Got my K20D - a few settings questions

Just working my way through the settings on my K20D and would appreciate some feedback on a question or two.

1. In HIGH ISO NOISE REDUCTION what's the best setting to choose (Off,weakest,weak,strong)?

2. What settings are best for incamera JPEG (sharpness,contrast etc)?

3. Is "D-range" best set to on or off?

thanks

Simon

Hi Simon,

I did some test shots when I first got K20D and decided that strong was a bit too, well, strong. For me, weak was a good compromise between noise reduction and detail retention, but some others prefer the weakest setting. I guess try both and see how it does....

I left all the modes as RAW apart from USER, which I set to best JPEG, natural mode with fine sharpening up one notch, and contrast down one in the hope that it may preserve a few more highlights. For the kind of shots I've seen on your fantastic website, however, I think I may be tempted to start from the bright mode and then perhaps just knock saturation and contrast down a notch instead.

I know that many people will disagree, but I'm in the camp that says once you've tuned them to taste, it's possible to get JPEGs from the K20D that are so good they make RAW unnecessary except for more difficult lighting conditions.

I'm also in the camp that says the DR enhancement on K20D comes with a large price in terms of noise and it would be better instead to shoot RAW, bracket and resign yourself to some PP.

Hope this helps - enjoy the new camera. Look forward to seeing some results in a publication near me sometime in the future....

I use the highest quality JPEGs, which are fine for all my purposes. Sharpness is set to +1 as is contrast. The Bright setting then delivers suitably snappy images.

Thanks,

For now I've set the jpg to "Bright", turned off the D Range & set Noise reduction to weakest - I'll see how this goes.

General impressions so far after a few non-descript ramdom shots:

Sensor definitely seems to provide more detail than the GX10, struck me immediately.

Focus seems quicker than GX10

native image size is perfect for my needs, means I will rarely need to up-res any shots in Photoshop

On the negative side I'd say the ergonomics of the K20D body are not as good as the GX10, doesn't feel quite as comfortable - menu system also looks like something from the 1970s in comparision too

Looking forward to giving it a serious tryout

Simon

This is a very useful thread for those just getting acquainted with the K20 as I am, so the more contributions along these lines the better. This is the sort of stuff you can't really glean from a manual. Already the first couple of answers have been very useful.

I started taking JPEGs with my new toy (K20d)and found I was getting dark pictures with a cast and underexposed. Although they could be brightened and cleaned up in PP by any number of programs I felt disappointed that I might have to always do this or somehow override the camera exposure with EV adjustment. Then someone in another thread started talking about shooting raw all the time and then converting to JPEG because all the data is retained...

I have now been playing with RAW and converting the shot in the camera straight after and of course you can then apply white balance and other 'corrections' to suit and not only is this working fine it is also very easy, regardless of the 'old' K lenses I have been using.

So am I right in thinking that what I perceived as 'underexposure' in the K20d is nonsense and an 'almost meaningless' term since you can increase the brightness, white balance, and any number of other parameters on the fly and as long as it is not wildly over exposed or wildly under or out of focus, then you have it all there to output as a clean, well lit, well exposed JPEG right out of the camera from the RAW file?

There was me trying to treat it like a film camera...

Bodyheat

Although shooting raw gives you much more latitude in pp, you should always strive to get the exposure spot-on at capture. When you increase the exposure in raw processing you are adding noise to the image, and I am sure you have already discovered that you cannot regain detail in any blown highlights by decreasing exposure.

You will also find that raw processing is best done at your computer when you can see the whole image in detail.

Of course I understand this, but the ones I uploaded to my PC to make sure were really fine, and yes it seems that on balance it is better slightly under than over since once blown there is nothing to recover

If the K20D proves to be the same as my previous GX10 it's likely that I'll be dialling in +0.7EV pretty much permanently, this corrects for the "characteristic" underexpose programmed by Pentax/Samsung. The majority of detail in an image is to the right of the histogram (highlights) so underexposing risks losing some of this, although recovery of shadow detail is possible it tends to bring with it unwelcome shadow noise.. the difference between the GX10 & K20D regarding sensor noise however may mean it's not quite such an issue...I'm sure a more experienced user of the K20D can clarify this for us?

simon

Maybe I have been misinformed as I believed the detail was in the shadows and overexposing would effectively have the same problem as it would with slide film with blown highlights etc. I always used to underexpose transparencies (positives) and overexpose B&W (negatives) as this was in each case the best way to retain the most information for development and printing.

Surely if it is slightly over exposed and you have blown out some white areas there is nothing to recover, no detail left? If it is slightly under then the detail is retained and you can 'brighten' the shot or adjust white balance to get it looking more normal? Or have I got this wrong?

What you say obviously makes sense, maybe I didn't explain it well enough...here's an article that does a better job than me, it's a little old now but the principal is the same - improvements in sensors and the noise they produce probably make this slightly less important but I think the general principle still applies..

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

Simon

1. Off if you would prefer to apply any NR in post processing. This setting only affects JPEGs.

2. Medium settings if you will often do some PP, otherwise +1 for Sharpness. Again these settings are for JPEG only.

3. Off normally, and off when you want ISO 100 (because 100 isn't available otherwise). A similar effect is possible with RAW by under exposing and pushing in post processing.