New to Pentax - K-7 & FA43

There is a thread in Pentaxforums by Adam on the settings if you have a K7. I had a K7 and used the settings and I could take photos up to ISO 3200 without that much noise.

I then upgraded to a K5 and now use a K30.

Who would review a camera they've never used?



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Do you have a link?

Cough, splutter. I know we all have different tolerance to noise but 3200? If you mean it is possible to post-process 3200 with some heavy handed noise reduction and get it sort of acceptable albeit with detail loss I'll go along with that - but if you mean straight 3200 shots before noise reduction you have a different camera to me and I'll ask for an example shot to see what I'm missing!

That would be utter madness !

If anyone's still interested in listening, the supplied software with the K7 (Pentax Digital Camera Utility), a simplified form of Silkypix which includes software implementation of the 'in-camera' image controls, is very useful and provides excellent results, It is not the most well designed interface, true, but that's because it doesn't aim to be a generic RAW converter - most of its editing panels mimic the camera controls.

LR clearly offers more - its a different package, but the learning curve is greater also. There is information about LR widely available, and help on using the Pentax software is here on this forum.

Managed to find it:
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-dslr-discussion/106600-k-7-high-iso-s...

I think I am more tolerant with noise and will try to dig thru my collection for a sample with ISO 3200.

Cheers, thanks for that

I have used the software and you are being a jerk. That is rather familiar to me as well.

I can never understand users not liking Silkypix (the full version, Developer Studio Pro) because of the interface - it's all in there, there's just a few words used that are different to the average. 'Tastes' are just user preferences or defaults, 'Development' is RAW conversion to jpg.

Having said that, I use Adobe Camera Raw these days as the highlight controller is amazing in what blown out details can be recovered.

As for Lightroom, I tried LR4 and thought it was awful, dog slow, I'd much rather use PhotoShop CS6 and ACR.

The Silkypix product is well respected - I've seen a number of favourable writeups. Our own MattMatic has provided a guide to using it on this forum for some time now.

It is tempting to assume that when they wrote the English version they might have used a fairly cheap dictionary - anyone ever heard of 'Marginal Luminance Correction?' (its vignetting!). I've actually adopted the term 'development' though, to refer to RAW conversion - I like the comparison to the 'development' of film, which makes some sense.

But the confusion about the Pentax Digital Camera Utility & its relationship to Silkypix seems to rage on. From what I can deduce from using them both, PDCU is primarily designed to provide software implementation of most of the 'on-camera' settings (like the Custom Image settings & shadow corrections). To achieve this the makers seem to have transferred related editing tools and controls over from Silkypix - some are very similar such as the Colour Fine Tune and Highlight Adjustment panels. But others just duplicate the on-camera controls.

This has lead to user bewilderment it seems - the layout is not like any other RAW software. I use it in much the same manner as if I were setting up my camera before the shot - this order of doing things works well.

I remember that thread as well. It was I think concerned about setting 'clever' camera options for .jpeg shooting that yielded 1600 like performance when shooting at 3200, trouble is that you were effectively shooting at 1600 when doing so and didn't really gain.

Best bet I think is to switch off the clever dynamic range settings, shoot in raw and just use the ISO speed you want. To repeat, I'm not saying that 3200 is unusable just that it is noisy to the extent that getting rid of the noise will start to lose detail. Show me a nice smooth relatively noise free 3200 shot without noise reduction and I'll eat my words.

Sorry, Mr Parmar, but, given your record, and your conclusions, I find your statement to lack credibility.

For those who don't know Mr P, he is the one who wrote a review of a camera he had never even held in his hands. But he pretended he knew all about it.

From memory, it was the K5. But I could be mistaken. And I think he removed the review from his website when he was rumbled.

Lest I sound critical of Mr P, let me provide some balance. He has a truly prodigious imagination, and we must all hope he finds ways to channel it into something worthwhile.

G

It's popular these days, reviewing things that the reviewer has never held!

My First Pentax Forum™

Tell me about it - those DNGs kept slipping through my fingers !