[interested_observer]

the CameraVille comparison....

You Tube

You Tube

[biz-engineer]

KP would give 80% of K1 image quality for half the price.

[MJKoski]

With good lens KP and pixel-shift produces better results than K-1 without PS. There is something to think about. 24MP PS prints about as well as standard Bayer 36MP mess.

[steve_k]

With good lens KP and pixel-shift produces better results than K-1 without PS. There is something to think about. 24MP PS prints about as well as standard Bayer 36MP mess.

What do you mean 36MP mess? That 36MP mess beat Nikon and Sony for image quality. If anything the crop sensor is a overall mess if that is what you are trying to imply. The video compared both with ps and the shots of the K1 without ps still looked as good if not better than KP with ps. Unfortunately there was not a side by side comparison. Also who wants to carry a tripod everywhere?

[MJKoski]

Bayer is Bayer is Bayer, no matter what brand produces the data. PS requires extreme care to do properly and that means proper RAW conversion for maximum sharpness and detail. Default settings of DCU or OOC-jpg do not help. I do not understand why not carry tripod? Standard cellphone is enough for travel photography if weight is of any concern.

I used KP quite a LOT for 6 months before purchasing back K-1 and the way I see it now, one needs special lenses to get some real IQ advantage from K-1. For example, 35mm macro ltd can be only beaten by Zeiss 50mm Makro-Planar on K-1. FA 50mm macro does not count thanks to plastic haptics. K-1 offers other advantages and they are not so much IQ related but ergonomics and battery capacity.

[steve_k]

Bayer is Bayer is Bayer, no matter what brand produces the data. PS requires extreme care to do properly and that means proper RAW conversion for maximum sharpness and detail. Default settings of DCU or OOC-jpg do not help. I do not understand why not carry tripod? Standard cellphone is enough for travel photography if weight is of any concern.

I used KP quite a LOT for 6 months before purchasing back K-1 and the way I see it now, one needs special lenses to get some real IQ advantage from K-1. For example, 35mm macro ltd can be only beaten by Zeiss 50mm Makro-Planar on K-1. FA 50mm macro does not count thanks to plastic haptics. K-1 offers other advantages and they are not so much IQ related but ergonomics and battery capacity.

What is this special lenses to get excellent images? I've seen many excellent shots with the K-1 using the D FA 28-105 and even people using legacy glass. I'd say the skill of the person taking the photo is more important. The Zeiss may be an excellent lens but is not required to take excellent photos.

Also If you don't like Bayer because it creates a 36MP mess to quote you. Then why buy a camera that uses it.

[normhead]

Another awesome video that answers a question I was actually looking for an answer to.
Thanks for posting.

The thing I like most about videos like this, apples against apples, oranges against oranges, and ti answers the big question. "What's the difference."
Look at the video, if the K-P video is good enough for you buy the K-P. If you think you need the "pro camera" buy the pro camera. You can look , see the difference, and make up your own mind.

Notice unlike some posters on the forum, he doesn't test just one camera, and then claim that "you couldn't do this with the others." Or post images from one camera and claim there is something wrong with them. He tests results from both cameras and lets you make up your mind. 80% for half the cost, as biz-engineer says, or the whole enchilada for a lot more money. And you do the same thing going from a K-1 to medium format.

This page should be bookmarked for those thinking K-P or K-1. Specs, stats battery life etc. I can read from the Pentax website. But this information is priceless.

The lazy dudes who test one camera and declare it the best, forget them. They are wasting your time. The guys who claim one is better than the other but can't show you with images what exactly that means, also wasting your time. Cameras take pictures, and many , many photographers will put up with the limitations of the camera they use if it gives them the best images for what they do. And you don't know that until you see the images compared. No amount of "blah, blah, blah" makes up for no comparative images.

[Not a Number]

He didn't compare K-1 crop mode vs K-P.

Bayer is Bayer is Bayer, no matter what brand produces the data. PS requires extreme care to do properly and that means proper RAW conversion for maximum sharpness and detail. Default settings of DCU or OOC-jpg do not help. I do not understand why not carry tripod? Standard cellphone is enough for travel photography if weight is of any concern.

Read more at: Pentax K1 vs Pentax KP , Review + Image quality test - PentaxForums.com

Huh? I thought proper pixel shift is with tripod. Hand-held pixel shift is a different matter, which the K-P doesn't do. Nor does DCU process HHPS at the moment.

[jpzk]

Thank you for the video !
I found it very much to the point and subsequently made me rethink my decision as to whether wait for the "next APS-C Flagship" or just get the KP for the type of low light wildlife (birding) shots I have been doing for the past few months … I really like the fact that the KP can handle higher ISO settings and still keeping decent DR.

