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who is upgrading their K-1

who is upgrading their K-1

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I believe Pentax will improve and innovate the K-1 to the Mark II, no matter what a review says. It's not likely that Ricoh/Pentax were planning to take the trouble to downgrade rather than to update a camera.

I reserved mine for update in late August, so many K-1 users have paid the fee for update here in China, and I have to wait for 3 months for it.
 
Not upgrading, and didn't put a vote in your survey, as none of the responses were close to my reasons.
 
I voted in the "still thinking about it block," but at present I'm leaning toward a "no." I shoot photos on hikes which is a "landscapes" category. The K1 which I purchased not so long ago (November 2017) does it better than any camera I've owned. I don't really "need" anything I have thus far heard is in the K1ii. If a lot of people reported back that their upgrades gave them wonderfully improved Image Quality, that would sway me in the direction of doing it. And more generally, if the upgrade gave me something new, something I'm going to use on hikes, then that would be hard for me to resist.

In regard to "something new," I took a break from the intensity of the Pentax Upgrade debates to pursue something I've been intending for a long time: the acquisition of a serious light-weight system to use when I want (or need) to go light. I bought an Olympus OMD-EM5ii and an Olympus OMD-EM1. I had a couple of kit lenses from the time I hurt my arm and shoulder and got an Olympus EPM2; so I used those with the EM5ii which I got first. I then bought a 12-50 which was a sort of kit lens -- still checking that out. I then ordered my first serious lens an Olympus 12-40 pro; which I don't have yet.

And so, if in my weakened LBA (Lens Buying Addiction or CBA (Camera Buying Addiction) I become tempted to get the K1 upgrade just because it is new gear, I'll still be in the midst of trying out my second system. I shouldn't call it a "new" system since I saved all my old Olympus DSLR cameras and lenses, and the OMD-EM1 was designed so that with an MMF-3 adapter (which I bought), I can use some of my better Olympus DSLR lenses -- the 14-54 II is especially recommended. Some like the 12-60 which I also have, but others say it is too heavy for the little Oly cameras.

I don't have high expectations for using the OMD-EM1 with old DSLR lenses. A lot of Olympus people still do it, but there are Olympus snobs who insist that the Olympus "Pro" line is much much better.

There is a parallel between the K1 upgrade to the Kii and the Olympus upgrade from the OMD-EM1 to the OMD-EM1ii. Apparently the EM1ii has a lot of new technical capability, but those who shoot mostly landscapes say they aren't going to get the Mark II because the OMD-EM1does everything they need. :-)

Lawrence
 
SBS said:
I think it will be worth it to me. The ability to comfortably use ISO 12,800 is significant as a wedding photographer. The best photo examples look good to my eyes. I would prefer to add sharpening rather than noise reduction to my images. I don't get hung up in the technologies used if I like the results. The charts below have been seen here, and I find them persuasive. Faster AF is always welcome too.

http://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/reviews/pentax-k-1-mark-ii-review/4
Click to expand...
 
Not me. I''ll save my $500. I've been pretty uninspired by the hand held PS samples posted to date, which was the aspect of the upgrade I was looking forward to most.
 
I have sent it in -- went out on monday

Fingers crossed

John Morris
 
breeze_of_wind said:
I have sent it in -- went out on monday

Fingers crossed

John Morris
Click to expand...
What are the mechanics of sending it in. Is there a site you go to in order to get the form? Did you contact Precision ahead of time?

Lawrence
 
MightyMike said:
Joseph Tainter said:
MightyMike said:
Joseph Tainter said:
I was considering it, but also dreading it. I would have to recalibrate all of my lenses, and I have a lot of them. The process is a real nuisance. The reviews about mandatory noise reduction convinced me to just stay with my K-1.

