Pentax K-50 review – White balance and colour
Image: The vibrant colour setting produces very punchy colours, but the hues still look fairly natural
Enthusiast photographers should really enjoy the colours that the K-50 produces. They look natural and realistic, and even on the vibrant setting colours are only subtly increased in saturation, producing a slightly more vivid image but avoiding outright garish or over the top images, which some other cameras manage to achieve.
The black & white mode is also excellent, with a range of different colour filter effects available. The first thing I do when using the black & white mode on most cameras is to apply a red filter effect. In the K-50 this effect is very good, producing dark and moody skies, so it’s a great mode for those who shoot high-contrast landscapes.
Image: The bleach bypass image style produces really nice images. The effects of the image style are obvious, but it isn’t over the top as many similar effects can be
There is also a range of more novel colour effects, including a number of cross-processed looks and bleach bypass. The cross-processed effect can be applied randomly, so you never know which of the various styles you are going to get. One or two of them are interesting to use, but on the whole I wasn’t overly impressed with the images or colours they produced. The bleach bypass effect is far better, producing very deep shadow areas, highlights and midtones, and low colour saturation. Images taken using the bleach bypass style are reminiscent of a number of Hollywood films of the late ’90s, for which this particular effect was used. For certain landscape images, and also some portraits, the bleach bypass effect is fun to use and creates some striking results, without looking too harsh or obvious.
Auto white balance works well, producing fairly neutral results, although images do tend to be a little on the cool side. Switching to the default white balance styles produces more accurate results, with daylight mode especially producing very pleasing colours when combined with the standard natural image file.
As we have seen in a few other cameras in the past few years, the K-50 allows the user to determine how the camera’s white balance will perform when set to its tungsten lighting mode.There is the option to create a completely neutral image, removing the amber colour from the scene entirely, or to leave a hint of this colour in the image. This really underlines the fact that the K-50 is designed for enthusiast photographers, and options such as these will allow the camera to be customised to the user’s exact needs.
