The Pentax Camera System: Exploring Pixel Shifting Technology and Phase One Medium Format Cameras

Pentax has been around for a while, offering various camera systems to enthusiasts and professionals alike. Recently, they have introduced pixel shifting technology as an innovative way to improve color resolution in images. The idea is that by taking multiple exposures with each pixel changing color over time, it's possible to capture higher color resolution than what would be possible with a single exposure.

This technology relies on the fact that digital sensors are made up of pixels that represent either red, green, or blue colors. When these pixels combine, they form the final image. By shifting the pixels in a series of exposures, photographers can take advantage of this phenomenon to capture more color information than would be possible with traditional photography methods. The concept is similar to high dynamic range bracketing, but with pixel shifting, each exposure captures different aspects of the scene, resulting in a higher-quality image.

The pentax A7 R3 camera system has been designed with this technology in mind. The camera features an advanced sensor that allows for multiple exposures to be captured simultaneously, enabling photographers to take advantage of pixel shifting. This technology is particularly useful for landscape photography, where stillness is essential to capture the full range of colors and details.

Interestingly, Pentax has cleaned up several aspects of their camera system without increasing prices. In addition, there are rumors that the price of the A7 R2 model has been reduced significantly, making it more accessible to photographers who want to explore this technology. The review video featuring the A7 R3 will be released soon, and it promises to showcase some stunning images captured using pixel shifting.

Phase One Medium Format Cameras: Game-Changers for High-End Documentation

For photographers who require high-end documentation or need extreme levels of image quality, Phase One medium format cameras are considered game-changers. The company offers a range of modular systems, including lenses and backs, which can be easily swapped out to suit different needs.

One of the most notable features of Phase One cameras is their IQ 3 monochrome back. This sensor is capable of capturing 101 megapixels of image data, making it one of the highest-resolution sensors on the market. However, what sets this camera apart from others is its ability to capture an extended range of light, extending into infrared territory.

This means that Phase One cameras can capture images with a wider dynamic range than traditional cameras, resulting in more detailed and nuanced images. The IQ 3 monochrome sensor also allows photographers to experiment with different tones and colors, as it doesn't have a color filter like other digital sensors. This opens up new possibilities for black-and-white photography, allowing photographers to capture images with greater depth and richness.

The Phase One system is designed for high-end applications such as museum documentation, fashion photography, and landscape photography. While it may seem expensive, the results are well worth the investment. In fact, many photographers find that the quality of Phase One images justifies the cost. The review video featuring a Phase One camera will showcase some stunning images and provide further insights into this technology.

Conclusion

The Pentax A7 R3 and Phase One medium format cameras offer innovative solutions for photographers looking to improve their image quality. Pixel shifting technology and high-resolution sensors like those found in Phase One cameras are changing the way we capture and process images. Whether you're a professional photographer or an enthusiast, these technologies are worth exploring.

David Brooke's Vlog: A Sneak Peek at Wine Country Camera

In recent videos, David Brooke has been showcasing his latest adventures, including a visit from Stephen Sanders Saunders, owner of Wine Country Camera, and Rod Clark, who brought a Phase One camera for review. The trio spent time together, experimenting with different lenses and cameras.

The Vlog video promises to deliver exciting content, featuring an in-depth look at the Phase One camera system. This will include footage from multiple angles, as well as insights into how this technology can be used to capture stunning images. Wine Country Camera's expertise and equipment were invaluable to David, allowing him to get the most out of his testing.

The review video is expected to release soon, featuring stunning images captured using the Phase One camera system. This will provide an opportunity for viewers to see firsthand what makes this technology so unique and useful. Stay tuned for more updates from Wine Country Camera and Phase One medium format cameras.

Image Review: Phase One IQ 3 Monochrome Sensor

In a recent review of the Phase One IQ 3 monochrome sensor, it became clear that this camera system is capable of producing truly stunning images. The ability to capture an extended range of light allows for greater depth and nuance in the final image, making it ideal for black-and-white photography.

The reviewer was blown away by the quality of the images captured using this sensor. With its 101 megapixels of image data, this camera is capable of producing some truly breathtaking results. The absence of a color filter also allows for greater creative control, as photographers can experiment with different tones and colors to achieve their desired effect.

The review video promises to showcase more images from this camera system, providing further insights into its capabilities and limitations. This will be an excellent opportunity for viewers to see firsthand the quality of Phase One medium format cameras and how they can be used to capture stunning images.

