{"id":10679,"date":"2013-11-13T22:36:30","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T06:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=10679"},"modified":"2013-11-14T09:50:33","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T17:50:33","slug":"a-tail-of-3-sensors-pentax-k-3k-7k-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=10679","title":{"rendered":"A tale of 3 sensors Pentax K-3\/K-7\/K-01"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the acquisition of my latest camera the Pentax K-3 and the fact that I pre-ordered it and ended up being among the first people to receive one I felt I needed to do some testing to determine how far I can push it in terms of ISO performance. This camera is an upgrade to my Pentax K-7 DSLR at 14.6Mpixel but in between I also have my mirrorless K-01 with its 16Mpixel sensor. I thought I would share my findings and hope that you find them useful.<\/p>\n

I set up a simple scene of my Minolta Super A, a camera with a lot of details, against a black background with a constant fluorescent light. I used the Pentax SMC 100 Macro WR lens on all three cameras and set the aperture to f13 each time while allowing the camera to vary the exposure with a -1EV bias set to compensate for all the black. The images are all shot in DNG RAW and taken as screen captures from Lightroom where I have set all noise reduction, both chroma and luminance, to 0. A setting I would never use in normal operation but makes things equal and accentuates the differences<\/p>\n

Here are crops from the two DSLRs set to ISO 100 a sensor level where they all perform well with the K-3 producing an image with more detail.<\/p>\n

\"PentaxK3vsK7_100ISO\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But it’s the higher ISO’s that are going to start to show the differences between the sensors and their noise performance. Next I jump to 1600ISO where the 4-year-old K-7 starts to struggle but the newer sensors produce images that can easily have evidence of noise removed.<\/p>\n

\"PentaxK3vsK7_1600ISO\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"PentaxK3vsK01_1600ISO\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the above image comparing the K-01 and the K-3 at 1600 ISO you can see that the K-3 appears to have slightly more chroma noise however that is something that can be completely mitigated with very slight noise reduction.<\/p>\n

Next I will jump to 6400 ISO a place the K-7 has no business going to but where the K-01 and K-3 still are producing files that would clean up with some noise reduction.<\/p>\n

\"PentaxK3vsK7_6400ISO\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"PentaxK3vsK01_6400ISO\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Despite both being shot in RAW it seems that the K-01 is using some noise reduction within the camera so while the K-01 image has less noise it also has less detail even more so than the difference in resolutions affords.<\/p>\n

Here is the K-3 vs the K-3 at 12800 ISO with noise reduction in Lightroom 5. The K-01 file has less noise but also less detail I would choose the more detailed K-3 image if asked for a preference<\/p>\n

\"PentaxK3vsK01_12800ISO_NR\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Here is the K-3 at 6400ISO vs the K-7 at 800 ISO where the distance separating them is more than 3 stops. This is a major improvement for me as when I’ve shot performaces in the past I have needed to balance shutter speed aperture and ISO in a clumsy dance at the edge of the K-7’s performance envelope. Those extra stops can go into a faster shutter speed or smaller aperture or both. And the fact that the K-3 focuses in light the K-7 is blind in only adds more usability.<\/p>\n

\"PentaxK3_6400vsK7_800\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As for the K-3 vs the K-01 they have similar noise performance up to about 6400ISO after which point the K-3 starts to appear more noisy but the K-3 continues to retain more detail through out all ISO’s.<\/p>\n

In conclusion the K-3 is a major ISO performance upgrade over the K-7 and therefore also the K-20d by default but is less so over the 16Mpixel sensor in the K-01. This is of course only one aspect of the camera and hardly begins to touch on what a fantastic camera the K-3 is. For instance I used manual focus for this test for the simple reason that I wasn’t able to set the focus exactly where I wanted with the K-7 or K-01 but with the K-3 I was able to easily select the active point from any of the 27 placing it where I needed. This is such a major upgrade for macro photography it can not be over stated.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the acquisition of my latest camera the Pentax K-3 and the fact that I pre-ordered it and ended up being among the first people to receive one I felt I needed to do some testing to determine how far I can push it in terms of ISO performance. This camera is an upgrade to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-processing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10679"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10679"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10723,"href":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10679\/revisions\/10723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}