Most underestimated camera currently available

I did the upgrade (kudos Ricoh for offering this!) and I have nothing but praise. The K-1 was already a remarkable camera, but with the upgrade (which it makes an MkII) Ricoh/Pentax puts the bar a great deal higher.

First and foremost, and just to get it out of the way, IQ is excellent and I have yet to find the detail-eating and cooked files of which this site (and others) speak. Images are very detailed and noise free, more or less what the K-1 did. If anything, I find the images to have less colour noise but all in all, between K-1 and MkII there is not a lot to it.

AF has been improved, not so much in speed, but in precision. In low light, the K-1 hunted now and again (and sometimes failed to focus), but that is gone with the upgrade. I've yet to fault the AF, it just locks focus without hesitation, no matter the circumstances.

Under the hood, there are also some things changed. Exposure is now much more precise (on the K-1 I has to dial in -0,5/-1 stop and that is gone.)

All in all, I am very happy to have done the upgrade.

Ergo607 wrote:

I did the upgrade (kudos Ricoh for offering this!) and I have nothing but praise. The K-1 was already a remarkable camera, but with the upgrade (which it makes an MkII) Ricoh/Pentax puts the bar a great deal higher.

First and foremost, and just to get it out of the way, IQ is excellent and I have yet to find the detail-eating and cooked files of which this site (and others) speak. Images are very detailed and noise free, more or less what the K-1 did. If anything, I find the images to have less colour noise but all in all, between K-1 and MkII there is not a lot to it.

AF has been improved, not so much in speed, but in precision. In low light, the K-1 hunted now and again (and sometimes failed to focus), but that is gone with the upgrade. I've yet to fault the AF, it just locks focus without hesitation, no matter the circumstances.

Under the hood, there are also some things changed. Exposure is now much more precise (on the K-1 I has to dial in -0,5/-1 stop and that is gone.)

All in all, I am very happy to have done the upgrade.

I also did the upgrade and fully agree with everything you said.

As far as the grading goes:

While i have no (more) complaints shooting my kids in action, i realize that cameras like the D5 will lock focus like superglue, and others like the Olympus em1x will do 20 fps... So i wouldn't give full marks.

For landscapes the K1ii is so refined, it should get at least one extra bar above maximum!

miles green wrote:

Ergo607 wrote:

I did the upgrade (kudos Ricoh for offering this!) and I have nothing but praise. The K-1 was already a remarkable camera, but with the upgrade (which it makes an MkII) Ricoh/Pentax puts the bar a great deal higher.

First and foremost, and just to get it out of the way, IQ is excellent and I have yet to find the detail-eating and cooked files of which this site (and others) speak. Images are very detailed and noise free, more or less what the K-1 did. If anything, I find the images to have less colour noise but all in all, between K-1 and MkII there is not a lot to it.

AF has been improved, not so much in speed, but in precision. In low light, the K-1 hunted now and again (and sometimes failed to focus), but that is gone with the upgrade. I've yet to fault the AF, it just locks focus without hesitation, no matter the circumstances.

Under the hood, there are also some things changed. Exposure is now much more precise (on the K-1 I has to dial in -0,5/-1 stop and that is gone.)

All in all, I am very happy to have done the upgrade.

I also did the upgrade and fully agree with everything you said.

Thank you!

As far as the grading goes:

While i have no (more) complaints shooting my kids in action, i realize that cameras like the D5 will lock focus like superglue, and others like the Olympus em1x will do 20 fps... So i wouldn't give full marks.

While I agree that there are probably better camera's in that department and while I have yet to do any action photography with the MKII, I feel that I would have close to 100% keepers rate if I were to do any. It used to be different with Pentax. That is why I rated it at the maximum. I have zero interest in high frame rates. In fact, I don't recall ever having machine-gunned a photo scene... But even if for someone else the 4 fps wouldn't be enough, those persons can read a spec sheet, I guess.

