On Sep 19, 2005, at 6:16 AM, Martin Trautmann wrote:
Yes - and it's one of the best documented and usable setups I know.
Didn't say it wasn't, although I generally find doing my own
comparisons to produce much different results for whatever reason.
I feel, this is very justified, too. Systems should be at a reasonable
default setup. ...
The defaults Pentax set work very well for whom they targeted them to
be useful.
Only few people have the knowledge to alter this default in
order to get the optimum out of it.
This is always the way things are.
which means
"Vivid" (highly saturated) color rendering, a high degree of
sharpening and contrast, sRGB colorspace.
This is documented within the manuals, as well as the effect of other
settings? ...
Agreed - but did Pentax offer any update or info which setup would
be suited
best for which operation?
The use the word "Bright", not "Vivid" ... sorry. Page 108 in the
*ist DS manual, the Color Tone option describes the setting.
I normally save exposures in RAW format.
dpreview stated here, that Pentax' RAW is huge, since it's
uncompressed.
This is true by now?
*ist DS PEF files are 9.7-10.8 Mbytes in size apiece. Canon 10D CRW
files are 6.5-7.8 Mbytes apiece. While the Pentax files are larger, I
see little reason to disparage them as being "huge".
The key is Natural color mode and Adobe RGB color space. Natural
color mode *ONLY* works in P, Tv, Av, and M exposure modes; Auto
Picture and all the program presets override the setting and go to
Vivid.
So you don't have any other choice there?
I feel this qualifies for taking 'vivid' for comparisons, as well
as for
critisizing the poorer default quality.
For the users for whom the program presets were created, those who
normally want to make modest sized prints directly out of the camera,
the settings are excellent: they do a better job than the program
presets on my Canon 10D, for instance. For enthusiasts who want to
get the most out of the camera, they use P, Tv, Av, M and B settings.
Looking at the settings for making excellent 4x6 prints out of the
camera and comparing them to the best that the camera can produce for
maximum adjustability and large print quality isn't a proper
comparison since the processing needs for those two goals are different.
Do you know any other comparison documented online, comparing the jpeg
quality of different cameras, which is of better quality than
dpreview looks like?
I don't personally search for all possible review sites. I look at
DPReview, Imaging-Resource, Steve's and a couple others as people
mention them. Normally, I just go to the store and look at a camera
I'm interested in myself, shoot my own test images, and make my
judgments from that.
Godfrey
