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Forum: General Photography
04-27-2018, 12:10 AM
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What irritates me is "gear does not matter" myth. It is funny when many professional photographers say it, and then I see them picturing everything with top of the line FF bodies costing $3000-$6000 + lenses in range $1500-$2500 each. Seriously, if gear does not matter, why aren't you using a cheapo Chinese cellphone?
In photography both gear and skill matter. If you're lacking any of these, your photography will be limited. Sure, you may get some awesome photos with a smartphone, but this doesn't mean smartphone is optimal for most types of photography. Also a total noob in composition might get a few good shots just by luck. Probably 1 per 10000, but this happens. I have many friends who do tourist type of photography and bring thousands of pictures from vacation and while most pictures are technically bad and uninteresting, occasionally there are a few good ones.
BTW I'm not irritated when someone says "you must have a good camera", particularly after seeing pictures taken using K20D. Sure, it is a good camera, isn't it? When a noob says the camera must be good, it may means they like the picture and it is better than pictures they see on average.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
04-20-2018, 12:52 PM
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I saw this apple tree today near the kindergarden where my daughter goes to.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
04-16-2018, 02:44 AM
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One of the very first shots with my new K1 II. Pictured handheld. PP: WB + tone curves + resize. No sharpening, no denoising.
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
04-07-2018, 11:59 PM
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Are these handhled PSR pictures really sharper than what I could get just manually stacking pictures in PP?
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
04-07-2018, 12:05 PM
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It wasn't that bad. I know it is not a good lens for that type of shooting, but I don't have a proper long tele lens yet. The problem I had, though, was that the camera actually confirmed focus many times, and looked as if it was tracking properly but the images were out of focus (I was panning and keeping the AF point on the object while holding back AF button). Quite likely the tracking was just too slow or imprecise with this lens. However, with different lens and for a bit slower objects AF works quite well even in moderately low light and I have no problems getting sharp shots of kids.
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
04-06-2018, 09:35 PM
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I can't wait for my K1 II then. A pity they are not available in Poland yet :(
My K20D with 100 mm f/2.8 macro hunts a lot even in moderately good light and AF.C is terrible. I tried it to track seagulls in flight once and I got 1 sharp picture per 50 (yes, I mean it, one per fifty or even less), and 3 moderately sharp per 50, all the others totally blurred OOF. Don't know why, but WR macro has the slowest AF of all my lenses - I don't get hunting so often on FA 50 f/1.4 or DA lenses.
If AF works on K1 II reliably then it opens a completely new set of possibilities.
Also if these AF improvements are real, why Ricoh doesn't shout about it everywhere? It looks like a bigger thing than high ISO and handheld PSR.
Another review confirms much better AF:
https://www.tiendapentaxeros.com/blog/enfoque-de-la-pentax-k-1-mark-ii-analisis-fotos/
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
04-04-2018, 09:20 AM
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One of the first shots I made with the new DFA 100 / F2.8.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
04-04-2018, 08:52 AM
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According to your tips, I cropped the right yellow patch and indeed the composition now looks better. Thanks!
As for the contrast, I played a bit with the curves in RawTherapee, but somehow I couldn't make it better. Increasing contrast overblows the highlights in the red channel and then I have to compress them and flatten some subtle tonal changes, so it starts looking unnatural. The image already uses full output range of the red channel - from total black to 98%. Any ideas?
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
04-03-2018, 10:53 AM
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Thanks for the tips! If I had a chance to shoot it once more I'd also increase the f-stop a bit to get more DOF.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
04-03-2018, 09:35 AM
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Tulips. Comments appreciated! Thanks!
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Forum: Pentax Full Frame
03-31-2018, 07:30 AM
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High ISO is not the only improvement in mk II. I've heard a rumor that AF got significantly improved as well. And there is handheld PSR.
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Forum: Pentax Full Frame
03-30-2018, 10:14 PM
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This was to be expected. This is the same sensor. When they said they add some magic "accelerator" I was worried this would be just some kind of bad color smearing NR applied to Raw data.
From all the images I've seen yet, it looks that K1II improved detail and color saturation and also slightly lowered the amount of noise particularly at mid ISO 3200-25600. This is where it matters the most. To me this is substantial enough to buy mk II instead of mk I.
BTW: See the DxO comparison charts for Sony A7R III vs A7R II vs A7R. Not much difference either, despite a new sensor each time. I think that now we got some kind of plateau with sensor performance - even a 0.5 EV improvement in a new camera is a huge thing.
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
03-30-2018, 08:48 AM
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I looked at these charts again using a better display (not a tablet, but just a professional 30'' wide-gamut Dell), and I must say at ISO 3200 there is a significant difference. For K1 II, the noise level is lower and at the same time the contrast is much better. Look at the white / black levels. Blacks are more black and whites are more white, saturation is higher, yet at the same time the picture is smoother and less chroma noise. As I said earlier, looking at noise alone may be misleading, because it is easy to get less noisy picture just by decreasing contrast and/or saturation.
Anyway, as for the WB thing and color casting - I wonder, is it maybe a problem of auto WB? The camera puts WB info into PEF file and most software automatically uses it by default to setup postprocessing if you don't set it by hand.