For landscapes the K1ii is so refined, it should get at least one extra bar above maximum!

Fully agree, IQ is top notch!

I am sorry, but I do not understand this post at all.

Sure, the K-1 II is a nice camera. We all here know that. I have a K-1 and love it. Woulds not mind a mk II, even if I did not upgrade.

But this "review" is totally over the top. The camera is so utterly unbelievable fantastic and the upgrade to mark II the best thing since sliced bread.

What purpose do it fulfill to write this, in the Pentax DSLR forum?

Moreover, no matter how you look at it, even if the mk II is good, the mk II upgrade was a total disappointment. It is an obvious delay tactic to avoid releasing a substantial new FF camera. By releasing mk II they can wait to 2022 to release next FF camera. And that is extremely bad news. We really want two FF cameras NOW, a 24 MP low end camera and a 50 MP high end camera. But, the mk II release says that you will get none. The mk II was the most bad news we FF Pentaxian could get.

agukha wrote:

I see the K1ii as a very good upgrade, which has improved a lot of things, including AF.

And it's seen in the charts, for example :

The K1ii is third behind 2 MF, the K1 is not even on the second page, but at the 59th place !

I have seen the really better AF engine between the K3ii and the KP also.

As K-1 II does do noise reduction, the low light ISO will, of course, go up. Low light ISO is defined as the highest ISO where you have a certain signal to noise ratio. This does not necessarily mean that the camera can produce more noise free images, it only means that it do so out of the box. Which is convenient.

BTW - where can I find this table?

agukha wrote:

You can see the chart on the bottom of this page :

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

And all other measures :

http://www.photonstophotos.net/

Thank you for the reference to the links.

When looking at the PDR.htm chart above. Choose K-1 and K-1 II then you see that something strange happens at ISO 636. The PDR improves with 1.66 stops. At lower ISO they are identical. But, from 636 and up, the mk II is 1.5 stops better or so. And this is pure noise reduction. Nothing else.

Same thing happens here at ISO 636.

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

This noise reduction is not possible to turn off. So, as a photographer you hope that you do not find situations where you really would like it.

I know that astronomers really dislike noise reduction in the RAW data. One example is the infamous Nikon star eater. But even if stars are not eaten, noise reduction destroys the statistics.

So - how about us less celestial photographers. Is this mk II noise reduction in any way bad? Personally, I have not the slightest idea.

Florida Suse wrote:

Surprisingly it got marked a notch lower for flash photography- social, this is an area where I think it excels. I have had nothing but excellent results the times I have used it with flash and off camera lighting. Not sure where this rating is coming from. I shoot manual though and don't let the camera make those decisions so that may affect someone's results or experience. But even on aperature priority, I have had no issues.

I am not a flash expert, but I thought the flash support from Pentax did not really come up to the heights of Canikon. So - I am not surprised by the 4 (out of 5).

I am more surprised by the 5 (out of 5) for action and sports. The 2 given by the community is more reasonable. Sure, you can use it for action and sports, but it is not easy if something is moving in the z direction.

Tom Lusk wrote:

While I agree that there are probably better camera's in that department and while I have yet to do any action photography with the MKII, I feel that I would have close to 100% keepers rate if I were to do any.

You're being serious?

I agree it's MUCH better than previous Pentaxes.

I've shot my kids doing sports (with the 150-450) and it had no trouble keeping up. I'm not going to count the hit rate, but it was good. I have no idea how it would do photographing a downhill skier at 150km/h.

Regarding frame rate and buffer size, yes it's OK for my needs. I managed to fill the buffer at my daughters dance recital, photographing just my kid, and not the others. The pro shooting a big Nikon next to me seemed to be happily shooting away, taking pics of all the kids. So i would say that he needed the faster performance.

That said, for my needs, including kids sports, the K1ii was very satisfactory. The pro would have been swearing. It's all a question of needs / requirements.

