Shot with the Sony F717, this was my first night photograph.
I took my very first night images using a Sony F717. The pictures were of the northern lights in western Massachusetts. It wasn’t until a few years later that I decided to seriously immerse myself in night photography. The camera that started me down that path was a Canon Rebel XT, quickly followed by a well loved Canon 40D and eventually a brand new Canon 7D. After that was stolen, I purchased a second 7D and spent a few years happily shooting with that until I upgraded to my first full frame camera, the Canon 6D. This has been my primary shooter since September of 2013, the older 7D serving as my “back up” camera. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am a Canon shooter. Over the years, I’ve amassed several lenses, a bunch of batteries, shutter release cables and so on. Which is why I naturally moved to a Pentax K1.
Yes, you read that correctly.
This blog is about why I chose to put my Canon gear into storage and choose the Pentax K1 over competitors like Nikon and Sony.
The Obvious Question: Why Not the 6D Mark II?
Moving from one camera ecosystem to another is daunting. I really didn’t want to do it. In a perfect world, I’d have moved to the 6D Mark II. This was something I had expected to do sometime before my next big trip out west. It would be a natural upgrade, I had all the glass and accessories I needed and the body is essentially identical to the Mark I. I’d be up and running with it in no time flat. However, Canon’s anticipated replacement for my aging 6D didn’t seem to raise the bar much on what I was already using. The Mark II has been universally panned as an upgrade for Canon’s existing 6D users and was even recently voted “Worst Camera of 2017” by
Unfortunately, the 6D MKII was not the upgrade people were hoping for.
the folks over at Fstoppers and essentially destroyed in an earlier article from Photographybay entitled “Canon’s 6D Mark II Just Plain Sucks.” The new camera adds not much more than a swivel screen and slightly better resolution on a sensor whose dynamic range is at or below the older full frame model and decidedly behind recent crop sensor offerings. For someone looking to move to their first full frame Canon body to replace their Rebel, it’s probably a better deal to just go with an older 6D. I’d have no qualms about recommending it to anyone and at around $1000 used, it’s a good value.
The news about the 6D Mark II was a huge disappointment to me considering how happy I had been with the original model and my expectations for the next. Regardless, newer cameras were out there and despite having a perfectly functioning 6D, I was missing out on some of the newer technology. Higher resolution sensors were capturing as much if not more light at higher ISO values and pushing well beyond the 6D’s dynamic range abilities. Unfortunately, most of these new cameras were not Canons.
There seems to be a general sense that Canon has fallen behind competitors like Nikon and Sony in this regard and that they continue to put out cameras with minor upgrades at high price points. Based on my research, I tend to agree. I hope they turn it around at some point, which is why I am keeping all of my Canon glass, for now. This is not to say that Canon has a line of poor cameras that no one should purchase. In my opinion, there are just better options and values out there right now. I suspect they’ll figure it out eventually but that’s not something that helps me today. Ok, enough about Canon.
So why not Sony or Nikon? (If this isn’t important to you, skip to “Why Pentax”)
First off, let me say that the reasons listed below are not to outline why I think you shouldn’t own either of them. Just like shopping for a car, there were things I came across in my research that moved me in another direction. It’s no different than choosing a Toyota over a Ford or a Chevy over a Honda. They all essentially do the same thing but how they get you there is personal preference. What may be important to you, may not be important to me.
Why Not Nikon?
I know people love their Nikons. The greater majority of my night photography friends shoot with Nikon and are quite pleased with them. Their images are fantastic and there have been many times that I considered moving to Nikon and adapting my existing Canon glass. It really came down to two simple reasons.
The first is the menu system and general control layout. People who attend my workshops often struggle to do even the simplest of things because of what appears to be an unnecessarily complex control infrastructure. When trying to assist them, I regularly found that something I was used to doing with a single button press on my Canon often required multiple steps on a Nikon via button combinations or deeply buried menu items. Yes, I understand that if you’re a Nikon shooter reading this you are probably shaking your head at me. French is an easy language to speak when you’re from France. Nikon’s just not a language I know and it’s not all that intuitive either. I don’t want to spend a lot of time messing around with buttons and wheels and hard to find menu items in the dark. I’m not a “gear head” photographer who is trying to impress myself or others by performing complicated technical tasks in order to take a picture. I just want to take the picture. This is where my 6D really shines. It probably has the least amount of physical buttons of any camera I’ve owned but they all do what I need with little requirement to access the menu.
