K10 hands on review PART 1

[R Valentino]

all of us waiting for our cameras can use.

Hopefully, only another 3 weeks or so.

Thanks again.

R

 

[lak]

How long does it take to charge the battery with the provided charger?

According to the manual, the MAXIMUM charging time is 180 min. So it should be less if the battery is not completely discharged.

 

[alinla]

How long does it take to charge the battery with the provided charger?

According to the manual, the MAXIMUM charging time is 180 min. So
it should be less if the battery is not completely discharged.

Thanks Lak. I guess I should RTFM. Stupid me.

--
al in la



Learning to light at Strobist.com

http://www.trappedlight.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LAShooters/

 

[Rupert60]

Thanks a bunch for your efforts, they are well appreciated here. I will have sweet dreams tonight!!!!
--
'This is more serious than I thought.....but it is still fun!
http://www.pbase.com/rupertdog Take a look- It's Free!

 

[*isteve]

No I used a combination of 12-24, 24-90, 40 pancake and 70 pancake. I dont rate the kit lens and was not particularly interested in proving what I already know
--
Steve
Measurebating makes you short sighted.
http://www.pbase.com/steve_jacob

 

[*isteve]

I took about 90 mins when I did it but that was not from an empty battery.
--
Steve
Measurebating makes you short sighted.
http://www.pbase.com/steve_jacob

 

[*isteve]

Hi, Steve,

Really helpful, thanks so much for posting.

For a 'serious amateur' mainly doing wildflower macro work at the
moment,

http://picasaweb.google.com/ferrymanau/Upload

could you very kindly summarise what advantage there would be to me
upgrading to a K10D from a *ist D?

Well, I think you'll find the colour rendition and impact of your shots somewhat enhanced. I always found *istD shot needed a bit of adjustment to give them impact. Not so with the K10D. I think it will really bring flower shots to life!!

Regards

--
Steve
Measurebating makes you short sighted.
http://www.pbase.com/steve_jacob

 

[Ariz]

How much noise from the shutter was there.
Would it make someone nearby turn their head and look ??

 

[*isteve]

You can listen to it in Phils report...its not the quietest but its low frequency - more of a low clunk than a clack like the DS.

How much noise from the shutter was there.
Would it make someone nearby turn their head and look ??

--
Steve
Measurebating makes you short sighted.
http://www.pbase.com/steve_jacob

 

[Robert Chow]

Well, Phil will be getting his soon and he will probably disagree
with all my conclusions, but overall I really was impressed with
this camera.

Well, the firmware on his test subject is likely to be more current than .3.

Nice preview, Stteve.. I was thinking more about the upcoming DA* 16-50mm/f2.8 than the K10D but now I'm wondering about what I can do without to get them both.
--
rc

 

[Godfrey]

Good job, Steve!

Godfrey

 

[Francis E]

Thanks Steve.

I was also thinking that the anti-shake feature will come in handy. I try and carry a tripod at all times, but it's not always feasible in company with a group.

 

[brew1brew]

That was great, now I'm really sad that I have to wait till spring. Oh well I will have to go out with my *ist D and take some more pictures.

Les

 

[Voikkari]

Thank you!

This was a pleasure to read.

--
*istD/MZ5n/Z70/SF7/MESuper/MX
Pentax since Spotmatic F
Gear is in the profile
LBA? Sure!

 

[Ishpuini]

Hi all, I picked the K10, a K100 and all the pancakes up from
Richard on Monday and had around a day and a half to play with them
all. Shot around 400 frames on the K10 under a lot of quite
difficult situations (high DR, into the sun, low light etc). I am
not allowed to post any shots, but I can tell you about my
impressions.

You lucky b* d. ;-)

The rest snipped to only the parts I'm commenting on.

BATTERIES
Battery life seemed OK. I shot over 300 pics with lots of chimping
and the batery indicator still read full. Spares are very cheap and
available, so having one or two spares charged up seems like a
reasonable compromise. I have no reason to doubt the estimates from
Pentax of 500+ per charge and of course you can double this with
the grip.

I wonder whether these batteries hold their charge (I'm sure someone here will already know?) so that pre-charging a few could help for a three week trip in an electricity-wise unstable region?

CONTROLS
Its a great camera to use. The controls all work well and have a
solid, well engineered feel to them. The VF is excellent as
expected, but the new LCD is great, much more accurate and much
easier to see. Its atually quite useful for checking exposure,
though I used blinkies for shadows/highlights rather than the
histograms. Another WAY cool feature is being able to review the
affect of image settings such as WB on the review screen. Now is
that cool or what? Its a great way of adjusting WB for the
conditions. Raw files can be converted quickly into JPEGs to save
space if needed.

