On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 09:41:58PM -0400, paul stenquist wrote: > This is an apples to oranges comparison. And it will remain that
Same subjects, same light, same lenses, same place, same ISO. > regardless of how much processing you do. If you want to compare the > cameras, do a controlled test. However, I would be surprised if the I will indeed need to do a controlled test. Prefereably using another K20 also to compare mine with. > K20 wasn't considerably better. Mine K20D was light years less noisy > than my *istD and a lot better at rendering color in AWB mode. My first K20 was much much better than my K100. On a given night at FNB, I might get 3-6 keepers with the K100, and when I got the K20 I easily got 20 of better quality than I got with the K100. So, it is my belief that the K20 should do much better than the K100, that there shouldn't be any comparison. But, I'm not seeing the tremendous difference in image quality that I expect. Frankly, I think that there is something wrong with this K20, that it isn't performing as well as it should. I see a lot more noise in all of the shots that I take with it than I expect. Unfortunately, that's not something that is easy to test. If it doesn't take photos, I can return it to Pentax and say "this camera is broken". But, there are no published specs for SNR (signal to noise ratio), nor any easy way to test and check that on a camera. It's definitely easier to use than my K100. I love the ergonomics, but I think that I should be seeing much better image quality at higher ISOs than I am. For that matter, even on my ISO 100 shots I see a lot more noise in the sky than I expect I should. I could have unrealistic expectations, a K20 may not actually perform any better than a K100, my K20 may not be performing well, or I may just be imagining things and it really does work a lot better than my K100. It's also possible that I am so much better with the K100, that I can make it perform better than the K20. But I wouldn't expect monopod braced shots, aperture priority, to make a huge difference. Granted, with some of the shots, I used a tripod with only one leg extended rather than a monopod, but I expect that the delta between the two of those to be minimal. I figured that shooting the same subjects under the same conditions would be a case where I should see a lot of much better quality shots from the K20 than with the K100, and that would convince me that I was, indeed, imagining the poor performance of the K20. -- The first step is learning to take great photos, the second step is learning to throw away ones that are merely good. Larry Colen [email protected] http://www.red4est.com/lrc -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