Final Thoughts

The Pentax A7 R3 and Phase One medium format cameras represent significant advancements in image quality and technology. Whether you're a professional photographer or enthusiast, these cameras offer innovative solutions for capturing stunning images. With pixel shifting technology and high-resolution sensors like those found in Phase One cameras, the possibilities are endless.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis week is photo plus in New York City I am not there I am here but I am keeping up because typically a lot of industry news comes out of photo plus there were three major announcements from Sony that I want to get to in a second but as I was beginning to record this I saw the news that DxO has purchased Knicks software this is amazing news if you're not familiar with Nick software there make a series of standalone applications that also run as plug-ins in Photoshop and Lightroom etc and they are some of the best and I remember paying a lot of money for these back in the day to use them and my favorite in particular was Silver Efex Pro which was this application that they use for black and white grading on still images and it is amazing it had the best grain structure all the localized adjustments that you can do the tone shaping that you could I mean it was really amazing and had excellent film emulation in it too if you really wanted that look and what happened was a couple years ago Google purchased Nick software and then they made everything available for free and a lot of people were really excited about this but then they announced that they would no longer be supporting or doing any development on Nick software and so that was a little bit of a bummer and I actually stopped using it because I didn't want to get dependent on it with my workflow so one day I would not be able to use it when a computer didn't support it because they were no longer going to be pursuing development and so this was very unfortunate but today the news came out that DxO has purchased it there's no word yet on whether it will still be made available for free or whether they're gonna charge for it I guess it depends on what direction they decided to take it but this is excellent news because at least somebody is committed to the future with the Nick sweet and it's it's amazing stuff if you haven't checked it out do yourself a favor it's brilliant but let's get to these Sony announcements they announced the a7r 3 as well as 2 different lenses and so the two lenses were at 24 to 105 millimeter f/4 OSS as well as a prime lens a 400 millimeter F 2.8 which will be available summer of 2018 but at the end of November we will see the a7 r3 and in my research and looking this up and checking out the specs I have other people have made videos I'm not gonna sit here and just read specs but I want to give you some thoughts on this because the a7 r2 was an incredible camera I don't own one but I rented them many times last year because I used two cameras when I was shooting the Artist Series and what I would do is I would rent to a 7r whose and I use those not only for filming the artist series but I would also shoot stills for behind the scenes and other stuff that I needed they were incredible there weren't perfect and there's been some major improvements I have heard people say the another way to think about this camera is kind of like a slightly slower and much cheaper version of the a9 and that really doesn't make sense to me and yeah I see why they're saying that but the a9 is a very specialized camera it's big attraction is high frame rate shooting and so this is a camera that's designed towards sports photographers people who do wildlife certain types of events people who need to shoot a lot of burst rate photos to get the one in there that's gonna work that's not how I shoot really and the a7r has always been more attractive to me because the video capabilities because I personally do a lot of video as well first of all the little things when I would rent the a7 Artoo's the battery life was horrid and they now have adapted that to use the larger battery I think it's the NP F Z 100 it's the same battery that the a9 uses it's all sound like a license plates but anyway some other nice things - touch screen we've got two card slots now OLED viewfinder and another one that's really cool is USB 3.1 which you can actually power the camera so if you do a lot of video work in the field you can power via USB that is a very nice add-on 14 bit raw for everything including continuous shooting and so there are some really nice improvements on here one of the things I always loved about the a7 r2 particularly over the a7 s 2 was the a7 are two features phase detection autofocus towards the a7s2 was contrast based only this is a big deal if you're doing video and you don't have a big crew and nobody's sitting there pulling focus and you need to use autofocus put turn on face detection and it worked great and supposedly they've been improvements on that too so the little things that have been cleaned up and you know Sony don't invite me to these events and when I say things like this it's probably why but it feels like sometimes Sony release cameras like software you're gonna try this beta version for a while and then we'll make improvements for the next model and that kind of feels like what this is a couple of things that have been added though that are also very interesting is first of all a higher dynamic range and Sony are boasting that this will support 15 stops of light at the base ISO and so that's a big deal the deal though and here's an asterisks is it really is not proven yet how you can raise the ISO and still retain 15 stops of light ISO as most of you know in digital photography it's basically gain it does not work like film there's no silver involved there's no you know physical sensitivity of an light-sensitive object but we have what we call gain and so the metaphor of ISO is used so photographers back when digital came out would understand what they were adjusting on there and so when you have gain that's introduced a couple things happen first of all when you raise the gain you're gonna