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The Pentax K50 VS K20D


Javier Gutierre

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<p>Thanks Wayne. Don't feel bad. I got exactly what I wanted. A weather sealed body that makes good pictures. I was not expecting the Autofocus to even come close to my Nikon gear. I will say this. AFC with 5 focus points works the best for street shooting. AFS was super slow and missed too many good captures. I do not feel like I missed any in AFC. In AFC it does not have the pentax skip. </p>
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<p>I was considering the K50 as an upgrade to my K100D but was surprised at seeing the color rendering of skin tone so different in Javier's posted samples. There's a lot of over saturated yellowish to pinkish hues in the Hispanic skin color that I'm wondering if Pentax changed their color engine.</p>

<p>See below what I get from my K100D incamera jpeg of the same ethnic skin color shooting with an old SMC-F 35-105mm/f4-5.6 Macro lens. All I did was assign/embed the appropriate AdobeRGB color profile which I have set as the incamera color space and in ACR 6.7 applied Brightness +60, Black 1, Clarity +30, Saturation +10, Sharpness Amount +50.</p>

<p>I'm assuming Javier's samples are edited incamera jpegs. </p>

<p>So has Pentax changed their incamera color engine after 2006 when my K100D was first released?</p><div>00dXCh-558822184.jpg.f0bda74cd8e8e92ffe655722b6fca647.jpg</div>

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<p>Tim, we can always count on you to critique color! Javier did claim to give them a saturation boost in LR. Not sure whether he shot in raw or JPEG. Javier's blues look pretty electric to me, and the skin tends a bit pink/magenta. These look like vintage Javier to me both in terms of subject matter and punchy color treatment, similar to what he would have produced from his older Pentax bodies. </p>

<p>I will contribute that when I process Pentax RAW (from various models up to my latest K5ii) in LR with very similar tweaks to yours (very mild boost to saturation & black level, slightly larger clarity boost) I have always gotten relatively natural looking colors & tones something like the image you post. I find WB generally pretty good, I usually don't feel the need to tweak it more than one click one way or the other. </p>

<p>Of course I don't live in SoCal, so don't generally have the kind of intense sunlight & clear skies that Javier experiences on a routine basis.</p>

<p>For better or worse, newer DA lenses tend to be a bit contrastier than your F-zoom. I'm not sure which in-camera JPEG profile you were using with your K100D...I think 'Bright' might be the default? When I've shot JPEGs in Pentax bodies, I've usually used the 'natural' preset -- I figure it's more effective & flexible to boost saturation or contrast to taste later if necessary rather than try and remove it if overdone in-camera. I seem to remember that K100D JPEGS were praised relative to the models that came before (like my 1st, the *ist DS2), though I think the criticisms with the older models were maybe more about sharpening than the colors.</p>

 

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<blockquote>

<p>These look like vintage Javier to me both in terms of subject matter and punchy color treatment, similar to what he would have produced from his older Pentax bodies.</p>

</blockquote>

 

<blockquote>

<p>I batch processed these in an Old Version of Lightroom. Mostly a simple resize and a slight punch in saturation. <strong>Otherwise, they are 95% out of the camera.</strong></p>

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<p><br /> Then Javier must have shot jpegs with cranked up contrast and saturation incamera settings and maybe in "Bright" rendering mode. My K100D was known straight out of the box for producing overly saturated and contrasty default settings jpegs. My posted K100D jpeg has saturation and contrast reduced to max shooting in "Natural" mode instead of "Bright". <strong><br /></strong></p>

<p>I'm going to assume this is the case and not attribute it to Pentax engineering of the K50.</p>

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Tim. Thanks for the response. No RAW for me. I was using the vibrant setting in the K50 and I did notice the yellowish

tones. That would be easy enough to fix. I thought it was more of a white balance issue, but then again maybe not. In

either case, the k50 will kill that k100 in every way in my opinion. The amount in camera J peg settings is really

impressive. I suppose you could shoot all natural as well. But me, I love color.

 

Thanks Javier.

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<p>Here is another picture. No processing what so ever. A simple resize in fastone. The reason for this picture, is because the color of my hand looks right, but the color of the folks in the back ground looks off. I am convinced it is the vibrant settings I chose in the camera. I will try bright next time.<br>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/18108644-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="450" /></p>

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<p>Thanks for the updated explanation on the K50 color rendering, Javier.</p>

<p>And I don't doubt you that K50 is better than my K100D. I'm just on the fence on whether to get a used K-5 or K50 with my current budget. </p>

<p>In my 7 or so years shooting landscapes with the K100D I'm seeing 6MP just doesn't cut it in capturing enough detail of broad/distant landscapes to register a majestic, bigger than life feel over what I can best describe as miniaturization with the K100D due to not enough resolution no matter what post processing tricks I apply. </p>

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<p>Tim, I'm not sure whether you're likely to notice this in practice but one potential image quality advantage of the K-5 over the K-50 would be the 14-bit rather than 12-bit raw files. Just how much this spec advantage would show in your workflow output is not for me to guess.</p>
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<p>The 14-bit is beneficial for reducing noise shooting HDR type scenes where preserving highlights requires rather dark Raw captures. I've seen the incredible results with regards to clean captures exposing this way with K-5 test samples over at Pentax forums.</p>

<p>I'm just not all that concerned with noise even shooting with my K100D especially the clean fixes I can get processing with ACR's noise reduction tools.</p>

<p>I see in a google search I can get the K-50 body only for $378 at B&H vs the K-5's for $299 on eBay (not going there). Don't know why the K-5 II is selling about $100 cheaper than the K-5 since it's newer. I don't want to buy off eBay. I never liked the experience. I buy used mostly either from KEH or B&H.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>A few from a short lunch walk. K50 with the 18-55WR kit lens. I must admit. This lens is OK. Here are the settings.<br>

F/5.6, 640 FPS, +7EV, Bright setting with max contrast and max sharpen all in body. Images as shot except for a quick resize in fastone.<br>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/18110120-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="450" /><br>

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<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/18110123-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="450" /><br>

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<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/18110122-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="450" /><br>

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<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/18110121-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="450" /><br>

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<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/18110119-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="450" /></p>

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