Joe
Click to expand...
You must not have seen the service steps, the sensor unit and AF unit and Mirror aren't touched.

https://pentaxrumors.com/2018/05/14...ription-of-the-different-steps-with-pictures/
Click to expand...
I saw the service steps. I'm not a tech type, but if the mainboard is replaced I would guess that somewhere on that mainboard is the memory chip that holds the af calibration information.
Click to expand...
You are absolutely correct... so write down on a piece of paper the lens and its calibration setting so you can re-input it when you get the camera back. I went through all my settings and wrote in a text file every important setting to me so I can configure the camera back to the way I want it when I get it back. May have taken quite a few minutes but its well worth it.
MightyMike said:
If Pentax says otherwise, then I would just consider whether to accept the mandatory noise reduction. I suspect my answer would still be no.

Joe
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
SBS said:
I think it will be worth it to me. The ability to comfortably use ISO 12,800 is significant as a wedding photographer. The best photo examples look good to my eyes. I would prefer to add sharpening rather than noise reduction to my images. I don't get hung up in the technologies used if I like the results. The charts below have been seen here, and I find them persuasive. Faster AF is always welcome too.

http://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/reviews/pentax-k-1-mark-ii-review/4

--
https://www.skyoftexas.com
https://www.instagram.com/skyoftexasphoto/?hl=en
Click to expand...
I looked at these charts for the first time -- interesting numbers, but I don't see where you see faster AF in them?

I do need "high" ISO because I often hike in the early morning in the lee of a mountain, but how high do I really need? I'm not sure. I did a sort of test with a K-70, Olympus E5 and a K3 a while back on what "may" have been a typical morning and didn't need above ISO 3200. On the other hand, without actually trying a K1ii, how could I know I wouldn't see improvement in my dark-morning-shots.

Does "low light ev" mean the ability to get a focus in low light?

Lawrence
 
Pontoneer said:
MightyMike said:
Joseph Tainter said:
MightyMike said:
Joseph Tainter said:
I was considering it, but also dreading it. I would have to recalibrate all of my lenses, and I have a lot of them. The process is a real nuisance. The reviews about mandatory noise reduction convinced me to just stay with my K-1.

Joe
Click to expand...
You must not have seen the service steps, the sensor unit and AF unit and Mirror aren't touched.

https://pentaxrumors.com/2018/05/14...ription-of-the-different-steps-with-pictures/
Click to expand...
I saw the service steps. I'm not a tech type, but if the mainboard is replaced I would guess that somewhere on that mainboard is the memory chip that holds the af calibration information.
Click to expand...
You are absolutely correct... so write down on a piece of paper the lens and its calibration setting so you can re-input it when you get the camera back. I went through all my settings and wrote in a text file every important setting to me so I can configure the camera back to the way I want it when I get it back. May have taken quite a few minutes but its well worth it.
Pontoneer said:
If Pentax says otherwise, then I would just consider whether to accept the mandatory noise reduction. I suspect my answer would still be no.

Joe
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
MightyMike said:
Pontoneer said:
MightyMike said:
Joseph Tainter said:
MightyMike said:
Joseph Tainter said:
I was considering it, but also dreading it. I would have to recalibrate all of my lenses, and I have a lot of them. The process is a real nuisance. The reviews about mandatory noise reduction convinced me to just stay with my K-1.

Joe
Click to expand...
You must not have seen the service steps, the sensor unit and AF unit and Mirror aren't touched.

https://pentaxrumors.com/2018/05/14...ription-of-the-different-steps-with-pictures/
Click to expand...
I saw the service steps. I'm not a tech type, but if the mainboard is replaced I would guess that somewhere on that mainboard is the memory chip that holds the af calibration information.
Click to expand...
You are absolutely correct... so write down on a piece of paper the lens and its calibration setting so you can re-input it when you get the camera back. I went through all my settings and wrote in a text file every important setting to me so I can configure the camera back to the way I want it when I get it back. May have taken quite a few minutes but its well worth it.
MightyMike said:
If Pentax says otherwise, then I would just consider whether to accept the mandatory noise reduction. I suspect my answer would still be no.

