john bishop images | fine art photography | vancouver, bc

my camera is a Pentax K20D

  Adobe, camera RAW, DNG, image noise, K20D, lenses, Pentax

and she is a beaut!

The K20D is a high end prosumer 14.6 megapixel digital SLR with a ¾ size APS-C sensor. It combines an 11 point AF system with a 16 segment exposure meter that supports multi-pattern, centre-weighted and spot metering. It is capable of ISO 6400 (although that is quite noisy), and the shutter tops out at 1/4000 second. I am very impressed with this baby … I don’t think I’ll run out of grow room for quite a while.

There are three features that sold me.

1. The camera has professional grade dust-proof and water-resistant seals – 74 of them, and includes a Dust Removal (DR) system. I don’t have to take cover if it starts to rain or worry about dust or sand.
2. The image sensor is CMOS, not CCD which results in much longer battery life (lower current drain).
3. And, perhaps most importantly, I can use any of the Pentax K-mount lenses, including those made for older film cameras. There are some beautiful lenses out there that are no longer being made, so this really opens up a lot of possibilities.

The K20D uses non-image stabilizing lenses because stabilization occurs in the sensor, not in the lens. This very effective image stabilization is the same regardless of the len I use, giving me 2-3 stops more leeway. This makes the lenses lighter, mechanically simpler and should mean they will be cheaper than an equivalent Nikkon or Canon lens.

The K20D uses the Pentax Real IMage Engine (PRIME) image processor, rendering excellent colour. I use 12-bit Camera RAW mode, and have the option of using the Pentax format (PEF), or the new Adobe DNG standard. With RAW mode, I can also specify the colour space (sRGB or Adobe RGB), giving me much more control over how my images look in the final result.

There are two noise reduction modes: High ISO noise reduction and Slow Shutter Speed noise reduction. The K20D was engineered to let the user control noise in post-processing rather than ”clean” the image too heavily in-camera. That would make it impossible to recover any information removed by noise reducing software in the camera.

If you take into consideration the Adobe DNG format, the Adobe RBG colour space option, and the reduced noise processing, it becomes quite evident that Pentax aimed this at the prosumer who has good post-processing capabilities.

More on this later.

;-j