I also managed to fill the buffer shooting an HDR 360 degree pano (using a nice nodal point tripod head). Then i did one with PS, which was better. I calculated i exposed 2.88 gigapixels for that, so some delay is easily excused!

Tom Lusk wrote:

While I agree that there are probably better camera's in that department and while I have yet to do any action photography with the MKII, I feel that I would have close to 100% keepers rate if I were to do any.

You're being serious?

Yes.

People nowadays want a camera where they can machine gun an action scene, come home with tons of images and select the best one. While anyone does what she or he wants, what's wrong with the good all approach of timing your moment and making the photo at that exact while? If you want the former, there are obviously better camera's than the MKII, if, however, you choose for the latter, it is more than a capable camera.

My reasoning is three-fold:

a) no onboard flash (which is handy to trigger cordless flash.) I understand that the flash had to make way for GPS, etc, and frankly, I don't care too much, but the fact that Pentax doesn't have a small cheap flash that can be used as a master is an oversight

b) less third party support

c) flash metering is not as robust as with other brands. I don't do flash very often, but the few times that I do it bothers me a bit that flash exposure from one image to another is not very constant. I think if you do use it manually it won't matter too much, but nevertheless, it's there...

Florida Suse wrote:

Surprisingly it got marked a notch lower for flash photography- social, this is an area where I think it excels. I have had nothing but excellent results the times I have used it with flash and off camera lighting. Not sure where this rating is coming from. I shoot manual though and don't let the camera make those decisions so that may affect someone's results or experience. But even on aperature priority, I have had no issues.

Roland Karlsson wrote:

I am sorry, but I do not understand this post at all.

Sure, the K-1 II is a nice camera. We all here know that. I have a K-1 and love it. Woulds not mind a mk II, even if I did not upgrade.

But this "review" is totally over the top. The camera is so utterly unbelievable fantastic and the upgrade to mark II the best thing since sliced bread.

What purpose do it fulfill to write this, in the Pentax DSLR forum?

I posted a review in the camera section, didn't know it would turn up in the forum. Don't like it? Don't read it...

Moreover, no matter how you look at it, even if the mk II is good, the mk II upgrade was a total disappointment. It is an obvious delay tactic to avoid releasing a substantial new FF camera. By releasing mk II they can wait to 2022 to release next FF camera. And that is extremely bad news. We really want two FF cameras NOW, a 24 MP low end camera and a 50 MP high end camera. But, the mk II release says that you will get none. The mk II was the most bad news we FF Pentaxian could get.

I am sorry, but I am so fed up with people who have the ambition to be Pentax' CEO and have the future of the brand all worked out just because they use products of said brand.

People who mourn about the MKII seem to forget that until it was announced no-one was expecting an ff replacement in the first place (everyone was eyeing a K3 replacement.) Is it so difficult to comprehend that the idea was to put the accelerator of the MKII into the original K-1, but somehow got delayed? IMHO, releasing the MKII didn't delay anything that Pentax was already planning back then...

As for the 24 MP low-end ff: what could it possibly bring that the MKII doesn't already have? It is a pretty affordable camera with top-notch IQ that is better than the 24MP ff camera's out there.

Ergo607 wrote:

Tom Lusk wrote:

While I agree that there are probably better camera's in that department and while I have yet to do any action photography with the MKII, I feel that I would have close to 100% keepers rate if I were to do any.

You're being serious?

Yes.

People nowadays want a camera where they can machine gun an action scene, come home with tons of images and select the best one. While anyone does what she or he wants, what's wrong with the good all approach of timing your moment and making the photo at that exact while? If you want the former, there are obviously better camera's than the MKII, if, however, you choose for the latter, it is more than a capable camera.

That is a clear and understandable answer. Your first post on the other hand did lack the fact that you were not talking about what normal is meant with "action photography" today, i.e. catching moving things with a capable AF.

But, if you pre-focus and is timing your photos, then any camera can do it.

Ergo607 wrote:

Roland Karlsson wrote:

I am sorry, but I do not understand this post at all.