Does that mean that if you save the JPEG you lose the RAW. Or do you mean your can convert and then throw away the RAW explicitely?

MODES
I tried out the Sv and TAv modes, and they work well - there is
something quite groovy about watching the ISO go up and down as you
expose! The ISO setting takes the place of the remaining shots
counter in the LCD and VF. However I never really got on with them

• what I did find FAR more useful was to assign EV comp to the

front dial in Av mode - this puts up a permanent display of the EV
setting and you can adjust it simply by twirling the front dial -
excellent!!!!

That looks more like the setting I would probably go for too.

I also set auto ISO to 100 - 320 and shot away though
you dont know what ISO it selected until you review the shot. I do
wish the ISO display was permanent.

Does it skip up to the next ISO if wide open doesn't get enough light? Like on the DS now. Or does it take into account the program lines, i.e. so you could have it pick the ISO for best lens performance.

AF
There were still some odd focus stutters in very low light at very
wide angles (12mm on the 12-24) but I never got any OOF shots and
it didnt give up either. In half decent light its snappy and
accurate. Its a great deal faster than anything Pentax have
produced before as indeed is the whole camera.

Good to have confirmed once more.

RAW
I was restricted to shooting DNG because I didnt have any other RAW
tools that would read the PEFs. I had to compress the DNGs using
adobe DNG converter before Picasa could read them. However they
worked fine uncompressed in adobe bridge and photoshop. The size of
the uncompressed DNGs was 16.3 - 16.7 MB. They converted in camera
to Jpegs which were about 3MB to 9MB depending on the detail and
noise in the image.

You didn't shoot one PEF to check the size by any chance?

IMAGE QUALITY
Wow. In terms of detail, the 25% increase in linear resolution is
there, but to get it in context, you would still have to peep hard
at an A3 print to see the difference. However what is VERY much
improved is the sheer vibrancy and colour depth of the shots. What
looks like a fairly flat single colour on the K100 seems to almost
glow on the K10 showing far more liveliness and a range of shades.
And yes, both were using natural image tone. In terms of DR at the
ends of the range, I would say the K10 has a far more gradual tail
off towards clipping at both the highlight and shadow end. There is
textural detail in white surfaces and shadows that isnt visible on
the K100. Its slight but its noticeable. Subjectively I would say
there was about a stop more DR in the shadows as well. The K10
exposes about 1/3 to 1/2 a stop lower than the K100, but still
retains more shadow detail.

That is realy what I wanted to hear!! Did you try exposing a same shot the same way with the K10D and the K100D to check whether the difference was still as obvious?

More in part 2

Already looking forward to reading it!!

Thanks Steve!!!

Wim

--
Belgium, GMT+1

 

[orangegoat]

Thanks for that in-depth report. One question: what's the startup delay like? As "instant" as the canikons, or more like the Sony?

--
See http://partialsight.com/ for my shot of the day.

 

[Ishpuini]

ANTI SHAKE
It works. I got shots at the wide end of the 12-24 as low as 0.8
seconds and routinely at 1/4 and 1/2 second. At 24mm I have a few
shots at 1/5 and 1/6 seconds which are nice and sharp and some 90mm
shots at 1/10 and 1/15. The fact that I could do this routinely was
what was so impressive.

Great!

NOISE
Ah yes, noise. Well, its there. Sympathetic NR is being applied to
the output JPEGs in camera. Comparing JPEGs, I would say the ISO
equivalence is about 1/3 lower on the K10 for the same noise, ie.
200 400 800 and 1600 are roughly the same as 160, 320, 640 and 1250
on the K10 - far from a disaster. There is very little to choose
between them at low ISO, its only really visible in shadow areas
and from ISO400 upwards.

Very nice! Are you saying ISO100 is actually cleaner than the ISO200 on the K100D? As far as one can tell of course...

With RAW files, there is no in camera noise reduction and above ISO
320 the gap becomes more pronounced - I would say about 2/3 of a
stop difference at 1600. You can recover it using good NR but 1600
on the K100 is noticeably cleaner.

Still less than one stop difference between them? Better than expected, so I'm happy.

