks of exposure compensation.

All this would be possible to analyse once we would be presented the raw files.
Until that time we have to assume some mixture of users errors (yes, poor choice and handling of metering is a valid guess).

Could also be that the option for connecting the metering with the chosen focus point is active and the focus point was on some of the darkest areas.

[nunzio]

Dear nunzio, would you be so kind to share the raws of the first three images you did present as JPGs here?

Talking about "overexposure", there is no way to do any serous discussion without having access to the raw files. JPGs simply dont tell a story.

In 9 out of 10 cases in the end it turns out as user error in not using the right settings or right development of raws or misjudging personal preferences for "over/under"exposure. The weaknesses of raw development software also come into play here.

In this case I am especially curious as to my own K-1 is mostly set to +1/3 or +2/3 in exposure compensation and still there are no overexposures happening.

yes sure, but each photo is 50mb, yes sure, but each photo is 50mb, I do not know if it will be possible to load them

---------- Post added 12-10-2016 at 08:01 PM ----------

I cannot speak for Cannon or Nikon precisely, but Pentax have pulled incredible dynamic range out of the Sony sensors. However most of this range is in the shadow end and can be pulled back in PP. It is not possible to get back information from light that is beyong the right hand side of the histogram as it recorded as white. You can turn white to grey, blue, or any other colour but it will not give you any detail back. To expose for the highlight preservation you have to ensure the highlights are within the bounds of the histogram. That is non negotiable. If you fail to do that it will be white and that is the end of the story. Metering with EV compensation set to zero will largely set the average within the metering area to mid grey. Or on a 1 - 10 scale 5. If the difference between the metered area of the scene and the highlights is greater than 4.999999 recurring (on that scale) the highlights will be at 10 (white). With the Sony sensors that Pentax use there is a lot of information stored effectively at zero on the scale, but straight out of camera the zeros to 1 will look black and only PP will bring out the information. So if you want your highlights to be at 9 on the scale you absolutely need to inform the camera that is your intention. Use spot metering on the brightest thing in the scene with +4 EV compensation dialled in and the AE lock. This will fix the brightest part of the image at 9 on the 1-10 scale. If the shadows fall at 1 or 2 or thereabouts then the scene captured by the camera is likely to come out as jpeg from camera looking great. However, if the shadows are all below 1 then the highlights will look good but the shadows will be dark and no info will be visible without PP. Try this out on a few high DR scenes and see what happens.

Unkipunki and Unkle Vanya, you are saying right things, certainly I will follow your instructions

[lithedreamer]

yes sure, but each photo is 50mb, yes sure, but each photo is 50mb, I do not know if it will be possible to load them

You could try uploading them to Google Drive and sharing the link?

[nunzio]

Nope. Nunzio never mentioned it. :/

I used all three exposure modes, but mainly multi zone, just to compensate for the over / under exposure.

[beholder3]

There are tons of providers which you can use to share the raws, if you dont have google drive, one drive, dropbox, like this here:
workupload - Share and send large files.