Image from Petapixel. http://ift.tt/2urdrAQ
Second: Recalls. Both the much heralded D750 and D810 both suffered from recalls for various reasons. Whether it’s the 750’s three recalls for shutter issues or the D810 initial white dot problem, it doesn’t leave me with a lot of confidence. If you’ve not had any issues with yours, that’s great and I hope your good luck continues. They seem like generally well-built cameras capable of amazing images but I can’t invest several thousand dollars in a new system when taking into consideration these two reasons.
Why Not Sony?
This one is much simpler. I’ve always been of the mindset that the Sony A7 series of cameras are really meant for videographers who sometimes take pictures. Many of the people I follow on sites like Youtube are using them to capture incredible HD video, especially in low light situations. However, they are also heavily menu driven and their build quality is not something I would necessarily entrust to get me through a week of high desert shooting with all that sand blowing around. They look and feel somewhat “boutiquey.” No GPS for geotagging? These GPS chips are so cheap now that the decision to leave them out by a major manufacturer is nonsensical. Cell phones priced at $100 have these chips as does your ten year old iPhone. I find this feature extremely useful and it was in my top three asks of any new camera. No, it wasn’t a make or break decision on that front, but there are several cameras currently equipped with GPS chips.
But all that aside, the real “goat getter” for me was this star-eater issue that has been blowing up the internet for the last year. Ian Norman of Lonely Speck wrote a rather direct and informative post about this issue and included examples as well as an open letter to Sony outlining his concerns. In short, a noise reduction algorithm kicks in, confuses stars for noise and essentially cancels them out. This seems to be the result of a firmware update last year and has plagued Sony since. One major site claimed
From Lonely Speck’s Ian Norman,
that the problem had been fixed with the recent released A7RIII. Another site did some testing and said it wasn’t. Who knows? Either way, what company puts out a firmware update that creates this problem in the first place? Someone was asleep here whether it was on the development side or the testing side but either way(, I’m not interested in owning a camera that could have a feature or ability crippled in a firmware update to say nothing about it not being appropriately addressed later. This is important to me. If Sony is catering to videographers and day shooters at the expense of the night photography community, obviously this is not the camera for me. Regardless, I am confident that the greater majority of people who use the camera for anything other than astro-landscape photography are and will continue to be very happy with any of the Sony A7 series units. If I shot any video, I would certainly consider this camera for that purpose. I don’t shoot video and I do sometimes shoot astro-landscape images.
Why Pentax?
About a year ago, a photographer friend told me about the camera he had bought but ultimately returned. (Not off to a good start, are we?) The reason for the return was a matter of a slow frame rate but he was excited about some of the features it had and he knew that I would be too. He thought the camera had been designed for night photographers. We don’t worry so much about frame rate so, yes, that was not a concern. This is when I learned of the existence of the K1 and started down a long, multi-month path of research and reading. I made a trip to BH Photo in New York City and Hunts Photo in Providence, Rhode Island. Each time I got my hands on a demo unit, I could easily imagine making the K1 my primary camera.
Important Tech
The Pentax K1 uses the same Sony sensor featured in the Nikon D810 but thanks to Pentax’s tweaking of the sensor and mating it with their own software, the results are improved dynamic range and low light performance. I made several visits to DPReview’s website and pitted the K1 against the Nikon D810, D850, D750 and Canon 5D MK IV paying special attention to dynamic range at low ISO and apparent noise at higher ISO levels between 3200 and 6400. With the Pentax’s Pixel Shift function enabled, it appeared to outperform all of them in both dynamic range and high ISO shooting. Without Pixel Shift, it appeared to beat the D810, D750 and the 5D Mark IV and did pretty good at keeping up with the D850 in both respects despite being priced at nearly $1300 less. The value and performance started to feel like a no brainer. I even asked co-workers to look at the comparisons and tell me which result they thought looked better. Time and time again, it was the K1.
Where the 6D begins to show its age is in its dynamic range ability. It did well getting me a good sky but bumping up shadows or under exposed areas in an image was tough. The evidence of this is often seen in the form of purple banding that will begin to appear in the images as the files reach their dynamic range limit (and this seems to happen pretty quickly.) Canon sensors all have this “banding” issue to some degree. Evaluating evidence online in which the Pentax K1 was similarly pushed revealed much-improved handling in the same circumstance.
