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Pentax K-30 Finally the camera I have been waiting for

PostPosted: Sat May 26, 2012 7:42 am
by Wastral
Pentax K-30 finally the camera I have been looking for!

Weather sealed. 2nd best dynamic range of any camera besides the Nikon D800 tested by DXO-mark even better than Canon 5d III! Has same sensor as K5(16Mpix). Takes AA batteries as well. Next time you are in a foreign country, no more worries or conversely can buy cheap rechargeable batteries! Can get top of the line amazing glass very cheaply as well due to all the old legacy lenses. It has image stabilization on the sensor itself so ALL legacy lenses will be stabilized!

100% optical viewfinder as well

1080p @ 30 fps isn't bad either. Same bit rate as everyone else, not RAW video.

All for $800?

Holy cow!

SIGN ME UP!

I think I just jizzed in my pants

Re: Pentax K-30 Finally the camera I have been waiting for

PostPosted: Sat May 26, 2012 11:55 am
by radson
double post - sorry

Re: Pentax K-30 Finally the camera I have been waiting for

PostPosted: Sat May 26, 2012 11:57 am
by radson
I have a soft spot for Pentax as well, since I had a K-10. One thing I found very frustrating though was the auto-focusing. The lens on my k10 would bloody whirr back and forth, almost as bad as my annual tequilla fuelled gyrations on the dance floor.

Re: Pentax K-30 Finally the camera I have been waiting for

PostPosted: Sat May 26, 2012 1:49 pm
by ExcitableBoy
Question? I gave up taking photos years ago because I found messing around with an SLR to be instrusive to climbing. It swung around my neck and tangled in the rack. Belaying, focusing, and shooting simultaneously was impossilbe. As a result it stayed in the pack while climbing the hard pitches and I only got shots around camp.

When Digital P&S became cheap enough I bought one and have taken many more photos. Easy to carry, easy to belay and shoot with one hand, and the optics and clarity are as good as I could do with any SLR. (My P&S has 10x optical Leica zoom lens) For those with he skills, are DSLRs that much better than quality P&Ss?

Re: Pentax K-30 Finally the camera I have been waiting for

PostPosted: Sat May 26, 2012 11:21 pm
by Wastral
Crud, just about to post and saw how long this was. Sorry! Anyways...

Well, it depends what you want to do with said pictures. Screen saver? Or, 20x60 accurate color high detail landscape picture?

I would also point out DSLR, and true climbing is fairly hard. I made a clip that attaches to my shoulder strap to keep it out of the rack. Rack slung on right shoulder so weight is mostly on left side, camera on right shoulder strap wieght right side. Double slings over this. All single slings are on my harness with screws, pins, and prussics.

The main reason I was excited about this camera is due to its weather sealing and its Super high dynamic range sensor. No P&S can come even close to its dynamic range. Also no more fogging up of the lens. Well, less fogging up of the lens anyways. Lets be a little realistic here. =) Obviously many small body large sensor cameras have come on the market in the last couple years and for most this is fine for them but they do not have weather sealing. The rough cameras would be what I was interested in if I was to buy a P&S. That way it could work everywhere. I do a bit of kayaking, boating, beach combing. Actually excitable, I know of several guys who used to climb but due to bad knees gave it up and went into kayaking/boating. You wouldn't catch me dead doing whitewater kayaking though. Known 2 people personally who have died doing that from a very small sample size.

P&S is fine for screen saver. P&S if done right is fine for large prints with Lots of photoshop tweaking and image stitching. Have an old stitched 17x 24 picture of Johanasburg compiled from 12 3 Mpix pictures. From 5 feet it looks fine, but get close and you can see huge amounts of noise that was generated due to pulling out the shadows. Tried same picture with APS-C camera and it faired much better but the fall foilage was not good that year and therefore stuck with the old noisy picture. What is sad is that until 2 years ago, said old 3mpix camera had the same dynamic range as all these new P&S. But in the end said cameras just don't have the dynamic range that their larger cousins have. They do have their benefits. In climbing with rock usually fairly close, a P&S with its small sensor will have a large depth of field that will be in focus and therefore rock near say the rope and gear all the way out to infinity will be in focus. p&S also are wonderful for macro shots. $$$ and you are more likely to have it handy. To each their own.

