Who else is waiting for K 3 Mark 3 MONOCHROME?

Kobie M-C wrote:

RBIV wrote:

Romaner wrote:

Kobie M-C wrote:

Well, since a monochrome camera has no color filter array, the image quality, dynamic range and sharpness is vastly superior as is the iso capability with a much lower noise floor compared to a color sensor. You can't replicate those in software.

EXACTLY! Some people just don't understand this. I know that software convertion is more convenient for a lot of people, but there are a lot of color cameras, and VERY few (and VERY expensive) cameras for people who mainly shoot BW and understand the benefits of monochrome sensor. I'm sure that Pentax K 3 Mk. 3 Monochrome will sell very well.

Why not lobby one of the mirrorless manufacturers so you could get monochrome right from the viewfinder?

The viewfinder is completely different than a dedicated monochrome image sensor. I can already do monochrome in live view. But it's still a render of a color image with the filter in front of the sensor.

I'm thinking a decent EVF combined with a mono sensor would be nice, especially for those of us who don't care for "arms length LV" ...  but it's just a thought.

Myself, I'm OK with mono via PP    in fact,  I find I'm somewhat attracted to "gritty" somewhat noisy mono images.  Reminds me of some of those great journalist images of the late 1960s shot with Tri-X or HP-4 pushed 1 stop too far  LOL.

DougOB wrote:

PentUp wrote:

Absolutely not! I see it as a colossal waste of time and resources.

As opposed to the combined time that all of us spend on this forum?

Doug

p.s., add 42 smilies to indicate my good humour in this.

RBIV wrote:

PentUp wrote:

Absolutely not! I see it as a colossal waste of time and resources.

You're just trying to get more time and resource directed to the Five Fives. Yes, you are. Admit it !!

5 x

This camera would be useful for some but not all.

Romaner wrote:

Kobie M-C wrote:

Well, since a monochrome camera has no color filter array, the image quality, dynamic range and sharpness is vastly superior as is the iso capability with a much lower noise floor compared to a color sensor. You can't replicate those in software.

EXACTLY! Some people just don't understand this. I know that software convertion is more convenient for a lot of people, but there are a lot of color cameras, and VERY few (and VERY expensive) cameras for people who mainly shoot BW and understand the benefits of monochrome sensor. I'm sure that Pentax K 3 Mk. 3 Monochrome will sell very well.

Some people just disagree. I took the blind test linked in an earlier post, and sorry, didn't see it. Maybe Pentax could do better than the Leica in the test, but I doubt it. And I think it's 40MP so that obviously helps. I agree that technically there are some advantages, but whether they translate to much better images? sometimes probably, but not enough to interest me. Good luck to them though.

If we had a Pentax Monochrome, shooting RAW would I still be able in Lightroom to selectively change certain colors? Like making green much brighter?

Jon Donahue wrote:

If we had a Pentax Monochrome, shooting RAW would I still be able in Lightroom to selectively change certain colors? Like making green much brighter?

No, because there would be no color information in the RAW file, only luminance.

You would have to put a physical filter in front of the lens to cut some waves if you want to do that (here a red/and or blue filter) at capture time.

robgendreau wrote:

Romaner wrote:

Kobie M-C wrote:

Well, since a monochrome camera has no color filter array, the image quality, dynamic range and sharpness is vastly superior as is the iso capability with a much lower noise floor compared to a color sensor. You can't replicate those in software.

EXACTLY! Some people just don't understand this. I know that software convertion is more convenient for a lot of people, but there are a lot of color cameras, and VERY few (and VERY expensive) cameras for people who mainly shoot BW and understand the benefits of monochrome sensor. I'm sure that Pentax K 3 Mk. 3 Monochrome will sell very well.

Some people just disagree. I took the blind test linked in an earlier post, and sorry, didn't see it. Maybe Pentax could do better than the Leica in the test, but I doubt it. And I think it's 40MP so that obviously helps. I agree that technically there are some advantages, but whether they translate to much better images? sometimes probably, but not enough to interest me. Good luck to them though.

That's because they were comparing images with deafult noise reduction. Try downloading raw files and then comparing it by yourself.

Tim Reidy Productions wrote:

This camera would be useful for some but not all.

I', not claiming that everyone needs monochrome camera, I'm just saying that people who know that they need it have virtually no choice (apart from very expensive conversions and stuff like Leica and PhaseOne).

And what do you mean by K D Chrome?

Jon Donahue wrote:

If we had a Pentax Monochrome, shooting RAW would I still be able in Lightroom to selectively change certain colors? Like making green much brighter?

No, but you can use proper lens filter! Also, I hate playing with channels in post, there are a lot of nasty noise and artifacts.

Lothman wrote:

Romaner wrote:

Jon Donahue wrote:

If we had a Pentax Monochrome, shooting RAW would I still be able in Lightroom to selectively change certain colors? Like making green much brighter?

No, but you can use proper lens filter! Also, I hate playing with channels in post, there are a lot of nasty noise and artifacts.

but then you have exactly to know how strong you want to filter before you take the shot no chance to correct this afterwards and you NEVER can filter the blues of the sky different from the greens. For filtering a monochrome camera is a great drawback compared to post processing. And up to ISO 3200 noise is no longer a problem with modern cameras.

If I'm not mistaken, sensors response are not the same for all wavelengths . Be it RGB or monochrome (if you put a color filter at shooting time) we won't get less noise for red, blue or green I guess? And if we keep near IR for the monochrome sensor, would that be the same compared to a full spectrum sensor with the adequate filter ?