At this point, I was convinced the K1’s sensor was going to meet my expectations and provide comparable abilities to higher priced competitors. However, there was a lot more underneath the hood that was making this decision easier and easier.
Extended Features
User Presets
The movable/tilt screen, while available on many new cameras, had been a foreign concept to me up to this point. No more lying on the ground to check a low shot composition. Yes, I am excited over a feature that has been available on other cameras for a few years now.
Astrotracer
Astrolandscape shooters hang their hats on how well their cameras handle high ISO shooting. Sometimes you need to take a few images to combine in post processing to assist with noise reduction when pushing values higher than 3200. What if you could get the same effect in a single, low ISO long exposure shot? “Impossible! The stars are moving!” you exclaim. This is true but Pentax has incorporated the most interesting feature of all; a sensor that moves with the sky! Imagine four minutes of exposure time with no star trails? This is now possible thanks the K1’s ability to calculate your location with its internal GPS and properly track the sky for up to five minutes which is more than enough time to get all the starlight you need. Does this entirely negate the need to ever worry about how high you can push your ISO with this camera? Yes, quite possibly. I’ll get back to you on that when I really start putting this feature to the test. Sure, I could take any old camera and duplicate that feature with a separate sky tracking device that will move the entire camera. The point is, if I can get that feature already built into a camera, why not? That’s one less piece of hardware to carry. One less thing to charge. One less expense.
Another interesting tidbit about this sensor is the option to manually move it up, down, left or right in the event you need to adjust your composition. The ability to make such an adjustment without repositioning the tripod is an interesting one. It certainly cuts down on tripod wear and tear and likely saves a little time. Additionally, the K1 has the capability to essentially auto-level the image based on the same technology. Features like these you live without because they’ve never been an option. Will I use them? Probably.
Pixel Shift
Pixel Shift, in short, is Pentax’s way of grabbing the maximum amount of resolution by combining four images, each exposed slightly differently to bring out the best possible color resolution and sharpness. The caveat is that nothing in the image can be moving for this to work properly. For my night work, this would not often be an issue as most of my subjects are completely static (when referring to the foreground.) I am not certain yet as to whether or not Pixel Shift would work or make sense for long exposures. Pixel Shifted files come in at a whopping 160MB per file. I bought two larger memory cards as a result. If I do find a way to integrate Pixel Shift technology into my work, I’m going to start eating up space fast.
Backlit card slots help you in the dark.
Speaking of memory cards, there are two slots available in the K1. Up until now, I have not owned a camera with that feature and I am happy to report that I’ve not yet had a memory card fail. That said, time is probably not on my side so this is a welcome feature. There’s an option to back up the RAW files to the second card slot, or JPEG or simply switch to the second card when the first one is full. I think that’s pretty standard for most cameras at this point. Pentax has included an LED lamp recessed into the card slots to help see them in the dark.
No More Shutter Release Cables
The most recent firmware update allows the camera to shoot up to twenty minutes without a shutter release cable. AMEN! I had previously installed Magic Lantern software on the 6D to avoid carrying a cable and was admittedly sad when facing the prospect of losing this feature. I tend to go through shutter release cables often whether due to loss or simply breaking a wire. At this point, no photographer should have to be limited to thirty seconds without a shutter release cable. I rarely shoot longer than five minutes so twenty minutes is more than enough for this night photographer. The update allows you to adjust the exposure time in ten second intervals. The only gripe I have about this is there is that there is no apparent countdown feature like my old 6D. When committing to a three minute exposure, you basically just have to wait it out without knowing exactly how much time remains. There also does not seem to be an interrupt/cancel option short of shutting the camera off mid exposure. The work around is to use bulb mode rather than a preset exposure time. The K1 allows two bulb mode settings. The first is to keep the shutter open while the button is held down. The second is to open the shutter with the first press and close it on the second. This option combined with a timer on my watch is probably where I’ll end up in most cases.
Interval Composite
There are several built in composite features for the K1. The one I am most interested in and likely to use is called “Interval Composite.” For star trails, I typically take several shorter exposures and combine them in post production. This is pretty standard for most photographers as digital sensors suffer from noise and hot pixels when exposure times get longer in warmer environments (unless you’re in a very cold location.) For the night photographer, Pentax has given us a built in function in which it will happily stack your stars by combining multiple exposures. It can create a single output file and retain each image used to build it if you like. In my tests, I noticed that I had to set the interval at two seconds longer than the exposure time to ensure it kicks in to take the next shot. In the Pentax forums, some people got away with a one second difference. I can’t say why this is necessary but it does not actually create a discernible time gap from one shot to the next. This is important to ensuring no gaps appear in the star trails. Stars keep moving whether you’re ready or not.
