So I decided today to leave my K-5 at home and cover some street life Pride Sunday 2011 San Francisco with just my Panasonic Lumix LX5. Yup, just that. I wanted to get in my head an idea how far up the bar is for the Pentax Q to clear and a few clear things emerged after some real world street life.
This is my opinion but in my view:
- at least one stop higher ISO quality from RAW (not just JPEG) than LX5. This means ISO 400 on LX5 = ISO 800 on Pentax Q
- very high quality glass (for the premium denominated lenses) that are good at controlling flare, chroma aberrations, sharpness corner to corner
- cnet and online photographer mentioned no AA filter. Add that one. This would give a boost in resolution compared to the LX5 maybe in the order to 2-4 more megapixels. I understand the LX5 may use a weak AA filter. If both the lens and the AA filter work on the Pentax Q, that should give a visible boost in quality.
- very fast operational speed. We can ignore autofocus in this for now- just make it really super responsive. In manual focus you press that shutter from no-touch and it should scream fast. Like a DSLR.
- total DR at least half a stop higher than the LX5. 1 more stop would be great, but I think that will be tough.
If Pentax can nail all of these, I can see this as a nice premium camera. Fail to do these and take $50-60 off for each, from the MSRP $800 USD (not the street price). And for every failed point add 20% to fail vs the competitors here.
Shows from the LX5 next post to show what I think this camera needs to do better.
This is my opinion but in my view:
- at least one stop higher ISO quality from RAW (not just JPEG) than LX5. This means ISO 400 on LX5 = ISO 800 on Pentax Q
- very high quality glass (for the premium denominated lenses) that are good at controlling flare, chroma aberrations, sharpness corner to corner
- cnet and online photographer mentioned no AA filter. Add that one. This would give a boost in resolution compared to the LX5 maybe in the order to 2-4 more megapixels. I understand the LX5 may use a weak AA filter. If both the lens and the AA filter work on the Pentax Q, that should give a visible boost in quality.
- very fast operational speed. We can ignore autofocus in this for now- just make it really super responsive. In manual focus you press that shutter from no-touch and it should scream fast. Like a DSLR.
- total DR at least half a stop higher than the LX5. 1 more stop would be great, but I think that will be tough.
If Pentax can nail all of these, I can see this as a nice premium camera. Fail to do these and take $50-60 off for each, from the MSRP $800 USD (not the street price). And for every failed point add 20% to fail vs the competitors here.
Shows from the LX5 next post to show what I think this camera needs to do better.