Originally posted by Wheatfield I had this email sent to me a few days ago.
It might be enlightening.....
"i simply don't trust the Pentax bodies to deliver reliable exposure, WB, and noise control as any of my Nikon bodies. the K20D's noise is not that good and unless shot with very careful exposure, more than any of my current Nikon bodies under ordinary circumstances. long exposures like i am fond of doing with waterfalls and HDR sequences induce sensor heat buildup noise that i have never seen in any other DSLR i have owned, including the K10D. this noise is a huge hassle to deal with and when it occurs, i end up throwing away lots of images. inconsistent exposure, mostly under, just kills noise performance because when the camera is under, it's under by a lot, 2/3 of a stop to as much as 1.5 stops. with a camera that is as noisy as the K10D or K20D, correct exposure is super important. Pentax may use a contrasty tone curve to hide the noise in JPG mode but i shoot RAW and process with a linear tone curve specifically to dig out lots of shadow detail. it's part of my look and i don't like to deal with cameras that don't have the dynamic range i need. the usual numeric noise figures for the K20D are misleading because they aren't sensitive to low spatial frequency chroma noise that the camera produces.
Yes, noise might *look* better, but at the loss of detail. You can make the K20D look just as good, but you will lose detail also. The other thing that the K20D does at high ISO is have a very film like appearance, which seems to be lacking in the other cams.
I really don't understand this belief that the K10D/K20D is poor at getting correct exposure. I have never really had a problem with the exposure of any of my Pentax cameras, the *ist D, nor the K10D and now the K20D.
Just about every time I look at the individual colour histogram I find that one or more of the colours is exposed near or on the right of the histogram. Yes, the combined histogram may *look* underexposed, but when you look at the individual channels you see that this is not the case. Now, the only way you could make the combined histogram *look* correct is to blow one or more of the individual colour channels and if the Nikon's do this, then I say good luck to them. The thing is, it is *you*, the photographer, that needs to make this judgement, not the camera. This is why I cannot understand this belief that Pentax has exposure problems. It sounds to me like a photographer problem as they have forgotten how to judge a scene.
Quote: messed up AWB is an inconvenience as i shoot only RAW, but it's annoying to do the extra step of overriding WB on just about every shot in tricky lighting. i'm not talking about tricky white balance, just unusual patterns of light and dark in daylight. tricky color balance problems seem to be beyond the camera's ability to recognize.
Here is another amazing problem that this person encounters that I never seem to find. I find the WB is nealry always spot on. I think this guy needs to tweak his monitor, not get a new camera.
Quote: shooting essentially 7 days a week with my D3 has made me very unsatisified with the speed and noise of the K10D and K20D. i'm talking general handling speed as well as my more specific complaints about AF speed and FPS. i haven't yet bought any DA* lenses with SDM, and i will eventually. that will address lens AF noise, but not its speed. it's hard to describe to someone who has never used one what it's like to get used to a 9FPS camera's responsiveness.
I remember another person posting how impressed they were with a camera that can do this machine gun shooting, but in the end, they *never* ever needed it and it was only the fact that the speed was impressive, not that they ever would need it. In otherwords, they were more impressed by the technology rather than the results.
Also, it has been shown that the AF speed isn't all that different to the others at lighting levels above EV5.
Quote: most of my shooting, although not much of my selects yet, are done with my D3 set to its highest FPS and high shutter speeds. simple things like quick review and so on follow from the D3 generally being a speedy camera. even on a tripod with long exposures, the D3 just lets me work faster.
Review? The review speed of the K20D is basically instantaneous anyway. What does he want, a review *before* he takes the photo now? I think some people have their hand on it too much.
Quote: i get what i feel are better results from the K20D only under relatively limited circumstances because of the body's shortcomings. these shortcomings degrade the lens advantage over Nikkor lenses to the point where i just don't feel like using the body more than i have to. i find myself prefering to use the K10D more to avoid the sensor heating problem. for the moment, i am solving my dissatisfaction with Nikkor short tele to wide prime problem by buying Zeiss lenses. i consider high end Nikkor zooms better than Pentax ones in most areas except flare and am happy with them otherwise. the one area where i have to do some experiments on are my B&W people photography. the K20D chroma noise basically disappears, but i am not sure of the general sensor heating problem. the K10D was excellent for this when i shot with the 43 and 77. i want to use the K20D with the same lenses but i am not sure i will get the results i want. when i get back from vacation, i will try a couple of sessions with the K20D to see how things work out. i may go back to the K10D from which i have had excellent results.
i just feel so disappointed and occasionally angry at Pentax for just not getting it when they had a chance to lead and now i don't see much chance of them ever doing more than eternally playing catch-up, even with Samsung in there. i just shouldn't have so much hassle to get consistent high quality results from the bodies. VPN on the K10D is a near-fatal problem for me. the K20D reduced VPN but not to the point where i am happy. however, the K20D adds noise overall by using cheap ADCs and then not providing adequate cooling for the sensor so that long exposure aficionados like me have the dark-field NR become essentially useless. inconsistent exposure and AWB just aggravate things. when i use the Pentax bodies, i just spend too much time working around their shortcomings and for many things, it's just not worth it."
What a load of bollocks. I think this guy is just saying all this to justify his (pricey) outlay on his Nikon gear. Sounds like technology and gear envy to me.