Pentax K-50 review – Dynamic range
With the same 16.3-million-pixel Sony IMX071 CMOS sensor on-board, the dynamic range of the K-50 almost matches the performance of the K-5 series, as well as the Nikon 7000 and Sony Alpha 77. The amount of detail that can be recovered, especially in underexposed images, is still quite remarkable, even though we have seen this sensor used now in almost a dozen cameras.
I found that I could expose images for extremely bright highlight details, and still brighten the shadows by around 3-4EV, revealing detail and introducing very little noise. Any noise that is revealed is generally so slight that it is easily dealt with using Adobe Camera Raw.
The dynamic range of the K-50 is so good that with tweaking of the highlight and shadow sliders in Camera Raw, it is possible to create images that have an almost HDR effect.
