[heliphoto]

in regards to heliphotos example (maybe someone said this before, but anyway): could it be you have auto color enhacement on in LR; your example on page one of this thread looks like that? This would lighten up most of the shots of Pentax DSLR's, 'cause it "thinks" they are underexposed. I had amost exclusively bad results from higher ISO K20D shots when I viewd them in LR, till I altered the standard setting of auto adjustment to none. This left shots darker and made the noise less visible. To brighten up the shots - if necessary at all, I chose a set of adjustments, that did much less harm to the photo than the rude LR auto adjustment. To go back to the initial state of a photo right click it and choose reset. I am coming up with that,

Thanks for your concern , but I have never liked Lightrooms "auto" adjustment (it's a bit better in 2.*, but still not to my liking), so I have had this disabled from the beginning with lightroom. That screenshot is from a straight raw file brought into lightroom, the only modification is that I turned down the NR so you could see the noise in a raw state.

[jgredline]

I was not going to comment, but what the heck.
Context, I shoot Jpegs, No RAW for me. No time to be wasting on PP other than simple things...
I have 2 K20D's and they are both a full stop better at noise control about ISO800 than the K-7...The K-7 produces better images below ISO 800, But it does me very little good as I like shooting at F/8 and need fast shutter speeds, hence I use MY K20D's more....I did buy a second K-7 because I thought I had a bad one, but ended up sending it back as it was exactly the same....I considered the K-X but in truth, I have started to loose faith in Pentax. I have been enjoying my D700 ''alot'' with its 2 maybe more stop advantage over the K20D which makes it 3 stops over the K-7...I am considering the d300s VERY much right now. If I do this, look for some great deals in the market place for tons of Pentax stuff. I will keep 1 K20D and a few lenses, but all else will go....

If I shot below ISO 800 like in the 100-400 range, I would be happy with the K-7 but that is not the case....

[heliphoto]

Thanks for the backup Javier, I was feeling pretty lonely in here . Man the thought of your collection up for sale is almost enough to make me want to buy a K-X ...

[Jadran]

I was not going to comment, but what the heck.
Context, I shoot Jpegs, No RAW for me. No time to be wasting on PP other than simple things...

JPEG engine in K-7 is really not so good. But, shooting RAW and PP doesn't have to be time consuming at all. For instance, in Lightroom you just connect your camera, import all photos and let the software automatically apply default conversion upon import. Easy as 1, 2, 3 ... and results can be much, much better then with in-camera JPEG conversion.

On the other side, but don't get offended please, I think that anybody who is serious in photography should try to get best quality from their equipment, and the way to do so is shooting RAW. Differences are tremendous.

I just saw photos on your blog. I love street photography, and I think that you are guy who really enjoys looking at world around yourself and take photos of it! I think that you can automate RAW import workflow very easy and with no serious effort. Also, I do a lot of street shooting and think that K-x, because of it's size, could be pretty good tool for such shooting.

---

Last edited by Jadran; 11-22-2009 at 12:56 AM.

[pcarfan]

I was not going to comment, but what the heck.
Context, I shoot Jpegs, No RAW for me. No time to be wasting on PP other than simple things...
I have 2 K20D's and they are both a full stop better at noise control about ISO800 than the K-7...The K-7 produces better images below ISO 800, But it does me very little good as I like shooting at F/8 and need fast shutter speeds, hence I use MY K20D's more....I did buy a second K-7 because I thought I had a bad one, but ended up sending it back as it was exactly the same....I considered the K-X but in truth, I have started to loose faith in Pentax. I have been enjoying my D700 ''alot'' with its 2 maybe more stop advantage over the K20D which makes it 3 stops over the K-7...I am considering the d300s VERY much right now. If I do this, look for some great deals in the market place for tons of Pentax stuff. I will keep 1 K20D and a few lenses, but all else will go....

If I shot below ISO 800 like in the 100-400 range, I would be happy with the K-7 but that is not the case....

Javier, When the 7D was mentioned here, I got curious and read the DPR review of the canon 7D. There they have comparison charts for high iso compoarision for the K-7, 7D and the 300s. They have both the jpeg and raw graphs for all three cameras, with jpegs the k-7 is monumentally inferior to the competition. In RAW it seems to be actually better at low iso's and slightly worse at very high iso (above 1600).

So, if you are shooting jpegs then the K-7 is not up to the competition in iso performance for sure.............

The link to the charts : Canon EOS 7D Review: 15. Photographic tests (Noise): Digital Photography Review

[pcarfan]

I was not going to comment, but what the heck.
Context, I shoot Jpegs, No RAW for me. No time to be wasting on PP other than simple things...
I have 2 K20D's and they are both a full stop better at noise control about ISO800 than the K-7...The K-7 produces better images below ISO 800, But it does me very little good as I like shooting at F/8 and need fast shutter speeds, hence I use MY K20D's more....I did buy a second K-7 because I thought I had a bad one, but ended up sending it back as it was exactly the same....I considered the K-X but in truth, I have started to loose faith in Pentax. I have been enjoying my D700 ''alot'' with its 2 maybe more stop advantage over the K20D which makes it 3 stops over the K-7...I am considering the d300s VERY much right now. If I do this, look for some great deals in the market place for tons of Pentax stuff. I will keep 1 K20D and a few lenses, but all else will go....

If I shot below ISO 800 like in the 100-400 range, I would be happy with the K-7 but that is not the case....

I would love to keep an eye out for bargain Pentax stuff, but not at the expense of losing a fine photographer and person.

[Marc Sabatella]

I was not going to comment, but what the heck.
Context, I shoot Jpegs, No RAW for me. No time to be wasting on PP other than simple things...