There is no one perfect camera out there. I own and use both DSLR and p&S. Heck I have taken 4x5 and 5x7 cameras to Buck Creek pass and Image lake before. =) Had light leakage in the 5x7 stuff@!#(*$*(R$%)$#)()(#@#(, but couple of the 4x5's turned out and have an ancient B&W high resolution picture of mean when I was 18 under liberty cap with perfect puffy clouds over head.

PS. I like to print VERY BIG and hang on the wall. Have Luna cirque from top of Challenger with me sitting on top with my feet dangling over 800 feet of air, Pickets to Silverstar from Luna, Mt. Goode from Black, Grasshopper/Black from Snowbrushy lakes in fall colors, Chimney Rock north face chimney with a perfect sunset behind Overcoat, Shucksan and picture lake(who doesn't), Ranier from Old Desolate showing Reflection lake? and the N. Face of ranier. hmm Reflection lake is on the south. Gah, mind blank on ... Stuart range from WIndy pass. Johanesburg in fall snow dusting and bright red vine maple foreground, Buck Mountain from ridge going up Berge, Clark Luhuna, from Lewis creek drainage, Dome, gunsight perfect smooth reflection in the lakes, Waddington range with all of the Franklin Glacier in all its glory from the shoulder of Jubilee, Waddington Range from shoulder of jubilee showing off its gigantic 200 foot wide crevasses and the gigantic toppled pillar bridge with our footprints over its top with our VERY TINY tent as a scale factor in perfect weather. Largest crevasse I have ever seen. Makes any crevasse I have seen on Ranier look small. Old picture from old P&S is a panorama from shoulder of Big Snow mountain covering between Thompson and Bears Breast in spring snow pack. Its an amazing picture.

On all of these pictures, they all suffer from a lack of dynamic range even with APS-C(ancient camera) that I was using. No way in Hell would I go to an even worse dynamic range via a modern P&S. Not to mention many P&S do not have a fast enough shutter speed for working on SNOW as its too damned bright and all you get is a gigantic white fuzz for a picture.

It all depends on what you want to do and NO camera is perfect in all situations. Anyone who claims otherwise you can write them off as an idiot and simply ignore.

Re: Pentax K-30 Finally the camera I have been waiting for

PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 4:24 am
by ScottyP
I just took a K7 to the summit of Denali. Well worth the effort. FYI long time Pentax user, K10, K1000, now shoot a lot of indoor sports with it (Gymnastics)

Re: Pentax K-30 Finally the camera I have been waiting for

PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 12:52 pm
by ExcitableBoy
I recall reading that Jim Nelson hauled a 4 x 5 cameral on his climbing trips because he liked the larger resolution. I doubt Washburn's arial photos with his large format camera will ever be beat. I personally do print some of my photos (8 1/2 x 11 on a regular home office color printer) from my Lumix P&S and they turn out well enough and I mostly publish photos online for trip reports. For me the user friendly nature of P&S trumps the improved resolution of larger cameras. Plus I'm a lously photographer so it likely wouldn't make much of a difference.

Re: Pentax K-30 Finally the camera I have been waiting for

PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 5:10 pm
by Baarb
My understanding is that a good sensor will make more of a difference to perceived image quality than resolution given that most things will be 10 mega pixels+ these days and assuming one isn't doing huge prints and all other things being equal. Things like CMOS vs. CCD, sensor size, dynamic range, noise levels, how these vary with ISO, bit depth, distortion etc. being factors with A to D conversion and other processes on top.

What the current gap between let's say adjustable (aperture, shutter speed, ISO) P+Ss and non-pro level D-SLRs I don't know, but having seen a Nikon D90 at work in 2009 vs. my own of the same thing it was like some kind of revelation or having cataracts removed. In cases where it was practical I'd rather have the D-SLR.

Re: Pentax K-30 Finally the camera I have been waiting for

PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 11:21 pm
by Wastral
UG, I just noticed that I didn't look at the specs close enough. While it has the same sensor as the k-5, the K-30 only has 12 bits and therefore it loses 2 stops of dynamic range to the K-5 and its 2nd best dynamic range other than the brand new Nikon D800.

GAH!

Dangit!

Well flush this camera out of the competition as far as I am concerned. Grr

Sorry to get folks hopes up. Didn't do my homework first.