Sure, the K-1 II is a nice camera. We all here know that. I have a K-1 and love it. Woulds not mind a mk II, even if I did not upgrade.

But this "review" is totally over the top. The camera is so utterly unbelievable fantastic and the upgrade to mark II the best thing since sliced bread.

What purpose do it fulfill to write this, in the Pentax DSLR forum?

I posted a review in the camera section, didn't know it would turn up in the forum. Don't like it? Don't read it...

Moreover, no matter how you look at it, even if the mk II is good, the mk II upgrade was a total disappointment. It is an obvious delay tactic to avoid releasing a substantial new FF camera. By releasing mk II they can wait to 2022 to release next FF camera. And that is extremely bad news. We really want two FF cameras NOW, a 24 MP low end camera and a 50 MP high end camera. But, the mk II release says that you will get none. The mk II was the most bad news we FF Pentaxian could get.

I am sorry, but I am so fed up with people who have the ambition to be Pentax' CEO and have the future of the brand all worked out just because they use products of said brand.

People who mourn about the MKII seem to forget that until it was announced no-one was expecting an ff replacement in the first place (everyone was eyeing a K3 replacement.) Is it so difficult to comprehend that the idea was to put the accelerator of the MKII into the original K-1, but somehow got delayed? IMHO, releasing the MKII didn't delay anything that Pentax was already planning back then...

As for the 24 MP low-end ff: what could it possibly bring that the MKII doesn't already have? It is a pretty affordable camera with top-notch IQ that is better than the 24MP ff camera's out there.

Yes, no one was expecting the K-1 II we got. We either expected a totally insignificant "improvement" soon or a substantially new camera later. Now we got a compromise, a new motherboard for improving IQ and some nice improvements of the software for AF.

Only the software changes for AF had been a better move, Then we could have looked forward to a new nice high end camera soon, maybe even 2019. Now, with this motherboard stuff, it will be 2022.

And no, I am not trying to act as the CEO, but rather as a customer. Pentax is too slow and outputs things I am not really interested in. Super expensive monsters lenses and the strange K-P, that most do not like. And this strange motherboard upgrade that even made DPReview look away from Pentax in disgust, making fun of us.

The 24 MP camera could be smaller, simpler and cheaper. This one is not for me, I have to confess, but it is a good introduction to Pentax FF - if they make suitable lenses for it, of course. But, as I said, it is no priority for me personally, so maybe you are right there, this being CEO talk. So - forget about it in this context.

agukha wrote:

I see the K1ii as a very good upgrade, which has improved a lot of things, including AF.

And it's seen in the charts, for example :

The K1ii is third behind 2 MF, the K1 is not even on the second page, but at the 59th place !

I have seen the really better AF engine between the K3ii and the KP also.

Thank you very much for this post

Pentax KP and K-1ii strike out significantly as outstanding in terms of DR and ISO.

Pentax KP shows amazing numbers - pretty much comparable to a FF!

Beats Canon

Jhaakas wrote:

Thank you very much for this post

Pentax KP and K-1ii strike out significantly as outstanding in terms of DR and ISO.

Pentax KP shows amazing numbers - pretty much comparable to a FF!

Beats Canon

As I have written a couple of times already - those numbers are possible to manipulate. They are based upon the signal to noise ratio. And, if you do noise suppression this ratio goes up. In practice, state of the art sensors all have the same signal to noise behavior if they have the same size. More or less. The differences are marginal.

The noise suppression kick in can easily be seen in the curves. If you compare K-1 and K-1 II, you see that they have identical values up to ISO 636. At that point K-1 II adds a noise suppression algorithm that gains one and a half stop. You can do the same for K-1 in post processing.

The two question regarding this noise suppression in the RAW data are

1. Is this noise suppression superior to one made in post process?
2. Does this noise suppression do anything degrading to the image?

NOTE - it is, of course, practical to have it in most cases. But, question 2 above is kind of important, for some of us.