[LensBeginner]

I was fiddling just now with old shots I had taken with my K100D Super.
I had developed those RAW with an uncalibrated monitor the first time, and wanted to do them properly, since now I have a better monitor, and it's calibrated as well.
Well... for all the time that passed, all the improvements in PP software, it was really hard to get something good out of them... CCDs really struggled in low light.
Those were taken at the very reasonable settings of ISO400, f/5.6, 1/250s:
Plane_Sunset_1 by Paolo Del Lungo, su Flickr
Plane_Sunset_2 by Paolo Del Lungo, su Flickr
Plane_Sunset_3 by Paolo Del Lungo, su Flickr

I guess I'm just too used to the nice sensor in the K-01...
Have you ever picked up a shot again to develop it again after some years? what is your experience?

[BigMackCam]

Nice shots! I love the lighting in that last one

I've certainly gone back and (re-)processed old photos, but I didn't really become photographically active in a big way until the K-5 was released.

However, in the last couple of years I've bought and used the Pentax *istDL, Samsung GX-1L (*ist DL2) and Samsung GX-10 (K10D) specifically because of their CCD sensors, and I've been blown away by the look of the files. It's not just down to colour mapping and tone curves in JPEGs... the sensors record light differently to the CMOS sensors in the K-5, K-3 and K-3II, so the RAW files are... well, different. The K-3II is the most capable Pentax camera that I own, with fantastic image quality - but the GX-10 / K10D produces better-looking photos in many situations...

[twilhelm]

I was extremely active with the K10D, shooting professionally for several years, until the K5 arrived. I have pulled up a few old pictures and just can't get out of them what I did when I was using the K10D. I still pull it out now and then because I love the color output, but the K3 and K-1 really put it to shame in the IQ department.

[aaacb]

I recently revisited the photos I had taken over ten years ago at a concert. I had processed then from raw, the camera was a Canon pro 1 compact. It's max iso was 400 and that was noisy, and I probably had to increase exposure by 2 stops in pp, so ... More noise, but not enough to detract from the image. I don't have the raw files anymore though.

[FozzFoster]

Love the colours in the clouds! Great background for planes!

[LensBeginner]

Yeah so it pretty much jibes with my sensations... a shame really because in good light that sensor really shines, and I didn't use such "unrealistic" settings...
I mean... in the third picture I can see some fluttering of the wingtip, so shutter speed is accurate for a fast panning on a fast-moving object.
f/5.6 is ok, especially considering I was manual-focusing with a 200mm f/4 lens...
And ISO 400 is not all that mind-bogglingly high... guess I should try again with the K-30 and the 55-300 sometime soon
Thanks again for the input

[Mikesul]

Good thread. I sometime run into photos from some old, long unused early digital and I am usually charmed and delighted at just how well those early small sensor cameras did.

[The Squirrel Mafia]

I get a kick out of the RAW files that my old 10MP CCD Sony A200 DSLR put out. The ISO 100 files were magical. Everything after that started degrading rapidly, though. Images were good to ISO 400 & decent at ISO 800. They were pretty much useless from ISO 1600 & above. I really loved the ISO 100 images. They had a charm that my K-50 RAW files don't have at the same ISO.

The upside with the K-50 is that ISO 100 is almost as good as ISO 100 on that old Sony camera & the rest of the ISO range slowly degrades in quality. I can get usable images at ISO 12800 with the K-50. I think ISO 12800 on my K-50 is far more usable than ISO 1600 on my old Sony A200. That's pretty impressive if you think about it.