introduce noise and also you're not going to get nearly the dynamic range at higher ISO settings that you are at lower ones this is all going to depend on the processor and other things but that's not exactly proven but the fact that you're gonna get 15 stops at the base ISO is very impressive a couple things that have been added for 4k video first of all they have introduced in 8 sorry it's an HDR picture profile that uses what they call hybrid log gamma now this I'm not real sure about because my GH 5 introduced hybrid log gamma this is designed it's an industry standard so basically what this allows you to do is get an HDR or hide em hide dynamic range picture without having to do any color grading and then you can like directly put it on YouTube they support it there's televisions that support it now and it's really not part of my workflow and I haven't used it very much if somebody has and they want to expand on this please leave me a comment and tell me your thoughts on it that isn't as exciting to me is the fact that they are doing over sampling now which is very cool so basically what they're doing for the 4k image is they're taking a 5k readout and then down sampling that to the 4k right to the card and so the idea behind that is that you're gonna get a sharper image with more detail in it so that is an improvement and then also there are no frame rate improvements I'm I want to add to I mean it still shoots 24 and 30 frames a second and then I could think you can go up to 120 with 1080p if you're shooting just in 1080 the other big story on this is pixel shift multi shooting and so what this is this is not new this is something that Pentax has had for a while but it's a way that you can do multiple exposures and combine them together and post to get better color resolution in your image so the idea is that on a digital sensor each pixel represents either red green or blue and then they combine to make your image and so what they're doing now with pixel shifting is it allows you to take a series of four images with each one the pixels will shift and change color so you a pixel might be red in one shot it'll be blue in the next and then green in the next so on and so forth and so the idea is that you can kind of get this higher color resolution and bring that down now there are some caveats with this you'll have to be on a tripod nothing can be moving it's much like a lot of other multi exposure techniques that you might use on a camera so something like if you're doing high dynamic range bracketing or something like that but it will be interesting to see how this works people have spoken very highly of it on the Pentek systems and if you're doing landscapes and things that generally don't move where you can use a tripod this could be something that is very useful so that is the a7 r3 I think the big takeaway is one they have cleaned a bunch of stuff up the price did not go up and what's even cooler is if you were eyeing the a7 r2 the price has been reduced significantly somehow maybe the time to look into something like that in the next video if you saw the last one I did a vlog video my friend David Brooke over is in town he brought with him Stephen Sanders Saunders who is an excellent printer as well as rod Clark who owns a company called wine country camera that make filters and rod made it possible to bring down a phase one camera for me to play with and I have a couple more videos coming out with that I'm gonna do my review video next and the reason I'm gonna do that is you guys want to see images in the last video well I just shot the video so I didn't have any images yet but I am gonna show you some images and just to give you a little hint of what's to come the phase one it this particular camera with this back on it is one of those game-changing cameras it is amazing I'm using the phase 1 XF if you're not familiar phase 1 is a modular system much like most modern medium format systems so we all the parts are interchangeable which include things like lenses and then the backs the backs contain the sensor and this is the IQ 3 monochrome so this particular back that we were using that back is the game-changer and the problem with phase 1 is a lot of people look at two things and that's as far as they get they look at the price because they are astronomically expensive and I'm not disagreeing with that and then they look at the fact that it's a 101 megapixel camera and then they put two and two together and they think well why would I pay that for a hundred megapixels you don't need them in the etc well and while that is probably true for a lot of people they do not target those cameras at consumers they're usually for high-end documentation museums fashion photographers or photographers who can justify the cost on something like that but the big take away with that iq3 back it's black and whites monochrome and when when you consider the spectrum of light the human eye only picks up a small portion of that that's known as the visual spectrum and what comes into this sensor because there's no bear filter there's no color information you actually get an extended range of light that goes beyond what the human eye can see goes into infrared territory it's not an infrared camera but it is extending through that so you get 15 stops a light on that camera and what this allows you to do is to use filters over the lens to start shaping the tone that you're getting in your black-and-white image it is amazing and I will say this I have never been super super excited about digital black and white it's always been like unsaturated and then just kind of do your adjustments or whatever this thing is phenomenal it is a complete game-changer it allows you to get a better image to start out with too when you go into post and you're gonna make your adjustments with that it is mind-blowing I can't afford one but I have had the luxury of playing one for one for a few days and so I want to show you guys what that can do by showing you some images so that review video will be out this week so anyway if you have any questions thoughts on the a7 r2 Nick software or anything like that please leave me a comment until the next