My K5 Sample Shots from SRS Open Day

WARNING : IMAGE HEAVY!

Please bear in mind, I'm not an expert in evaluating cameras, and I was only interested in how the ergonomics of the K5 felt to me, and how it responded with some of my lenses, with respect to focus speed and ability to lock. I used three of my favourite lenses : DA* 50-135, DA 12-24, and A 50/1.7.

Settings were AV Mode, +0 EV, Centre-Spot Focus and Default metering.

Shots with a (C) on the corner have been through my default Lightroom import of +40 Fill Light but no other tweaks and are uncropped & shrunk to 800 pixels. RAW conversion done by Irfanview - no support in Lightroom yet for K5.


Big thanks to SRS for letting me play about and put my cards & lenses on.


DA* 50-135 @50mm ISO 800 F2.8 1/250sec





A50 1/7 ISO 800 F.1.7 1/90sec (Manual Focus...)




DA 12-24

ISO 100 @14mm :


ISO 400 @19mm :


ISO 800 @24mm :


ISO 1600 @14mm :




645D vs K5 :

645D @55mm F.2.8 1/40sec ISO 200 +0.3EV



K5 DA*50-135 @63mm F.5.6 1/45sec ISO 800 +0.0EV




And now the monster, this was looking down at a dark bit of the counter, and is through glass - blur shows where the SR gave up! Centre-ish crop to show the same area.

1:1 Pixels, 100% JPG Quality, No Post-Processing!

DA*50-135 @63mm F.2.8 ISO 25600 -> 100





For any Pixel-Peepers or anyone who wants to see full-size versions :
LINK TO VERY LARGE TIFF AND RAW FILES - but don't rush, its going to be uploading for hours...!

thanks very much for taking the effort to do this.

i was initially a bit disappointed by the noise results, even though they do look quite good.

then i realised that you were pointing it at a dark area, so the noise is being exaggerated in all those shots. i'm going to peep at the full versions to see whether it's worth upgrading to from my k7.

thanks for the effort again—much appreciated.

thanks!

Yes the noise is exaggerated... I'm still uploading shots, the sequence you are after is IMGP3520 -> 3528, which will be another few hours to make it up...

Finished uploading shots (for now). Try not to break my website by posting links all over the world

As Gillbod said earlier, many thanks for your efforts posting these Flossie... much appreciated.

Well thankyou very much Flossie!.....Nice to see I dont have to upgrade from my K20D

I'd agree with that. Bear in mind if the pictures were taken more normally, processed in Lightroom, and not blown-up 1:1, they would look significantly better.

I'd say that you can happily shoot all day at 800/1600 ISO indoors without any PP work, and very comfortably at 3200/6400 ISO (e.g. concerts) with some attention. For an APS camera, you won't get better for low-light shooting (it definatly focused-better than the Kx)

Much thanks for this flossie.

Even though I'm eager to have a look at the RAWs I'll download them in the early hours to avoid clogging your bandwidth at peak times.

Thanks for showing the early K-5 shots, but i'm actually expecting from a real photogs/enthusiast who knew how to handle things even how to show those HIGH ISO PICTURES. Because there is no such DSLR camera that uses very high iso and shoot in dark can produce clean 100% CROP picture. Could you at least show us the whole picture of those high iso, specially those 6400, 12800 and 25600. Even in 800 x 600 so the viewer can decide if those HIGH ISO SHOTS are useable or not.

Altho the new pentax K-5 has an extended limit about amount of low light it can accept to produce a usable image but exaggerating it to a more darker subject, the result may not please you unless you look for some effects in a black and white kinda..

darrel

See the OP

For some odd reason I can't open the PEF files in Lightroom 3.2

Id that because LR can't recognise PEF files or because it doesn't recognise the K-5 ??


I always shoot DNG

Smeggy - you can't open PEFs from the K5 in Lightroom yet. It needs an update to do that, which isn't yet out. Every camera produces different PEFs and software needs an update to read it. Same with other manufacturers RAW files btw. NEFs from the D7000 will be equally unreadable.

Since Lightroom is pretty new, recently updated in fact, and all these manufacturers knew they were bringing out new cameras it would have been nice if they'd shared with Adobe and all the other RAW converters so they were set up and ready to go. But that requires too much co-operation of course.

Smeggy - the only program that I could get to decode the PEF files was Irfanview (see the SRS thread).


As said in the OP, you can download full-size files from here.

Forum rules restrict me to 800-pixels wide, but here you go for the uncropped, shrunk, versions, run through Lightroom at default settings (apart from my standard +40 Fill Light).

Please bear in mind I was very limited in what I could achieve in a short demo inside a shop. This was a dark under-counter area, lit only by reflected ambient light from a doorway and the shop. If I had one for a day at work I'd produce much more meaningful tests!

ISO 25600 -> ISO 100

Smeggy, use Faststone viewer to open it and view. Its simple, fast and free