Hi!
As I wrote earlier, my friends from DC (well, actually it is MD, but I
like to think of this as DC) came for a visit and left. Among other
things I did back up photos for my friend and I was given an opportunity
to keep them for my examination. He has Sony A850 and an assortment of
lenses, notably the famous Minolta Beer Can, Tamron 17-35/2.8-4.0 and
Tamron 90/2.8 macro.
I have looked and processed and examined and pixel peeped few dozen
images and compared some of them side by side given that we were
shooting at the same time on the same location.
Few ideas crossed my mind:
1. Under bright day light Sony wins hands down. The exposure latitude
and color fidelity are ahead of those of K-7. The dynamic range
difference is evident once you start to play with curves and look into
shadow-to-light transitions.
2. Under low light both cameras struggle, though my friend does not
shoot above ISO 1600, while I shoot at ISO 3200. Given pixel count
advantage, I think it might be possible to downsize Sony images to take
care of some of the noise.
So, on the surface it looks like naturally one might want to upgrade to
either full frame or another Pentax camera with better sensor.
On the other hand, I had to look at 1:1 or even 3:1 (300% magnification)
and really side by side to see those differences. Of course playing with
exposure slider makes different impression immediately, but beside that
I really don't think that Pentax is so much behind. Let's say that the
difference is 10-15% although I do admit and do realize that these
percentage points are meaningless. What I am trying to say is that the
difference is relatively small.
I have some reservations about the aforementioned lenses' performance in
some of the situations, but that's a different matter.
Thankfully, I don't feel like I should or even must update from K-7 to
K-5 or to Canon 5DMk2 or whatever. I kind of used to feel that way
having seen Paul's comparison shots from his basement.
I also think that to say that camera A offers revolutionary improvements
in IQ dept over camera B (*) would be a serious overstatement or simply
a market speak.
Well, at least I had my chance to vent.
Boris
(*) As long as both A and B are of similar general class. It stands to
reason that 16x24 and 24x36 cameras are closer than it might have seemed
initially.
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