K-m First Pictures...

Hi Guys,
I have just purchased a K-m and the two lens kit. I have taken a variety of photos over the weekend. The K-m is a replacement for my trusty Lumix DMC-FZ7 a 6 megapixel bridge camera.
With the 18-55mm lens at 55mm the RAW images are noticably noisier than the Lumix taking an identical picture. Is the Leica lens on the Lumix so good and the kit lens so poor? My wife's Lumix TZ3 is 7 mps and the pictures taken of Ham House yesterday again in the same place are just about the same for sharpness. Colour is more red with the Pentax. Surely the RAW files at 10 mp should see both these cameras away easily. Am I doing something wrong?
I am quite an experienced photographer although this is my first DSLR.
Many Thanks,
Phil.

Hello Phil and welcome.

As you have noticed the default output from your K-m is quite different from your Panasonic, this is actually quite deliberate and shouldn't be a concern - let me explain.

With (nearly all) compact and bridge cameras the assumption from the manufacturer is that the photos will be used as-is, in other words the camera will have applied quite a bit of processing to the pictures that come out of it. With DSLR's the opposite is nearly always true; the manufacturer assuming that the photographer is an "enthusiast" who will wish to provide his own Post Processing (usually on a computer with Photoshop or similar software). By taking the latter route the photographer has far more control over the final picture - if you're an ex-film buff then it's like the difference between sending your films to Boots or having your own darkroom, one wins on convenience but the other wins on quality.

Panasonic have a reputation for being rather heavy-handed with their in-camera processing; noise reduction is applied over-zealously which leads to clean images where fine detail has been smeared away, saturation levels can be so high as to be painful to view (and wholly un-natural) and sharpening is so liberally applied that images contain halos around nearly all edges. Later Panasonics are actually much more subtle but your FZ7 was built at a time when they threw the kitchen sink at every shot to make it "consumer friendly" (Other manufacturers have been just as bad so I'm not picking on Panasonic here - I actually quite like their compacts for many reasons).

Your K-m, on the other hand, will apply virtually no in-camera post-processing by default. This means the output will tend to look poor in relation to a compact camera but it contains all the information required to produce a vastly superior final image. For example, once noise reduction has been applied it can't be undone again to get the detail back - that's lost forever. The level and finesse of NR that can be carried out on a PC is a world away from what can be done in-camera and similar principles apply for the saturation / contrast / sharpening / etc. The images that you're getting from your K-m simply reflect the fact that more work is required on your part (to go back to film analogies you've got an exposed film, now you need to develop it).

You'll find that if you shoot JPEGs and rack up the image sliders (contrast / sharpness / saturation / etc) on the K-m then it will output results much more like those you had from your FZ7, but by doing so you're really bypassing the advantages that DSLRs have.

Hope that clears things up a bit anyway

Hi Phill welcome to the forum.Welcome to the family Pentax.

Hi Phil,

Welcome to the forum and congratulations on your recent K-m purchase. It really is a fantastic little D-SLR capable of very impressive results

Hefty is spot on with his comments by the way. If you are shooting RAW the world is your Oyster

If you want to give Jpeg a go, from memory (my daughter has a K-m) I believe best results tend to be by using the 'Natural' colour setting and fine sharpness, minimum file compression and naturally lowest ISO.

All the above assumes you are not trying to compensate for under exposure. Also make sure shake reduction is set to on unless your are using a tripod.

Once you experiment a little I'm sure you will quickly be able to produce shots more in line with your expectations. Most of all have fun

Welcome to the Phil.

A warm welcome to you and don't let your first efforts put you off.

Can only echo the above comments really and once you get used to the fact that using RAW means exactly that. Its exactly what you have taken with no processing involved, that is down to you.
Not sure if you are using any editing software, but something like Photoshop Elements should fit the bill.

Last week there was a link on the forum to obtain Corel Paint Shop Pro X free, maybe give that try and see how it goes

Cheers
Rich

Hi and Welcome.

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Welcome to the forum.

Hi Guys,
Thanks for all the help! I'm very happy to be here and I think the K-m is a smashing little camera btw.
I will need some editing software then, which raises quite a few issues. Firstly am I best shooting in PEF or DNG format and also sRGB or Adobe RGB? I will probably buy Photoshop Elements which is Adobe of course, so maybe that answers my question! I did hear good reports on Apple Aperture but am not entirely convinced.
A friend of mine has iPhoto and his pictures from the K-m look very good in it unedited. I do have iPhoto but it won't open .DNG or the Pentax PEF files. It is an older version, so these file extensions must be fairly recent.
What is the free Pentax software like I got with the camera? I have only been veiwing pictures in it so far.
Can I use a 50mm f1.7 from an MX with the K-m. Will it meter or is manual all the way?
So many questions....
Thanks,
Phil.

:::
Would you explain please, what does your signature "I have a new prepective" mean?

Did you mean "preceptive" or "perspective" perhaps?
:::

Firstly PEF vs DNG: It's unlikely that you'll see any difference quality-wise between the two formats so that shouldn't be part of the decision process. The advantage of PEF is that the file sizes are smaller so you can fit more photos on a memory card / hard disc. The advantage of DNG is that it is a more "universal" format and can be read by a greater number of software packages (although all the ones you have mentioned and most of the big-name programmes will open PEF files too). Personally I use PEF but there's no wrong or right answer here.

Secondly sRGB vs Adobe RGB: Here I would suggest sticking to sRGB. Adobe RGB is technically superior as it has a larger gamut (can see more colours) but unless your equipment is also using the Adobe RGB colour space what you'll see will appear washed out. Web browsers only see in sRGB so if you use the Adobe space you'll be forever having to convert everything you put online. As a rule of thumb if you don't understand what a particular colour space is for then you don't need it - stick to sRGB as that's pretty much universal.

Thirdly which software: To a large degree this will come down to personal choice as the differences between the packages are mostly down to functionality and handling (most free applications like iPhoto will only work with JPEGs, hence your RAW files won't open in it - at the bare minimum you need a package to open and adjust RAW files). If you ask a dozen people on this forum which software they use I can pretty much guarantee you'll get a dozen different answers, but a couple of packages seem to get used more than most; one is Photoshop Elements and the other is Silkypix - I won't say which is better as followers of each tend to defend their choices with an almost religious-like zeal and I don't personally use either of them (or Aperture, which is popular among the Mac brigade).

Before we leave software a word about the bundled Pentax Photo Lab; most people hate it or don't even bother loading the discs - I think they're missing out. It doesn't have very many features compared to a commercial package but for me it does enough (you can adjust all the basic image parameters and apply crops and rotations, etc) and on a modern computer it runs quite fast. I actually quite like PPL and as you already have a copy you may as well give it a go before spending cash on one of the others - if you are one of the few who does get on with it then you've saved yourself a few quid, happy days!

Finally using the 50 on the K-m: Yes you can - see the other thread you started for more details on that one.

Good luck!

The Pentax Photo Browser has a use for me - every time I open it, it shows my current month's EPZ images, so I can review what I have and need to do at a glance.

It's all it is used for, but I do find it useful to have a dedicated browser for one purpose.

Re jpeg settings: Amateur Photographer in their review of the K-m recommended Bright, +1 saturation, -1 contrast, +0.3EV. This normally does the trick.

Hi Guys,
Thanks Hefty for your wisdom again. The latest iPhoto does open .PEFs but maybe it displays them as jpegs, which may account for them looking editied. I am going to look into the free bundled software. Is it Mac and PC or just PC?
Thanks,
Phil.