Joe
Click to expand...
--
Mike from Canada
"I am not a great photographer! God is a great creator! All I do is capture His creation with the tools He has provided me."
'I like to think so far outside the box that it would require a telephoto lens just to see the box!' ~ 'My Quote :)'
http://www.michaelfastphotography.com/galleries/VP-BDI_3a.jpg
http://www.airliners.net/search/[email protected]&thumbnails=
Click to expand...
This isn’t something I’d thought about before , but on two of my video cameras you can save user settings onto an SD card , and recover them back from the card , either on another camera of the same type , or following some work being done on the camera .

I was just looking through the K-1 user manual , but can’t see any reference to this . I’d think it would be a nice facility to have and would allow users to save custom settings, and even to share them with other users .

I wonder if it could be added through a firmware update ?

--
With kind regards
Derek.
Click to expand...
What you describe has been requested for years, its most certainly not a priority for them, sure It could be added through a firmware update.

--
Mike from Canada
"I am not a great photographer! God is a great creator! All I do is capture His creation with the tools He has provided me."
'I like to think so far outside the box that it would require a telephoto lens just to see the box!' ~ 'My Quote :)'
http://www.michaelfastphotography.com/galleries/VP-BDI_3a.jpg
http://www.airliners.net/search/[email protected]&thumbnails=
Click to expand...
I wonder if it can be done in an engineer's menu - some cameras have secret button combinations which open up engineering menus ( I remember there used to be discussion of this back in the days of the K-10D when people used to go in and change focus calibration ) - it isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that engineers can save data from a camera before working on it , and reload afterwards , so that a customer's settings survive .

Otherwise , someone could send in a well used K-1 and get the camera back after the upgrade with the actuation counter reset to zero , which wouldn't be good since the shutter etc would have so many clicks behind it . A bit like 'clocking' the odometer on a used car .

--
With kind regards
Derek.
 
Last edited:
Pontoneer said:
MightyMike said:
Pontoneer said:
MightyMike said:
Joseph Tainter said:
MightyMike said:
Joseph Tainter said:
I was considering it, but also dreading it. I would have to recalibrate all of my lenses, and I have a lot of them. The process is a real nuisance. The reviews about mandatory noise reduction convinced me to just stay with my K-1.

Joe
Click to expand...
You must not have seen the service steps, the sensor unit and AF unit and Mirror aren't touched.

https://pentaxrumors.com/2018/05/14...ription-of-the-different-steps-with-pictures/
Click to expand...
I saw the service steps. I'm not a tech type, but if the mainboard is replaced I would guess that somewhere on that mainboard is the memory chip that holds the af calibration information.
Click to expand...
You are absolutely correct... so write down on a piece of paper the lens and its calibration setting so you can re-input it when you get the camera back. I went through all my settings and wrote in a text file every important setting to me so I can configure the camera back to the way I want it when I get it back. May have taken quite a few minutes but its well worth it.
Pontoneer said:
If Pentax says otherwise, then I would just consider whether to accept the mandatory noise reduction. I suspect my answer would still be no.

Joe
Click to expand...
--
Mike from Canada
"I am not a great photographer! God is a great creator! All I do is capture His creation with the tools He has provided me."
'I like to think so far outside the box that it would require a telephoto lens just to see the box!' ~ 'My Quote :)'
http://www.michaelfastphotography.com/galleries/VP-BDI_3a.jpg
http://www.airliners.net/search/[email protected]&thumbnails=
Click to expand...
This isn’t something I’d thought about before , but on two of my video cameras you can save user settings onto an SD card , and recover them back from the card , either on another camera of the same type , or following some work being done on the camera .

I was just looking through the K-1 user manual , but can’t see any reference to this . I’d think it would be a nice facility to have and would allow users to save custom settings, and even to share them with other users .

I wonder if it could be added through a firmware update ?

