Enhancing old photos in Lightroom

Today I did a little experiment: Using Lightroom to "enhance" (upscale) an old 3008 x 2008 pixels photo taken with a 6mp *ist DS—just to see what would happen. The result was a 6016x4016 pixels photo, nearly the same size as my 6000x4000 pixels 24 mp K-3 gives. Not too shabby, eh? Especially when one considers the shot was taken with the original 18-55 kit lens. It was captured one summer sundown in front of our cabin on Lake Superior back in 2007.

Now I think I'll get that *ist DS out of mothballs and start using it again, especially with the supersharp 300mm f4.5 Pentax-F I acquired for birding with a K-5. The DS's small size would make it appealing as a backup traveling camera, even with that 18-55.

Good job holding the highlights on the CCD sensor...........Larry

You might like to check out this official Pentax page about using the Digital Camera Utility software with images from older cameras - https://pentaxofficial-com.translate.goog/5318/?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB... it really does work very well

The *istDS is still a fine camera. Mine is dedicated to M42 lenses these days, occasionally I like to take a small selection of old glass out for a walk and "return to my roots"

I've always believed that it's the photographer, not the camera or lens, that makes the critical difference between a good photo and an excellent one, like this. Lightroom is wonderful, but it sure gad a great image to improve here!

Also -- noticed a KX in your gear list. Did you get one already, and how is it?

henryk1 wrote:

Today I did a little experiment: Using Lightroom to "enhance" (upscale) an old 3008 x 2008 pixels photo taken with a 6mp *ist DS—just to see what would happen. The result was a 6016x4016 pixels photo, nearly the same size as my 6000x4000 pixels 24 mp K-3 gives. Not too shabby, eh? Especially when one considers the shot was taken with the original 18-55 kit lens. It was captured one summer sundown in front of our cabin on Lake Superior back in 2007.

It's the same number of pixels but not really the same image, and the K3 could give 12000x8000 if put through the same algorithm.

There is crude re-sizing - make 4 of each pixel which doesn't put any more information in and still looks blocky when you zoom in, then there is interpolation which calculates the new pixels based their neighbours. No more information but less pixelated when printed or zoomed in. And the enhance is doing a bunch of guesses on what the image should have been and fills it in. If you zoom in the same I did below a while back you can see a lot jaggies are removed, lines the fence, the frame of the lamp or the chair in the upstairs window are much clearer.

Some pictures I took with the *-istD c.2004/5 re-process and things like brickwork noticeably enhanced but I think some of it is AI figuring out what might plausibly be there, not recovering detail that the sense saw but wasn't digitized.

Still even as a fake it's impressive.

Now I think I'll get that *ist DS out of mothballs and start using it again,

I assume that's tongue in cheek. Even if you only save 6MP modern cameras are more convenient to use.