I respectfully disagree, J.C. It depends on the size of the images to be
printed. I don't print bigger than A3. For that purpose A850 is actually
an overkill.
Boris
On 1/11/2011 8:12 PM, J.C. O'Connell wrote:
excepting resolution is a big exception...
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-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of paul
stenquist
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 1:05 PM
To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List
Subject: Re: Sony A850 vs Pentax K-7 or Boris examines lots of photos
Good post. I suspect that the K-5 can outperform the A850 in all but pixel
count. But that's just a guess based on sensor tests and a wedding
photographer friend's comments regarding his A850. Paul On Jan 11, 2011, at
7:07 AM, Boris Liberman wrote:
Hi!
As I wrote earlier, my friends from DC (well, actually it is MD, but I
like to think of this as DC) came for a visit and left. Among other
things I did back up photos for my friend and I was given an
opportunity to keep them for my examination. He has Sony A850 and an
assortment of lenses, notably the famous Minolta Beer Can, Tamron
17-35/2.8-4.0 and Tamron 90/2.8 macro.
I have looked and processed and examined and pixel peeped few dozen
images and compared some of them side by side given that we were
shooting at the same time on the same location.
Few ideas crossed my mind:
1. Under bright day light Sony wins hands down. The exposure latitude
and color fidelity are ahead of those of K-7. The dynamic range
difference is evident once you start to play with curves and look into
shadow-to-light transitions.
2. Under low light both cameras struggle, though my friend does not
shoot above ISO 1600, while I shoot at ISO 3200. Given pixel count
advantage, I think it might be possible to downsize Sony images to
take care of some of the noise.
So, on the surface it looks like naturally one might want to upgrade
to either full frame or another Pentax camera with better sensor.
On the other hand, I had to look at 1:1 or even 3:1 (300%
magnification) and really side by side to see those differences. Of
course playing with exposure slider makes different impression
immediately, but beside that I really don't think that Pentax is so
much behind. Let's say that the difference is 10-15% although I do
admit and do realize that these percentage points are meaningless.
What I am trying to say is that the difference is relatively small.
I have some reservations about the aforementioned lenses' performance
in some of the situations, but that's a different matter.
Thankfully, I don't feel like I should or even must update from K-7 to
K-5 or to Canon 5DMk2 or whatever. I kind of used to feel that way
having seen Paul's comparison shots from his basement.
I also think that to say that camera A offers revolutionary
improvements in IQ dept over camera B (*) would be a serious
overstatement or simply a market speak.
Well, at least I had my chance to vent.
Boris
(*) As long as both A and B are of similar general class. It stands to
reason that 16x24 and 24x36 cameras are closer than it might have
seemed initially.
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