Who said shooting RAW means spending time doing PP? Apply a batch NR preset to all your images and in *seconds*, you're done with a whole day's worth of shooting. Seems a much easier/cheaper option than switching camera systems.

[Marc Sabatella]

BTW, regarding the effect of light and/or exposure on noise: I don't have a horse in this race and kind of skimmed over who is disagreeing with who over what, but let me summarize my understanding:

- for a scene in given lighting and at given aperture and shutter speed, noise is basically always the same regardless of ISO, because the sensor collects the same number of photons regardless of ISO. So whether you got to that shutter speed by shooting underexposed at low ISO and push processing or by "exposing to the right" at higher ISO is largely immaterial - you're still taking the same number of photons and multiplying them by 2, 4, 8 or whatever. Sure, there might be *slight* differences betwene doing this in the analog amplifier in the camera (using higher ISO) versus doing it digitally in PP (push processing lower ISO), but to a rough approximation, it's pretty much the same (and depending on the specific camera and specific ISO, may be literally the same, since higher ISO's are often implemented digitally in the camera firmware).

- More light on the same scene helps only to the extent you you take advantage of it to collect more photons - that is, if you *don't* speed up the shuttter or stop down, but instead reduce ISO. If you shoot at high noon but have so short a shutter speed and/or so small an aperture that you need to be shooting at ISO 3200 to get a proper exposure, you'll get essentially the same noise at ISO 3200 you'd in low light with a slow shutter speed or wider aperture, because proper exposure at ISO 3200 always takes about the same number of photons, no matter what.

- The *color* of the light does indeed make a difference, because it affects the relative amount of photon (and hence noise) in each of the three color channels.

- It's probably the case that much longer than normal shutter speeds are worse for noise than much shorter ones, even if you also adjust other parameters to make sure you colelct the same number of photons, because the sensor has longer to overheat. I'm not sure at what point that kicks in.

[Wheatfield]

Who said shooting RAW means spending time doing PP? Apply a batch NR preset to all your images and in *seconds*, you're done with a whole day's worth of shooting. Seems a much easier/cheaper option than switching camera systems.

There are situations, however.
The water polo event that my friend just finished shooting involved 3 photographers and ended up being several thousand files. The event organizers wanted jpegs and they wanted them pretty much immediately.
The best option was to give them out of camera jpegs.
Or at least, this is what three very experienced professional photographers thought was the best option.

Here's another situaton. The studio I am teamed up with is gearing up for another year of shooting Santa photos at three different malls.
This will mean about a couple of thousand files per day hitting the lab. The time frame is such that raw files aren't on the table.
We don't have time to tie up a computer for that long, and still get the files printed and back out the door.
What you call *seconds* becomes a significant amount of time when the file load gets up into the thousands from just a few dozen or so.

The hubris brigade might think differently, but, of course, they aren't there either, in much the same way they aren't there when they are telling a person how to deal with post processing and whether he wants to bother with it or not.

[KungPOW]

Its funny how exceptions are always found at the extremes.

[Marc Sabatella]

There are situations, however.

True. They just aren't as common as those who imagine that RAW = "need to spend a lot of time doing PP" are suggesting. Event photography can indeed be among the rare exceptions.

[rawr]

...I considered the K-X but in truth, I have started to loose faith in Pentax. I have been enjoying my D700 ''alot'' with its 2 maybe more stop advantage over the K20D which makes it 3 stops over the K-7...I am considering the d300s VERY much right now.

I'd suggest re-considering the K-x as a high ISO street workhorse. I'd love to use a D700 or D300s, since they are beautiful machines, but they are big, heavy, expensive boxes that I'd be scared to take out onto the street, especially at night in some of the places I go . Compared to the Nikon's, a K-x is almost a disposable. If some drunk smashes it or some bastard steals it, it will hurt, but not as much as a smashed or stolen D300 or D700 would hurt.

[jgredline]

I'd suggest re-considering the K-x as a high ISO street workhorse.

Ok, Do you folks see the irony in this? I paid $1299.00 for my K-7 which is the Pentax flag ship DSLR. I have heard from ''many'' members that I should add a $600.00 K-X for high ISO use...Hmm, that adds up to $1900.00...That is more than what a D300S cost...So basically, to get D300S performance I need 2 Pentax cameras..The high end one and the low end one...I think, I just decided what I am going to do

[dylansalt]

A 7D cost slightly less than the K7 and it is far better in the noise dept and many other things to

All these very experienced paid pros covering theater/ballet productions mainly use 5D/5D MK11/1DMK111/1Ds - there must be a reason why they don't use the K7/Kx, 20D etc

Is the K7 a massive upgrade from the K10D/20D re: noise = no/ is the 7D - yes.

A second hand Canon 5dmk111/D700/1DMK111 with say 20 000 actuations can be had for just 30% more than the K7 and they will dominate in just about everything including noise handling

It also amazes me that many here think that the Pentax lenses offer the best performance/value - personally I believe Canon does with Nikon a distant 2nd.

And yes having handled and shot with a K7 it is a beautiful cam and most won't really need much more than this.

My K10D is my first dslr and it has delivered for me and I have learned a great deal and now looking to upgrade to a more complete package and to my great distress Pentax doesn't have the package and trust me I have also had the blinkered Canon/Nikon and lenses are shite approach.

Below is an unedited 7D ISO1600 - I personally think the detail is amazing in jpeg to and with a minuscule amount of pp - incredible



Can you imagine what a 5dmk111/1dmk111 is capable of

[Jadran]

Below is an unedited 7D ISO1600 - I personally think the detail is amazing in jpeg to and with a minuscule amount of pp - incredible

But, at light source as on that shoot, there would not be a problem to get such detail and noise on ISO 1600 on K-7. I'll post you some 1600 daylight shoots to prove that if I get some time. And 7D is still more expensive then K-7, not less.