Regarding color sensitivity this old link seems to imply that color selection with a monochrome sensor would be possible even in post processing with specific software ? At least that's what I understand when Maxmax write :

- The camera sensor is first converted to monochrome which removes the Color Filter Array (CFA) making each pixel sensitive to all light frequencies. Then a Linear Variable Filter (LVF) is installed on the sensor that progresses from 450nm of the left to 880nm on the right. By converting the camera to monochrome, the sensor and LVF achieve maximum resolution. Our custom software can create a color image for a monochrome dataset because the software knows what parts of the sensor receive what frequencies of light.

Regards, Fred

Romaner wrote:

Jon Donahue wrote:

If we had a Pentax Monochrome, shooting RAW would I still be able in Lightroom to selectively change certain colors? Like making green much brighter?

No, but you can use proper lens filter! Also, I hate playing with channels in post, there are a lot of nasty noise and artifacts.

Thinking about this, I find it an interesting comment.  If one is after the look of 35mm B/W say 1960s thru 1980s or so, the predominant films used were Tri-X or HP-4 or HP-5, maybe some AgfaPan 400 -- and all of them were, are, and ever shall be... noisy.  As in grain.  Subdued with soft solvent type developers or pushed with high activity developers and noisy with grain.  Medium and slower films a bit less so, but still had some noise, enough that some darkroom printer preferred diffusion head enlargers rather than condensers to soften the image slightly.

So, one might say a bit of digital noise keeps B/W authentic.  

And...  OK, if one is attempting to emulate the Ansel Adams type of large format prints from large format film, then, no, we don't want noise.

Romaner wrote:

Jon Donahue wrote:

If we had a Pentax Monochrome, shooting RAW would I still be able in Lightroom to selectively change certain colors? Like making green much brighter?

No, but you can use proper lens filter! Also, I hate playing with channels in post, there are a lot of nasty noise and artifacts.

That's weird ? Why would it do that ?

With Darktable I never saw this kind of things.

Lothman wrote:

Romaner wrote:

Jon Donahue wrote:

If we had a Pentax Monochrome, shooting RAW would I still be able in Lightroom to selectively change certain colors? Like making green much brighter?

No, but you can use proper lens filter! Also, I hate playing with channels in post, there are a lot of nasty noise and artifacts.

but then you have exactly to know how strong you want to filter before you take the shot no chance to correct this afterwards and you NEVER can filter the blues of the sky different from the greens. For filtering a monochrome camera is a great drawback compared to post processing. And up to ISO 3200 noise is no longer a problem with modern cameras.

That depends on your personal "threshold". I wouldn't go higher than ISO 200 if I wanted to push color channels in BW post - processing.

Kobie M-C wrote:

Well, since a monochrome camera has no color filter array, the image quality, dynamic range and sharpness is vastly superior as is the iso capability with a much lower noise floor compared to a color sensor. You can't replicate those in software.

For me personally, all the technical finer points are nice, but ultimately less relevant. Sensor-tech evolves, and current CMOS is far superior to the CCD in my Monochrom, as far as the numerics are concerned.

The huge advantage in my user case is that the post-processing is extremely simple and straight forward with a mono-file. The most obvious is no fiddling with colour-channels, but there's also how to deal with noise. Luminosity-noise is so much easier to process (and/or to blend into grain) than colour noise to get a pleasing image.

In addition, during the shooting itself, I am solely focused on looking for B&W-images; with a colour-cam, I'm often trying a bit of both, which can easily lead to fewer keepers. It's a bit the same (for me) as a prime vs zoom; neither is "better", but in general I prefer the simplicity of a prime.

So I'd buy a K-1M immedately

RBIV wrote:

Romaner wrote:

Jon Donahue wrote:

If we had a Pentax Monochrome, shooting RAW would I still be able in Lightroom to selectively change certain colors? Like making green much brighter?

No, but you can use proper lens filter! Also, I hate playing with channels in post, there are a lot of nasty noise and artifacts.

Thinking about this, I find it an interesting comment. If one is after the look of 35mm B/W say 1960s thru 1980s or so, the predominant films used were Tri-X or HP-4 or HP-5, maybe some AgfaPan 400 -- and all of them were, are, and ever shall be... noisy. As in grain. Subdued with soft solvent type developers or pushed with high activity developers and noisy with grain. Medium and slower films a bit less so, but still had some noise, enough that some darkroom printer preferred diffusion head enlargers rather than condensers to soften the image slightly.

So, one might say a bit of digital noise keeps B/W authentic.

And... OK, if one is attempting to emulate the Ansel Adams type of large format prints from large format film, then, no, we don't want noise.

Yes, Ansel Adams "BW style" is what I'm going for.

Noise can be cool and organic, but if I'll want some grain I can always shoot film.

JeremieB wrote:

Romaner wrote:

Jon Donahue wrote:

If we had a Pentax Monochrome, shooting RAW would I still be able in Lightroom to selectively change certain colors? Like making green much brighter?

No, but you can use proper lens filter! Also, I hate playing with channels in post, there are a lot of nasty noise and artifacts.

That's weird ? Why would it do that ?

With Darktable I never saw this kind of things.

Maybe you are just not as picky as me. I'm one of those "pixelpeepers".

RBIV wrote:

Why not lobby one of the mirrorless manufacturers so you could get monochrome right from the viewfinder?

Myself, I've found that using an optical viewfinder (on my Monochrom) is a great help in learning to "see" B&W-images, as opposed to whatever processing (contrast etc) an EVF presented me on my mirrorless cams before.

But that's obviously also a matter of personal preference.