[MJKoski]

Ya, tripod of course. Maybe I failed to express it correctly.

TL; DR I agree with the findings but IMO in some cases KP gives over 100% of K-1 quality.

2000€ gets one KP, wide angle, 35mm macro and something else to expose masterpieces while K-1 body alone costs the same. One needs 5000€ more to get 15-30, 24-70 and 70-200. There is something to think about. I would rather buy new 645Z and one lens, 55mm f/2.8 for that money and that is primarily for aspect ratio.

[photoptimist]

What do you mean 36MP mess? That 36MP mess beat Nikon and Sony for image quality. If anything the crop sensor is a overall mess if that is what you are trying to imply. The video compared both with ps and the shots of the K1 without ps still looked as good if not better than KP with ps. Unfortunately there was not a side by side comparison. Also who wants to carry a tripod everywhere?

He's referring to the fact that all Bayer sensors have sparse pixel arrays in the different colors. A 36 MPix sensor only has 9 million red pixels separated by rows and columns of other pixels that are not red-sensitive. The same is true for blue. Green is better measured with 18 million pixels but even the green channel as diagonal gaps in the measurement.

A Bayer sensor + sharp lens + detailed scene can be a recipe for messy artifacts unless the camera has some kind of low-pass, anti-aliasing filter (either a physical one or the simulated one as in the case of the K-1). The K-1 might beat the Nikon and Sony but that doesn't mean the images won't be a mess if the AA simulator is turned off.

[SteveinSLC]

I guess the question is what is valued more, price or quality?
The conclusion from the video is that the K-1 is better. In a variety of ways. But it is more expensive.
If cost is the main consideration, why not get the K-70? According to Adam's tests here, the image quality is almost the same between the K-70 and the KP. And the K-70 is cheaper yet(and a little lighter). I actually decided on that as my secondary/travel camera option.

[sundown]

I see it now, one needs special lenses to get some real IQ advantage from K-1. For example, 35mm macro ltd can be only beaten by Zeiss 50mm Makro-Planar on K-1. FA 50mm macro does not count thanks to plastic haptics. K-1 offers other advantages and they are not so much IQ related but ergonomics and battery capacity.

I am a bit confused, if you are talking about IQ, why do you mention that DFA50 doesn't count because it's plastic? It's a genuine question I've been thinking about in the past couple of days.. What is the difference in IQ between DFA50 on K1 and the 35ltd on KP/K3?

[monochrome]

At screen resolution (and even standard print sizes) the entire argument is academic. It approaches meaningfully discernible at 11x17 viewed from 18”, but who does that? K-1 really shines for dynamic range and legacy manual lenses focused OVF and for the enhanced control set, but 99.5% of users won’t ever push K-1 to the point where better image quality matters vs. KP. KP exceeds K-1 for specialized uses e.g. birding with 150~450 and portability with the three pancakes.

[EDIT] I violated @normhead Norm’s. ‘Show me’ dictum. See his below.

[normhead]

To me, this is what the K-1 is about. Images like this.



It used the entire dynamic range of the K-1 and could have used a bit more.to illuminate the trees on the far shore line.

This is what the K-3 / KP is about.


Cropped to about one half of a K-3 frame (or 1/4 of a K-1 frame).

The added low light performance of the K-P is what makes it unique. That's going to enable you to boost your ISO to maybe 1600 ISO where I cap my K-3 at 640 ISO. (That will mean a higher shutter speed and fewer images lost to motion blur) If they had simply put in a larger buffer, (the above photo extracted from a 16 shot sequence) I'd be all over it. The difference between 7 fps and 8 fps is negligible if not for the larger buffer.

---------- Post added 07-26-18 at 02:23 PM ----------

He's referring to the fact that all Bayer sensors have sparse pixel arrays in the different colors.

Yet, cameras from different brands using the same sensor can have different characteristics, with most chips having customizable leads to produce different reproduction capabilities. So, ya bayer is bayer, but that doesn't mean there are differences between different implementations of Bayer, which is what seems to be implied by this statement. SO to summarize,

Bayer is Bayer, but each Bayer implementation is different. In my now work macro, shot on tripods using Pixel Shift, my guess is there are many times when Bayer is as good as Pixel Shifted images. It seems to be luck of the draw. Except for the part where when Pixel shift is best, it produces an image the Bayer extrapolation can't match, whereas when they are equal, pixel shift isn't worse than the Bayer image, it's just not better.

Before I purchased a camera that did Pixel Shift I thought the difference would be more. Bayer is actually pretty darn good.