What might work best for me...

DougOB wrote:

Massao wrote:

DougOB wrote:

DougOB wrote:

McSpin wrote:

I wondered about that, but the KP has a higher pixel density than the K-50, yet has lower noise. I was guessing that sensor technology was most important and that a recently produced sensor might be better.

In short... yes.

To follow up on my own post... I took a look at the Photons to Photos web site (http://www.photonstophotos.net/) and the KP at ISO 6400 has a "Photographic Dynamic Range" (their terminology) of 6.32, which is about the same as either the K-50 or K-3 at ISO 1600. The K-70 is pretty close to the KP.

Doug

That may give a wrong impression: (1) x-axis represent ISO settings in camera(s), and after VW’s cheating, I don’t trust the ISO settings given by manufacturers too much. (2) Both Nikon and Pentax use sensors by Sony, and I doubt any sensor was given exclusively to Pentax alone; however, some of the difference in these charts between similar aged/year Pentax and Nikon sensors are very “pronounced”--so much that it is hard to believe they were using same sensors. (3) Pentax does some sort of noise reduction—I don’t know if that has been incorporated/adjusted/controlled in these charts. In sum, while these charts are helpful, I would never base any purchase on these alone 😉

On these numbers alone - no, of course not.

However my personal experience is the KP is about 2 stops better than the K-3 at these ISOs, which does happen to correspond to these numbers (note I never actually compared the K-3 to KP on this site before this thread).

Doug

When I look at DPReview's image comparison charts, I see about one stop difference, maybe a bit more, but that is just my crude estimation based on what my eye sees on DPR's crops.  Still, a stop or a bit more is worth looking in to.