breakfastographer

Pentax KP better at high ISO than K-70, especially after DxO PRIME treatment

Imaging Resource have published RAW samples from the Pentax KP. Since I was able to cheat DxO 11 into processing an ISO 102,400 file, I thought I would post the results of performing PRIME noise reduction on a pair of these at ISO 102,400 – one from the KP and one from a K-70 – click on the image for a 1:1 view of the striking difference (KP on left, K-70 on right):

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Compare with the out-of-camera JPEG result (KP on left, default in-camera noise reduction on both):

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The out-of-camera JPEGs retain a little more detail, along with some more noise – probably a matter of personal taste, but I would go with processed raws here.

The Pentax KP features saturation compensation, to stop colours looking washed out at higher sensitivities. The in-camera processing deals with this gracefully, so that no luminance detail is lost (KP on left, K-70 on right, both with default in-camera noise reduction):

screen-shot-2017-02-12-at-06-54-49

The current version of DxO OpticsPro does not include a Pentax KP profile, and some loss of luminance detail could be seen in the PRIME processed image. As explained by a commenter over on Imaging Resource, this may be due to the KP using a different white point in its raw output compared to previous Pentax cameras. That being the case, it would be true to say that this will not be an issue once the DxO software is updated to support the Pentax KP.

Pentax cameras offer a lot of configurability of the output, and it’s therefore likely that the saturation compensation can be turned off or on as needed.

Overall, one can’t help but conclude that the KP is a huge advance over the K-70, a remarkable camera in its own right. And after initial reserve over the design of the camera, many now seem to be swayed by its rich features, performance and customisability.

Related coverage:

The KP article series:

11 comments

  4. Horrendous. The DPR babies are in an orgy over the fact that the ISO 800000 setting is available on the KP, not with the performance. The ones who are mildly concerned with photography are claiming it to be incredible. It would simply be nice if Pentax could just make their cameras actually focus properly. That tends to have an effect on image quality.

    Reply

    • It seems a lot of Pentax users are able to focus without a D5 or a 1DX m2. I didn’t realized how talented they should be before reading you.

      Reply

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