I'm not surprised the resolution difference is minimal and all but
disappears when you compare linear resolution. The place the K-5 shines
is in high ISO low light shooting as far as IQ is concerned. Studio
shooting with plenty of light you might as well stick with the K20D.
There are only really four reasons to get a K-5. Low light High ISO
shooting. Extremely quiet shutter, (supposedly quieter than the Leica
M9). Smaller lighter body, (the K20D hulks over the *ist-D), better
autofocus. Notice resolution doesn't figure into this. Images taken
with both the K20D should be near indistinguishable at any ISO under 800.
The total resolution difference is about 12% but linear resolution
which is what really counts in discerning fine detail is only about a 5%
difference. Since you're shooting in a studio and controlling the
lighting you would expect little or no improvement.
With the Nikon D800 you'll see almost a 40 percent improvement in linear
resolution. Now that is significant. But it still may not be
sufficient to resolve the details you wish to be able to record.
On 5/20/2012 12:08 PM, Bruce Walker wrote:
In the "Something to think about." thread I opined that the D800E was
likely to be in my upward growth path for more useable resolution in
the type of studio shooting I'm doing lately. A few kind PDMLers
suggested that the K-5 might give me what I'm looking for and sent me
some RAW and high-rez JPEGs to compare against. Thank you very much,
Paul, Larry and Boris!
I pulled all these images into Lightroom, made a gallery of them and
some of my best in-studio (untouched) raws, closely examined eyes and
eyebrows in full-body and head and shoulder portraits, and here's what
I concluded.
- at ISO 80 (K-5) and 100 (K-5& K20D), the noise (or complete lack
of) is indistinguishable between them.
- in all cases, in full-body shots eyebrows are indistinct (read:
fairly blurry smudges). No diff between K-5 and K20D.
- in head& shoulders portraits, eyes and brows are sharp and
well-resolved and it's very hard to say which is better, but I think
the K-5 may have a very slight edge over the K20D.
- the lenses being used make more difference than the two bodies. (No
great surprise here.) And Boris's Sigma (whatever it is) is *sweet!*
- I'll get more resolution improvement by simply using a tripod or
monopod to shoot with rather then upgrading to a K-5.
I also grabbed a few D800 head& shoulders portrait images from
DPreview and compared. It's pretty clear that there's a large
improvement in resolution, but it's also hard to see by how much. I'm
convinced that the D800 shots were all done with a tripod, whereas all
of mine and the loaners were hand-held. There is not an order of
magnitude difference in resolution. There were no full-body, f8 or
above, studio lighting D800 shots, so there was nothing for me to
compare there.
Final conclusion: for my work, K-5 isn't going to help much, if at
all. Jury is still out on if D800E would really shake my world either.
I need to investigate further -- probably rent one. I do have an
acquaintance with one; maybe I can borrow that.
The good news for me I don't feel so much disadvantaged by my
2008-vintage kit as I was beginning to. I'm still in the ballgame. :-)
--
Don't lose heart! They might want to cut it out, and they'll want to avoid a
lengthily search.
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