At a guess, I would say there is much less NR than on the D80, but
more than the A100. Up to ISO800 the shots clean up nicely in Neat
Image and lose very little detail. There is more chroma noise than
the Nikon (though I noticed that PhotoLab was quite good at
removing this from K100 shots) but no detail smearing whcih is
quite obvious on both the D200 and even more so on the D80. The
grain pattern is also very tight which means you can use mainly the
high frequency settings in Neat Image and lose less detail.
I think Pentax have generally adopted the right approach. Using the
right RAW converter can claw a lot of the difference back but much
more sympathtically. Remember also this was only firmware 0.3!!

I wonder how the NR in ACR would work...

MOIRE
I only noticed it in one or two shots. The K100 showed more
especially with prime lenses.
AND FINALLY
Pentax were very receptive to feedback and I'm sure the final
versions will have some improvements. Pentax are planning some
firmware upgrades but I dont know for certain what they will
contain. However it seems clear they are happy to entertain the
idea of upgrading the camera throughout its life with firmware
improvements rather than just bug fixes.

Somehow this is great to hear. Mean I will be able to play with the camera and get to know it while it's being improved. Probably have an upgrade by my next trip (after the one starting in a week). The fact that I might have had the K10D before next week worried me slightly, using a cam with a not so finished firmware you know. But I'm taking the well known DS on his retirement trip and I will have a new toy for the last days of the year! :-D

I was very impressed with the camera as a shooting tool. As a value
alternative to the D200, you are giving up very little and saving a
lot of money. It deserves to sell like hotcakes!

Yes, but let's not encourage too many to pre-order, they might postpone once more because of that... I want my toy early December! ;-)

Sure it wont compete with the Canon 5D at high ISO, but it will
compete with the rest of the 10MP bunch. At the same time, at low
to medium ISO, the shots from this camera are awesome. They almost
glow. Its hard to explain but Richard and I both felt the same.
They manage to look far more vibrant and rich without looking
oversaturated or over contrasty. Really superb. That PRIME engine
seems to deliver the goods.

I'm sure we will all know what you mean in a short time...

--
Steve

Thanks so much Steve!!

Wim

--
Belgium, GMT+1

 

[*isteve]

There is no delay unless you have the dust removal on which takes less than 1/2 a second. The camera is fast - never held me up.

Thanks for that in-depth report. One question: what's the startup
delay like? As "instant" as the canikons, or more like the Sony?

--
See http://partialsight.com/ for my shot of the day.

--
Steve
Measurebating makes you short sighted.
http://www.pbase.com/steve_jacob

 

[*isteve]

I wonder whether these batteries hold their charge (I'm sure
someone here will already know?) so that pre-charging a few could
help for a three week trip in an electricity-wise unstable region?

I would assume they would last for several days or weeks since they are not NiMH.

Does that mean that if you save the JPEG you lose the RAW. Or do
you mean your can convert and then throw away the RAW explicitely?

No it keeps the RAW as well, you have to manually delete the RAW, JPEG is create as a new file.

I also set auto ISO to 100 - 320 and shot away though
you dont know what ISO it selected until you review the shot. I do
wish the ISO display was permanent.

Does it skip up to the next ISO if wide open doesn't get enough
light? Like on the DS now. Or does it take into account the program
lines, i.e. so you could have it pick the ISO for best lens
performance.

You can set ISO in 1/3 stop increments and yes, I believe it follows the program line.

You didn't shoot one PEF to check the size by any chance?

No - sorry. I have no idea.

That is realy what I wanted to hear!! Did you try exposing a same
shot the same way with the K10D and the K100D to check whether the
difference was still as obvious?

I equalised the shots as much as possible adjusting one to get the same exposure as the other. There was clearly more gradual clipping in the K10 at the highlight end and I think in shadows too. Of course this does rather show noise in the shadows!! But the real surprise was the colour.

Thanks Steve!!!

Any time - I am now waiting for Phil to contradict all my findings

--
Steve
Measurebating makes you short sighted.
http://www.pbase.com/steve_jacob

 

[sharpsh00ter]

Huge thanks for this overview Steve! I was thinking of getting a K100D, but some of your comments make me think the K10D is the one for me - if I can afford it

I'm especially interested in your findings about the K10D's images having more colour vibrancy and depth even than the K100D. When I had a DL, I often found the images lacked something, maybe this is it!

Were you shooting in Jpeg when you noticed the colour etc? I'm wondering if this new PRIME engine means their will be less difference between Raw and Jpeg. I never shot in Jpeg with my DL, as it just wasn't as good as the Raw output IMO, kind of a processed appearance.

--
Cheers,
Dave.