--
With kind regards
Derek.
Click to expand...
What you describe has been requested for years, its most certainly not a priority for them, sure It could be added through a firmware update.

--
Mike from Canada
"I am not a great photographer! God is a great creator! All I do is capture His creation with the tools He has provided me."
'I like to think so far outside the box that it would require a telephoto lens just to see the box!' ~ 'My Quote :)'
http://www.michaelfastphotography.com/galleries/VP-BDI_3a.jpg
http://www.airliners.net/search/[email protected]&thumbnails=
Click to expand...
I wonder if it can be done in an engineer's menu - some cameras have secret button combinations which open up engineering menus ( I remember there used to be discussion of this back in the days of the K-10D when people used to go in and change focus calibration ) - it isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that engineers can save data from a camera before working on it , and reload afterwards , so that a customer's settings survive .

Otherwise , someone could send in a well used K-1 and get the camera back after the upgrade with the actuation counter reset to zero , which wouldn't be good since the shutter etc would have so many clicks behind it . A bit like 'clocking' the odometer on a used car .

--
With kind regards
Derek.
Click to expand...
Further to the above , I did a search back through this forum and found posts about people hacking into the firmware debug mode on some Pentax cameras , the link below to a thread on this forum will take you to such a topic , second post down on the page is worth reading ...

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3847019#forum-post-55856145

as far as I've read so far , people had got into debug mode up as far as K-3 , so shouldn't be much of a stretch to K-1 and there do seem to be options to save parameters to the SD cards within the debug menus - could do exactly what I was discussing .

--
With kind regards
Derek.
 
Last edited:
Fotoni said:
So the accelerator chip is mainly for noise reduction and image stacking? These can be done with software anyway and you can actually control how it is done. Convenience chip is not worth it.
Click to expand...
I'm not so sure about that. The chip is filtering out read noise. It seems to me that a unit dedicated to that purpose will be more accurate than an aftermarket software approach that can't tell read noise from fine detail.
 
MightyMike said:
You are absolutely correct... so write down on a piece of paper the lens and its calibration setting so you can re-input it when you get the camera back. I went through all my settings and wrote in a text file every important setting to me so I can configure the camera back to the way I want it when I get it back. May have taken quite a few minutes but its well worth it.
Click to expand...
Good idea, Mike. I do have that information written down.

Joe
 
had I not seen/read the test, I would have said yes, I was all for it, now i don't know thus this thread
 
Joseph Tainter said:
Wheatfield7 said:
Not upgrading, and didn't put a vote in your survey, as none of the responses were close to my reasons.
Click to expand...
What are your reasons, Bill?

Joe
Click to expand...
I don't generally work at high ISO, so the read noise filter isn't critical to my work, generally I am a landscape shooter, and use mostly non AF lenses so the speedier auto focus isn't all that important, and I am almost always working off a tripod so the enhanced pixel shift is no biggie.
 
MightyMike said:
Roland Karlsson said:
36 is nice, but 50 might make me consider
Click to expand...
It might make you consider but I feel its a whack load of wasted data... diminishing returns, makes it much harder to pixel shift or burst quickly and to tell the difference you'd have to view both images at huge print sizes at close range or with a loupe. Just like PS requires 100% to see detail differences, you don't usually view an image at 100% in real life. Had pixel shift in its current form been available for 6-8mp sensors it would have been a huge advantage, but at 36mp its a gimmick.
Click to expand...
We all have our priorities. I like when the image is clean even at large crops. Apart from me getting a warm and fuzzy feeling it actually helps regarding IQ. One thing it does is decreasing aliasing, e.g. moire. But not only moire. I also make stitched images. Then it really helps.
MightyMike said:
MightyMike said:
Possibility to easy get a sharpness map of a taken image so you can see where it is sharp.
Click to expand...
Ah, that would be nice, perhaps when this comes out for software viewing programs it may arrive for the camera a few years later. I'm not sure my software can readily show me what is and isn't in focus in the image, not to mention noise would cause false positives.
Click to expand...
Yepp, noise is a problem. But, otherwise it needs to be similar to when showing focusing in the LiveView. It is approximative, and so it always ahve to be.
MightyMike said:
MightyMike said:
MightyMike said:
MightyMike said:
  • Simulated apodisation
Click to expand...
Just do it in editing if its that important
Click to expand...
What?
Click to expand...
Making for smooth fuzzy bokeh, isn't there software the can detect and change the look of bokeh in an image?
Click to expand...
If the bokeh is harsh, you cannot smooth it. If it is soft and weak you can enhance it.
MightyMike said:
MightyMike said:
One of my dreams is a camera where you do not set any ISO at all, but it can be exposed from ISO 1 to ISO 10.000 without problems anyhow. And, of course, with 24 stops of DR at ISO 1.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately there are technical limitations and likely physics limitations to getting all that you ask.
Click to expand...
Yepp, maybe. But you can do much better than today. And you can dream.

