Pentax 645Z Review, Part 3:

Comparisons of the dynamic range

Pentax 645Z Review – Part 3

In this part I’m going to show you some comparisons of the dynamic range between the Pentax 645Z, Sony A7R and Canon 5D MKIII.

In these examples, I under exposed the image on purpose, by a lot, to show you how much info in in the shadows.

This is particularly important for photographers like us, and especially useful on jewelry photography.

In many occasions I have to change the backgrounds of photos I took over a black Plexiglas or glass, for a white background, and I need to recover all I can of those reflections so they look more natural over the white background. Plus, it also means a lot less noise on the blacks, and less clipping, especially when you print.

This is the under exposed crop from the Pentax 645Z

As you can see, there is practically nothing on the under exposed image and the image with exposure at +5 in Lightroom shows almost no noise.

There is no noise reduction other than the Lightroom default one.

There is enough information to make this photo absolutely usable with some contrast and less gain, it will look like if it was correctly exposed.

Here is the image adjusted to look normal from the totally black image.

And this is the underexposed Canon 5D MKIII crop

Same as with the Pentax, it was under exposed by the same amount, and as you can see the +5 exposure is unusable and also there is a lot of clipping on the blacks.

There is no enough information to make this image look normal as with the Pentax, so not even worth posting it.

And here is the underexposed crop from the Sony A7R

The same underexposed image, the Sony sensor have a much better range than the Canon one, but still not enough, plus the RAW files from the Sony A7 are compressed, and that is something it affects the range you can get out of it. I’m under the impression that if there was no such compression, there would be a better range.