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Forum: Pentax Full Frame
03-29-2018, 10:11 PM
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The final noise level depends heavily on other post-processing like curves, saturation, contrast, sharpening, NR etc. So comparing jpegs is a bad idea, because these cameras apply some heavy processing automatically, which can be different in either camera. I can imagine JPEG NR on K1 II may be a tad weaker to compensate better sensor noise output, but leaving more detail and better colours.
Yesterday someone posted colour charts pictured in DNG/PEF and it is obvious K1 II has a better color saturation and higher DR while retaining the same or very similar noise levels. Comparing noise levels is meaningful only if you have all the other things equal.
However, I must admit the difference is not ground-breaking to me and I wouldn't upgrade if it was the only feature. K1 was already excellent and hard to beat.
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
03-29-2018, 01:34 PM
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Another review, this time real with high ISO tests using RAWs. While ISO 100k+ is rubbish, I can see an improvement over K1 in range 12800-51200. The noise level doesn't seem to be lower, but K1 II gives more saturated colors, higher DR and more details. I believe you could do more in PP with these images than with images from K1.
Pentax K-1 versus K-1 Mark II: altas sensibilidades - Blog de Tienda Pentaxeros |
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Forum: Pentax Full Frame
03-28-2018, 07:21 AM
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It is actually hard to see a difference, and I'm a bit disappointed.
K1 II images are not any better, but also not worse. The noise is a bit less grainy on K1 II which makes it feel more soft, however the amount of details is similar. Focus is a bit different in these images and DOF is shallow, so it makes it hard to judge.
However, I was expecting much more, particularly after seeing what KP can do, e.g. here:
https://www.pentaxforums.com/reviews/pentax-kp-review/high-iso-performance.html
KP has the same sensor as K3II and the difference is *obvious*.
Maybe the accelerator chip needs to be activated somehow in the options?
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
03-27-2018, 02:31 PM
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Forum: Photographic Technique
03-17-2018, 12:24 AM
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Is your display color-calibrated, is your OS set up with proper color profile of your display (created by a colorimeter) and finally, is the app you're viewing these images properly color-managed (that is, does it know the color space of the picture and the color profile of the hardware it displays to). These things are essential to get right before you start worrying about color accuracy.
For example displaying an sRGB picture on a good non-managed wide gamut screen will cause colors to be oversaturated, unnatural and biased towards red. If you have an adobergb picture on a standard screen, it will be washed out.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
02-21-2018, 11:00 AM
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I'll be soon travelling to USA. I'd like to buy Pentax K1 there, because it is much cheaper than in Poland. But would the warranty be valid in Europe? What if something breaks?
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
02-17-2018, 08:01 AM
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I'm taking back what I have said about these specs being a disappointment. I looked at KP reviews and sample crops and I must say they are impressive. If K1 gets this high ISO tech on larger sensor than KP then it is enough for me to wait for K1 II.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
02-14-2018, 02:54 AM
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If this specs leak is true, then someone in the Ricoh marketing team did a very poor job. I hope it is joke.
This is not an incremental update one might expect from release after 2+ years. I am a senior lead engineer in a technology-based company in SV, and we do releases once per 6-9 months. Updating one component by taking it from an already released product is now what we call even an incremental update.
An incremental update is a set of minor improvements in most aspects of the product. A major update is if there is some new big feature or a new huge improvement.
As for the marketing - the main goal of marketing is not to make ads but to listen to the market and decide what product to put on the shelf so people would buy it. And now what Ricoh is doing?
- Pentax is known for its AF system to be lagging behind the competition and having bad press. Ricoh answer: No AF improvements. Not even improved software.
- Poor buffer clearing speed, burst speed on the low-end, compared to competiotion. Ricoh answer: No hardware improvements in this area at all.
- No USB 3.0: Again no improvements at all.
- K1 is known for its outstanding IQ and great sensor beating the competition even in the 2x-3x higher price range. What Ricoh does? They add some software mambo-jumbo chip to improve ISO / IQ even further to ridiculous levels. Are you crazy, Ricoh? Are they gonna be shooting in complete darkness? High ISO makes sense only if you're shooting sports in poor light conditions. But without a decent AF and burst rates, this is pointless - there are better cameras for this.
Sure, I didn't expect miracles in this release. Only incremental update - the same sensor, but faster processor, modernized faster interface for accessing memory cards to increase continuous shooting speed, improved AF (maybe more points of the same kind), improved AF tracking software (or at least some additional marketing effort to show to everybody they were wrong and AF is decent).
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
02-07-2018, 12:26 PM
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These will be the longest 3 weeks ever. I hope I get it before summer vacation. I've already invested in a few FF lens and a good flashgun, which improved my pictures tremendously, so now time for the body upgrade.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
02-07-2018, 07:57 AM
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 Quote: The K-1 II will really need to be able to attract users from other brands. Most current k-1 users will see no need to upgrade. There are also people like me, who did not buy K-1 yet, but who own an older Pentax camera, but after seeing all the great comments about K-1 now they want one.
In this case I'm a "late-majority" customer. Unlike early adopters, I buy stuff when it really proved itself. I almost never buy the first version of something.
I'm not buying a camera to replace it in 2 years. I've heard K-1 was awesome, so if they just make some minor incremental improvements in K-1 mk II I'd get even preorder one.
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