[mattdm]

Can it be that K10D owners are mostly shooting RAW and messing up post production? Maybe the replication of in-camera jpegs similar to D50/K100 is very hard to do from a RAW file? I do see that contrast can give an image depth but maybe people are making images over contrasty which makes images look flat again?

My suspicion is that this is often true. The Gospel of RAW is very infectious ("you wanna quit being an amateur and shoot like a pro? go raw!") and glosses over the part where postprocessing is, y'know, hard, requiring both skill and a good eye. And no one wants to admit maybe their technique and talent isn't up to the task.

It made me think actually... it's a bit like 35mm/medium format in reverse isn't it... larger film allows for a higher quality capture... but for DSLRs the fewer pixels crammed in the same area the better the image...

To a point -- I mean, it' s pretty clear that a 6 megapixel capture is giving you a more detailed / better image than a 1 megapixel one. I've heard arguments from smarter people than me about physics and noise and theoretical limits, although every time I hear something like that I remember when I was hearing the same sort of thing about CPU clock speeds beyond 100 mhz.

[Christian]

Again, you have to choose what features are important to you. The only drawback I can see in choosing the K10D over the others is the noise issue. That's it. The image quality is excellent, color rendition is near perfect, and all the other features blow away the smaller camera.

If you can't get the camera to do what you want you probably shouldn't be blaming the tool.

Thanks for the advice... I don't have 'the tool' yet so I'm not blaminng anything... just trying to decide which I want.

I have the day off on Monday and, as well as finding my girlfriend a birthday present, I'm going to take the Nikon D50 and an SD card to the camera shop and take some shots outside with all 3 cameras at same settings to compare (RAW and Jpg). Take the buggers home and compare them on screen... I might even print them off.

I know I'm going to me wanting that big old viewfinder of the K10D.. it's like looking out of a window rather than peering into a keyhole... and then there's that new TAV mode or whatever it's called.. I really like that when I tried it... but it's the image quality that counts... so I'll test them to see what I'm happy with.

then there's there's the lens choice...

[SuperJared]

Thanks for the advice... I don't have 'the tool' yet so I'm not blaminng anything... just trying to decide which I want.

I have the day off on Monday and, as well as finding my girlfriend a birthday present, I'm going to take the Nikon D50 and an SD card to the camera shop and take some shots outside with all 3 cameras at same settings to compare (RAW and Jpg). Take the buggers home and compare them on screen... I might even print them off.

I know I'm going to me wanting that big old viewfinder of the K10D.. it's like looking out of a window rather than peering into a keyhole... and then there's that new TAV mode or whatever it's called.. I really like that when I tried it... but it's the image quality that counts... so I'll test them to see what I'm happy with.

then there's there's the lens choice...

If you ask me the lens quest is a much more important endeavor. I don't recall who has it, but a forum member here has a saying in his/her signature that rings true: Bodies come and go, but glass is forever.

Forgive me if that isn't 100% accurate.

[mattdm]

If you ask me the lens quest is a much more important endeavor. I don't recall who has it, but a forum member here has a saying in his/her signature that rings true: Bodies come and go, but glass is forever.

Forgive me if that isn't 100% accurate.

Yeah. If you're drawn to the Nikon body, start looking at the lens collection you might want (both realistically and theoretically) and add up the prices. For me, the list of "attainable over several years" lenses adds up to about $1800 for pentax, and, uh, $3000+ for roughly the same thing with Nikon. And while that may include some somewhat nicer Nikon glass in some cases, not necessarily so. Especially if the DA* lenses live up to Pentax's hype. (Image stabilization for zooms factors in, too.)

For me, that (plus of course the fact that the pentax cameras are pretty nice) made the decision easy. I went with a K100D for now. After a few weeks, I'm 85% happy with it. It's not a piece of technology which I'm going to really love and remember fondly when it's obsolete (I find the interface is acceptable but clunky), but it does a decent job, and I can use the money I saved towards the list of lenses. I think Pentax is going in a good direction, and I expect in a few years there will be a model I'll love.

[WMBP]

Can it be that K10D owners are mostly shooting RAW and messing up post production? Maybe the replication of in-camera jpegs similar to D50/K100 is very hard to do from a RAW file? I do see that contrast can give an image depth but maybe people are making images over contrasty which makes images look flat again?

Well, I was going to ignore this, but since somebody else has picked it up approvingly, I guess I should weigh in. You ask "Can it be...?" Answer to that question is, "Yes, it can or could be..." But I don't think it generally IS.

It's true, if you let the camera convert to JPEG, you don't have to do it yourself on your computer. However, what's hard about doing it on the computer isn't the DOING part, it's the FIGURING OUT HOW part.

Now, the Raw conversion software built into your Raw workflow program (the software that allows you to read a particular Raw file type) has certain default adjustments built in. But in a good program you should be able to create your own additional default adjustments and use 'em if you like. I'm noticing that I always want to adjust the midtones on the tone curve in LIghtroom by a fixed small amount and I always want to add some sharpening, so I will create a preset for Lightroom that is applied when I import images. I can undo it if I need to, but it will be applied by default.

I don't think the in-camera JPEGs are the gold standard personally.

Will

[mattdm]

I don't think the in-camera JPEGs are the gold standard personally.

Nicely understated.

Of course, the gold standard is someone with artistic talent, technical skill, and practical experience spending a decent amount of time getting the individual image right.

The in-camera JPEGs make a nice, I dunno, say, "copper standard", though. With more tunable options in-camera, they could be the silver standard.

[SpecialK]

The K100D and K110D, like the D50, are consumer-targeted cameras that provide the added 'pop' directly from the camera. That extra 'pop' is a detriment to someone who wants to modify the photo.

Nope, it's only a detriment to those who shoot jpg :-)
One of the first menu options is "Bright/Natural". Change it to natural if you don't like Bright. In any Auto Picture modes the camera sets itself to Bright however. Bright does make some colors glow. Shoot RAW and you can adjust the "tone" to fit the image, among other things.