where to view and print the images matching the quality of the K3

I have recently purchased the K3 its a wow! But I do not have the standard of printing equipment or monitor to transpose whats in the camera to either whilst preserving the quality. Is there a studio in London or a shared resource in London that Pentax users go to? Most local print shops are at 8 bit and the monitors no better than mine. Would appreciate some feed back.
Kpurist

You could use a professional printer like Loxley Colour

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Ken
“We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson -

Hi Ken

Thank you. It's trying to maintain the excellent K3 quality in the 'few' steps between the image in the camera and the printed output.A big studio which can work with 16 bit TIFF & offer paper variety I agree. But to keep the camera quality in the end image does it take Lightroom 5,Epson Stylus pro 3880, a high end monitor, calibration software etc? Hence my query. How do you and other Pentax Users get the quality in the end? Is there a studio where one could walk in with a memory stick & plug and play? John aka Kpurist

I think life is more straightforward, you will need to do some post work to your images usually in adjusting levels and sharpness but I have never bothered with monitor calibration and a high end lab like linkLoxley will charge less for a print than you can probably make at home with a high quality printer. Upload something to them and see if you like the result. I'm unaware of any digital playgrounds other than places like this

Perhaps there is something near you?

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Ken
“We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson -

There's nothing unique or different to the K3 in terms of any 'ideal' processing & printing workflow - I think you may be over-complicating it. I agree that a 16bit workflow is ideal (although not really for the actual printing). If you want to enable the best quality the K3 can output, then you'd be wanting to use RAW (16bit), but this means you will be doing your own processing .... unless you are going to pay someone to edit your pictures then you need to do the RAW conversion and processing stages yourself, and produce a pixel-based file for the printers .... usually JPEG, sometimes TIFF or PNG perhaps.

It does not sound like you have done much RAW processing, so until you have practiced and become proficient, then you might in fact get better 'quality' and consistency from the camera JPEGs, at least for immediately printable output. I'd suggest shooting RAW + JPEG for a while. Get the shots right on the camera with the custom controls, then play with some RAW editing and see if you can equal the JPEGs, or better them in some ways. Then you'll be getting a feel for the advantages of RAW and if its significant for your purposes.

In my view there's no doubt that working on a 16bit RAW and then also on a 16bit TIFF (created from that RAW) in photo editing software, gives you better finer control, in particular over fine contrast control, colour balancing and saturation - you get more 'play' with the controls in 16bit, and a smoother blend between both tonal levels and colour gradations, so its worth it for sure.

If you're just using a standard AdobeRGB input, converted to sRGB output (as in a max quality JPEG saved in Photoshop) then colours should be fine for a printer, and most online services will accept this by default ... so long as you keep the maximum image size (the pixel dimensions) then even from your 8bit JPEG the printer will be able to produce a high quality print - they'll (or the online software) will tell you how big you can go before you lose any quality. If you follow this process, then unless you ask for a print bigger than their suggested maximum, you will be getting the best out of the K3.

It only gets really more complicated if you're dealing with commercial printers for some publishing purpose and need to carry out RGB to CMYK conversions, matching printer profiles and all that stuff, which is beyond my experience and probably beyond the needs of most photographers.

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Ken This is appreciated. I walked into Kodak and for a 10"x 8" was charged £12 and for an A3 size (approx) £55, hence investigating the options. so I will give Loxley a go. I will check out studios near me - you never know. If it is possible I will post it.

Hi McGregni. Well spotted - I am as raw to processing as to the format but I am on the case. I am shooting both - it took about a minute for the K3 to save a burst of 12 shots of about 280 mg in both formats to two different cards and was ready to shoot before it completed the task!I am about to follow the guidance of you two members following a shoot this pm of swans having a quarrel. I worked in the past with the K7 then the K5 now the K3 - I thought I had it liked ....
Composure, patience, know your camera, avoid the tourists, all set, then with complete disregard for my settings the swans flew off the dull water into the bright sky- did you guys say post processing in raw format ?
I maintained a perfect smile in the face of the Canon users shaking their heads at their own gear.
This exchange has been helpful - I will pause before buying the kit, take the time to experiment with post processing and follow up on a lead that could give me the prints I want at a cost I can afford.
Now that's the Pentax forum. thank you.

DSCL is much cheaper than Loxley. I've been told if you looked at prints from both side by side you would be able to tell the difference.

However, if you were to look at them individually then you would have a much tougher job telling which was which.

I've won several camera club competitions using DSCL's 16x12 prints. Certainly good enough for me.

You can either allow them to auto correct or to print as is. Maybe get an image printed via both options and see which works for you.

At just over £1 for A3, the most expensive part is the £4.95 postage. So, I normally get them printed at a dozen a time.

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Alan


PPG
Flickr

Another vote for dscl here

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PPG Wedding photography Flickr
Concert photography

Currently on a Pentax hiatus until an FF Pentax is released

I use Loxley because it's local to me

I've just noticed a link missing from my earlier post which is supposed to read: "... other than places like this link

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Ken
“We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson -

Just had my first pictures back from DSCL also 16x12. Can vouch for the quality. Excellent.


I only paid £3.99 postage..

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6th Year Apprentice Pensioner

Another very happy DSCL customer here.

Only £1.50 for me 'cause I walk to the Didsbury shop down the road

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Flickr Stream

Another vote for DSCL. Auto correct option hasn't caused me any problems and their turnaround time is unfailingly good.

dscl website down