--
/Roland
Kalpanika X3F tools:
github.com

GitHub - Kalpanika/x3f: Tools for manipulating X3F files from Sigma cameras

Tools for manipulating X3F files from Sigma cameras - Kalpanika/x3f
github.com github.com
 
msadat said:
had I not seen/read the test, I would have said yes, I was all for it, now i don't know thus this thread
Click to expand...
Msadat,

I'm glad you posted this thread. I had not looked at the test data posted by SBS which I saw here for the first time. Also, sometime during the night I began to think along the same lines as Xiaomao. Something has been improved even if the DPReview people can't find it. And that improvement, while it seemed mysterious and nebulous to me for a long time is an equivalent feature to what's in the K-70 and KP, both of which I have and love -- not so much the KP's ergonomics, but everything else.

It is difficult for me to look at shots from different camera/lens combination and say "this shot" means that this camera is better than this other one. The best I can do is have a feeling. I mention buying an Olympus OMD-EM5ii and an OMD-EM1 while hoping for the upgrade storm in my brain to pass away. I plugged them into the chart SBS referenced and see that the K1, KP, K1ii and 5DIV are all enormously better than these two micro-4/3 cameras -- and yet -- and yet -- I look at the shots I've taken with these two cameras, using kit lenses and they look pretty good to me. Some shoots look a little soft, but some others would be indistinguishable to me from shots from the K1 (shooting the Oly cameras in DNG raw, apertures between 6.4 and 12, and ISOs up to 500 -- and then viewed on an LG 27inch 4K monitor --- and edited with Lightroom 6. To check details I would in LR click the the photo to get 1:1, but wouldn't go larger than that.

How can so many Olympus people be so happy with their OMD cameras, and they are, if the graphs are true? Maybe because they can't see in their photos what the tests referenced by SBS show on its graphs. And I can't see them in the photos either.

Nevertheless I just got back from the Postal Annex where I had them send my K1 to Precision Repair Service, with an estimated delivery date of Thursday May 31st. It isn't very scientific and I couldn't prove it, but in looking at shot after shot from the KP I had the "feeling" that the shots were better than shots from my earlier camera. One thing I especially noticed was that I could use the LR slide for lightening the dark parts of a photo without getting a ton of noise -- noise I have gotten from other cameras. I had more than a feeling that dynamic range was better.

So, I have confidence that Ricoh's upgrade is taking my K1 in the same direction that the KP was taken, and that strikes me as a good thing even if I can't prove it and even if DPReview can't find it.

Lawrence
 
For some the enhancements are either no big deal or even anathema.

I don't do weddings, but I am called upon at work to do some event work and quite a bit of on-the-fly museum installation photography. Finished installations are for my 645Z, but I've found the K1 to be very able in the lower light level, no flash situations I am increasingly finding myself in. What I've seen of the K1mkII samples tells me that the upgrade will be well worth it, and might even allow me to do more jpg work, which would help me with turnarounds for some things.
 
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