The Pentax K-1 and Dynamic Range
The Pentax K-1 is soon a four year old camera with a Sony sensor dating back to 2014 when it first appeared in the Sony a7r which was Sony’s first forray into the full frame segment with a mirrorless offering.
The Pentax’ engineers have done some marvels with that sensor and optimized it to such a degree that for instance the dynamic range the K-1 camera produces is nothing short of stellar as we will demonstrate through the following real world examples.
The following image is straight out of camera and my basic thought behind the image was to preserve some highlight details.
Anyhow, I decided to push the file to see what I could squeeze out of it.
I have a regular exposure shot for the shadows which I will use as a reference to examine to which degree pusing a file that much affects the colors. I have corrected the white balance on the underexposed file so that it matches the regular file.
As far as I can tell there is a minimum of color shift between the two files. There are absolutely no strong magenta color casts in the shadows of the underexposed file.
Next we will examine a close crop of the pushed file. No noise reduction is applied and sharpening is set to the Lightroom default.
I haven’t embarked on the project editing the scene above. It will involve both focus stacking and exposure blending.
But, how does the K-1 perform at high iso? Let us have a look at an iso 6400 image with the following settings: f2.8, 20 secs, 15mm.
After a few adjustments in Lightroom the image takes on this appearance:
A close crop with noise reduction set to +18
The Pentax engineers have programmed the Pentax K-1 in such a fashion that it is a tad nervous when it comes to the hightlights, that is, highlight recovery isn’t the camera’s strong side. However, one can safely exposure for the highlights and bring out tons of shadow detail in the post work without worrying about weird color casts in the shadows.
