Now, be careful here, Roland. What you're saying is that picture quality is really what matters in the end. That's going to screw up some pixel peepers' minds, if it ever penetrates.
Probably not. Even if Pentax could make a camera that outperforms any Canon and Nikon on the same and one higher price level, I dare say even two price -classes, it won't even scratch their sales numbers. Even in marketshare they won't sell many more, just because of it being a good camera.
Now, I have seen image samples that did show very nice DR...
The vast majority of prints generally is of max A4 size.. The size you can put in a folder.
Rob, of course the extra resolution does help the 14.7 MP sensors but not that much. Theoretically, the factor is the square root of the ratio or the square root of 14.6 divided by 12.3 or about 1.09 or about an eighth of a stop. I am looking for an improvement at low ISO's of about 1.5 stops.
I really would like to be on Pentax's payroll involved with improving the sensor's performance up to that of the Canon's at high ISO and up to that of at least the Nikon D300 as to low ISO Dynamic Range (DR).I really don't understand why Pentax does not put you on their payroll, if for no other reason than to stop you from posting your authoritative critiques of their sensors on the internet
Although another way to look at would be that if newer camera designs help steal a couple of percent of market share from Canon and Nikon and about one percent from Sony (which they would barely notice), Pentax's market share would be about doubled.
they never got the same sensor as in D200, it was a little bit different w/ 4 channels vs 2 channels in low level Nikon and Pentax models.
I think K10 and K100 sold (relatively) so well mainly because they were considered best in class. It might be considered a luxury for Canikon but a matter of survival for Pentax.
Agreed.
Thanks for your invaluable report Gordon. I may have missed the point but did you also check the highlight clipping threshold of the K7?
These are very important questions that tend to get lost in discussions of highly technical matters. It would seem that, when used at their limits, the D300 will have an edge over the K-7 in large print quality. That edge will probably be slight. Moreover, for 98% of what most people shoot, the differences will be irrelevant. Applying noise reduction is an option, but at the cost of losing some detail and introducing artifacts.
Roland, I don't think the concept of useable dynamic range at low iso has anything to do with print size. With a high contrast image, the difference will be seen at any print size or on the web. Here's an example of a high contrast photo taken with my D300 at ISO 200.
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Ronald, that's a good question that deserves a thorough answer. First, A4 print size is about a 100% crop of the K-7 sized image when printed at 300 dpi, so 100% crops on our screens are about the same resolution as this size of print. However, our screens have about a third of the ppi/dpi, so we need to step back from our normal viewing distance by a factor of 2.5 to 3 in order to see what the prints would look like. As for what print size we would need to reduce to in order to have acceptable image quality, noise generally works in binary stops, so if we see barely acceptable image quality at one viewing distance, we will likely find it to be quite good image quality if we increase viewing distance by a factor of two, and excellent image quality if we increase viewing distance by another factor of two, and imperceptible noise at increased distances = reduced sizes from that point onward.
The raw scaling is exactly the same between the K-7 and the K20D so the highlight clipping threshold for raw will be the same. As for JPEG so-called DR measurements made by review websites such as DPReview, the new ability to adjust the "roll-off" of the Tone Response Curves applied will help make the clipping transitions not so abrupt for JPEG's.
Jeff, in raw every camera tries to use the full DR of the sensor to display all the image tones it sees; it may well be that your posted image has a wide DR but it is very likely that it only has a DR of 8 or 9 stops, which still doesn't necessarily limit to capture of this image at low ISO's using the K20D/K=7. The concept of blocked shadows (ie. no deep shadow detail because the shadows are too dark) comes about because the image development Tone Response Curve (TRC), otherwise known as Contrast curve, is too steep and limits the available DR. If the camera is not too noisy in the shadows, you could decrease the contrast and recover the shadow detail. However, if the deep shadows are too noisy, you would not be able to do this without decreasing perceived image quality due to the increase noise in the shadows when you make those visable. That is what would happen in some situations with the K20D as compared to your Nikon D300.
But the D300 is old already, and a preproduction K-7 should have been put in the hands of someone who knows how to show Pentax that this issue exists so there is time to fix it, especially at the target price. Making these basic quality/design IQ issues to cause NO difference in TECHNICAL IQ allows the unique features of the camera to shine.
These abilities of the tool are not being discussed with the intention of people routinely using their cameras at their limits. Its that you may HAVE to every once in a while, and a photographer knowing his camera can handle it as well as any camera at this price range gives necessary confidence.
Now, now, you're not being very modest Mouse...Ha! Ha!....Reading comprehension is what it's all about Mouse.....& having an open mind...which is not what you're exhibiting here....reports? reviews?...other people's ideas....& value judgments based on little or no personal photographic knowledge or experience makes one sound like a parroting twit....which we both know that you are not Mouse :->
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