Hamish Gill
Tech Support (and Marketing)
The Pentax Q has intrigued me since its release! If you haven't ever held one one will know just how small it is, the comparative pictures when shown next to other CSC camreas dont do its diminutive size any justice, it really is very small indeed! The only thing that lets this down is the projection of the lenses from the body ... I was moaning about it to the chap in LCE yesterday saying if only they had made a "pancake" lens for it, but then when you hold the lens next to a pancake lens its no bigger... its just the size of the camera fools you into thinking it is!
The next concern for the camera is its sensor size ... which although bigger than most compact cameras is smaller than the other csc cameras out there!
So what effect does this sensor has on image quality?
Well it seems to me that it does make it fractionally better than most compacts, but not much... so what the point in the camera? ... Its interchangeable lenses of course!
The lens that was on the camera when I was playing with it was the 8.5mm f/1.9 lens (43mm equiv)... one of the shorter of the lenses. They also do a 5-15mm (28-83mm) a fish eye and a couple of "toy" lenses.
I shot a few DNG files on to a memory card I had in my pocket and thought i would share them with you... I know this is a little out of character, but i felt the results interesting enough to share!
Focussed on the tree shot at f3.2 1/100th iso 125
IMGP0024 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
I shot in DNG and JPEG and noticed the jpeg was very different ... very corrected
This is the same shot but instead of it being corrected by the camera its corrected in lightroom (how i would do it, the camera does the same job as far as i can see)
IMGP0024-2 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
as you can see there is quite a marked level correction going on here
One thing i had trouble dealing with was the purple fringing on the tree, no amount of lightroom correction could fix that it seemed! thats not to say it wouldn't be fixable, im lead to believe dxo is better at that sort of thing ...
this is the same shot cropped on the tree, unsharpened
IMGP0024-3 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
and sharpened in LR with amount set to 100
IMGP0024-4 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
about what i would expect from a decent compact ... not much more ...
Low light results were slightly more interesting though, I thought this a pretty good response from a copact at 3200 iso (f3.2 1/500th)
IMGP0020 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
cropped
IMGP0020-3 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
... I very short test of a camera, I admit...
But it's left me satisfied that I could at least know vaguely what to expect from this camera were i to use one day to day!
Pros - Interchangeable lenses - some fun to be had with toy lenses as well as the prime I tried being a perfect "normal" FOV and being a pretty fast 1.9... It's definitely a compact camera!
Cons - It's definitely a compact camera!
It was released at a somewhat shocking £499, but now (in lce at least) is available for £299 with the 1.9 prime... would I buy one ... hmm ... for £200 I might ... for something I could chuck in my pocket
I have also uploaded these DNGs to Media Fire for download ... feel free to download and play, but be quick as media fire downloads expire i think
pentaxQ.zip
The next concern for the camera is its sensor size ... which although bigger than most compact cameras is smaller than the other csc cameras out there!
So what effect does this sensor has on image quality?
Well it seems to me that it does make it fractionally better than most compacts, but not much... so what the point in the camera? ... Its interchangeable lenses of course!
The lens that was on the camera when I was playing with it was the 8.5mm f/1.9 lens (43mm equiv)... one of the shorter of the lenses. They also do a 5-15mm (28-83mm) a fish eye and a couple of "toy" lenses.
I shot a few DNG files on to a memory card I had in my pocket and thought i would share them with you... I know this is a little out of character, but i felt the results interesting enough to share!
Focussed on the tree shot at f3.2 1/100th iso 125
IMGP0024 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
I shot in DNG and JPEG and noticed the jpeg was very different ... very corrected
This is the same shot but instead of it being corrected by the camera its corrected in lightroom (how i would do it, the camera does the same job as far as i can see)
IMGP0024-2 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
as you can see there is quite a marked level correction going on here
One thing i had trouble dealing with was the purple fringing on the tree, no amount of lightroom correction could fix that it seemed! thats not to say it wouldn't be fixable, im lead to believe dxo is better at that sort of thing ...
this is the same shot cropped on the tree, unsharpened
IMGP0024-3 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
and sharpened in LR with amount set to 100
IMGP0024-4 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
about what i would expect from a decent compact ... not much more ...
Low light results were slightly more interesting though, I thought this a pretty good response from a copact at 3200 iso (f3.2 1/500th)
IMGP0020 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
cropped
IMGP0020-3 by Hamish.Gill, on Flickr
... I very short test of a camera, I admit...
But it's left me satisfied that I could at least know vaguely what to expect from this camera were i to use one day to day!
Pros - Interchangeable lenses - some fun to be had with toy lenses as well as the prime I tried being a perfect "normal" FOV and being a pretty fast 1.9... It's definitely a compact camera!
Cons - It's definitely a compact camera!
It was released at a somewhat shocking £499, but now (in lce at least) is available for £299 with the 1.9 prime... would I buy one ... hmm ... for £200 I might ... for something I could chuck in my pocket
I have also uploaded these DNGs to Media Fire for download ... feel free to download and play, but be quick as media fire downloads expire i think
pentaxQ.zip
