First off, with the firmware update, there was some sort of change
to the High JPG output. I am having a difficult time understanding
your concern and reasoning tough. First off, this is only
noticeable with A3 prints and above, at least according to Phil. Do
you really plan on shooting A3 size prints and then observing them
under a magnifying glass? If you do, you will see more texture with
the Pentax than the others, so you will have more to look at.
Secondly, Phil does not mention his output device. This is very
improtant. Half-tone devices like inkjet printers create a
continous tone-like effect by dithering their ink droplets. This
type of device will print highly sharpened images better that a
true continous tone device like a photo lab might use. A 403 dpi
continous tone printer will print better and sharper in many cases
than a 4800 dpi half tone device like an inkjet. Pentax'es
approach, much like F*ji's is to favor the continous tone devices.
Lastly, back to reasoning. I truely don't understand your question.
If quality is so important to you, why on earth would you use JPG
mode on any camera? Think of this, you shoot a picture, the camera
adjusts the exposure to what it thinks is right, captures you
image, calculates what it thinks is the necessary information based
on the settings you made (white balance etc), throws out all other
"unnecessary Information", applies sharpening and other
"manfuracter tweaks" and writes all the leftover info to your
memory card all within 1/3 of a second.
If you really want the best, aren't you being awfully lazy? My very
expensive computer loaded with my even more expensive software
with me at the controls will ALWAYS make better decisions than my
little camera can in its 1/3 of a second window! Think about it.