Usefulness of this feature is subjective. On a clear night without any apparent aircraft, satellites or other moving objects, this works great. However, we do live in a country with thousands of aircraft up there at any given moment. I have found that it is always easier to remove an offending aircraft streak one photo at a time while stacking. The results are arguably much cleaner than trying to erase a single line from across an entire photograph. Like the astrotracer function, sky conditions will determine whether or not the in camera stacking feature is going to work for that shot. And if you’re light painting a subject like an old building, it’s probably still best to do a single exposure for the foreground and work the sky separately if looking for star trails.
Focus Peaking
The Pentax K1 has focus peaking which is immensely helpful for all the obvious reasons. It’s another feature you didn’t know you were missing until you had a camera that offered it. The Magic Lantern software on the 6D allowed a variant of this function and it worked well in most cases with the exception of ultra wide shots at night in which I was using a distant light source as my focal point. I’ve tested the K1’s focus peak option and it works as expected. Admittedly, I still double check after each shot because I have trust issues. I’ll get over it.
Fit and Finish
The Pentax K1 as shown at Ricoh’s website.
The Pentax K1 is a tank. By all accounts, the weather sealing on the Pentax is unmatched. Pentax is apparently known for their weather sealing and there are several videos showing the K1 being subjected to a shower without ill effect. The body is heavy without a lens so adding a beefy 15-30mm or 24-70mm results in a combination that weighs in at over five pounds. This is almost a full pound and a half heavier than my usual Canon 6D and 17-40 lens combo. That said, the feel of this camera is that of a high quality, well-built unit. The dials and switches can look daunting at first but in a short while they’re very easy to figure out and often reveal multiple ways to do the same things. Compared to competitors, I found them to be intuitive.
Menu
The menu system (all though basic) also provides easy and intuitive access to many 
As other reviewers have mentioned, the amount of physical buttons allows for shooting without any real need to access the menu itself if you choose not to. Everything is clearly labeled and there is a third wheel that changes functionality based on what the wheel next to it is set to. Think of it as a secondary control. When the main wheel is set to ISO, the secondary wheel can adjust the ISO value. When it is set to GPS or WIFI, it can be used to toggle those functions on or off. Again, this is another detail that was pretty well thought out.
Night Vision mode keeps your eyes adjusted to your dark surroundings.
Pentax has also brought to the K1 it’s “night vision” menu mode which changes the primary screen color to red. Night photographers and astronomy buffs may appreciate this. However, the red filter extends into the image review and preview which, at least for me, isn’t helpful. I typically dim my screen down so as to get a good sense of my images but not blind myself in low light. If I could tell the Pentax folks anything, it’d be to let the camera switch back to a dim brightness but normal colors during image review and preview and back to red for the menu. Pentax also built in some quick screen dimming and brightening presets for night time and day time review. I am more likely to use these options.
Lenses
Depending on whom you talk to, Pentax either has the most lenses ever made or almost nothing for the K1. Yes, you can use all of your old K mount lenses. Yes, there are only a few new lenses made specifically for the K1. The most popular current selections are a 24-70mm and a 15-30mm both f/2.8. I generally shoot 99.95% of my work with either a Canon 17-40 f/4L or a Rokinon 14mm f/2.8. I opted to pick up the 15-30 because of its wider field of view and the generally more favorable reviews. Initially, this lens will meet all of my current needs. It is also completely weather sealed. At a later point, I will likely pick up a fisheye lens which is something I had been thinking for the last year.
Conclusion
As you can probably determine, I am quite pleased with the Pentax K1. I feel like this camera was designed for the type of shooting I do in terms of features and function. The price point enhances the value, and to be honest, it’s probably somewhat underpriced against competitors offering less for more. Is the camera for everyone? No, it’s not. Videographers should stick with Sony, and sports/action photographers should probably stick with anything else because of its slow frame rare. However, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to landscape, night and portrait photographers. The image quality is outstanding.
More to come as I begin to take advantage of features like Pixel Shift, Astrotracer and Interval Composite. Below are images included in this post and a few other angles of my K1.
from Blog – Cape Night Photography http://ift.tt/2EY9K7G
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