video I will see you guys then laterthis week is photo plus in New York City I am not there I am here but I am keeping up because typically a lot of industry news comes out of photo plus there were three major announcements from Sony that I want to get to in a second but as I was beginning to record this I saw the news that DxO has purchased Knicks software this is amazing news if you're not familiar with Nick software there make a series of standalone applications that also run as plug-ins in Photoshop and Lightroom etc and they are some of the best and I remember paying a lot of money for these back in the day to use them and my favorite in particular was Silver Efex Pro which was this application that they use for black and white grading on still images and it is amazing it had the best grain structure all the localized adjustments that you can do the tone shaping that you could I mean it was really amazing and had excellent film emulation in it too if you really wanted that look and what happened was a couple years ago Google purchased Nick software and then they made everything available for free and a lot of people were really excited about this but then they announced that they would no longer be supporting or doing any development on Nick software and so that was a little bit of a bummer and I actually stopped using it because I didn't want to get dependent on it with my workflow so one day I would not be able to use it when a computer didn't support it because they were no longer going to be pursuing development and so this was very unfortunate but today the news came out that DxO has purchased it there's no word yet on whether it will still be made available for free or whether they're gonna charge for it I guess it depends on what direction they decided to take it but this is excellent news because at least somebody is committed to the future with the Nick sweet and it's it's amazing stuff if you haven't checked it out do yourself a favor it's brilliant but let's get to these Sony announcements they announced the a7r 3 as well as 2 different lenses and so the two lenses were at 24 to 105 millimeter f/4 OSS as well as a prime lens a 400 millimeter F 2.8 which will be available summer of 2018 but at the end of November we will see the a7 r3 and in my research and looking this up and checking out the specs I have other people have made videos I'm not gonna sit here and just read specs but I want to give you some thoughts on this because the a7 r2 was an incredible camera I don't own one but I rented them many times last year because I used two cameras when I was shooting the Artist Series and what I would do is I would rent to a 7r whose and I use those not only for filming the artist series but I would also shoot stills for behind the scenes and other stuff that I needed they were incredible there weren't perfect and there's been some major improvements I have heard people say the another way to think about this camera is kind of like a slightly slower and much cheaper version of the a9 and that really doesn't make sense to me and yeah I see why they're saying that but the a9 is a very specialized camera it's big attraction is high frame rate shooting and so this is a camera that's designed towards sports photographers people who do wildlife certain types of events people who need to shoot a lot of burst rate photos to get the one in there that's gonna work that's not how I shoot really and the a7r has always been more attractive to me because the video capabilities because I personally do a lot of video as well first of all the little things when I would rent the a7 Artoo's the battery life was horrid and they now have adapted that to use the larger battery I think it's the NP F Z 100 it's the same battery that the a9 uses it's all sound like a license plates but anyway some other nice things - touch screen we've got two card slots now OLED viewfinder and another one that's really cool is USB 3.1 which you can actually power the camera so if you do a lot of video work in the field you can power via USB that is a very nice add-on 14 bit raw for everything including continuous shooting and so there are some really nice improvements on here one of the things I always loved about the a7 r2 particularly over the a7 s 2 was the a7 are two features phase detection autofocus towards the a7s2 was contrast based only this is a big deal if you're doing video and you don't have a big crew and nobody's sitting there pulling focus and you need to use autofocus put turn on face detection and it worked great and supposedly they've been improvements on that too so the little things that have been cleaned up and you know Sony don't invite me to these events and when I say things like this it's probably why but it feels like sometimes Sony release cameras like software you're gonna try this beta version for a while and then we'll make improvements for the next model and that kind of feels like what this is a couple of things that have been added though that are also very interesting is first of all a higher dynamic range and Sony are boasting that this will support 15 stops of light at the base ISO and so that's a big deal the deal though and here's an asterisks is it really is not proven yet how you can raise the ISO and still retain 15 stops of light ISO as most of you know in digital photography it's basically gain it does not work like film there's no silver involved there's no you know physical sensitivity of an light-sensitive object but we have what we call gain and so the metaphor of ISO is used so photographers back when digital came out would understand what they were adjusting on there and so when you have gain that's introduced a couple things happen first of all when you raise the gain you're gonna introduce noise and also you're not going to get nearly the dynamic range at higher ISO settings that you are at lower ones this is all going to depend on the processor and other things but that's not exactly proven but the fact that you're gonna get 15 stops at the base ISO is very impressive a couple things that have been added for 4k video first of all they have introduced in 8 sorry it's an HDR picture profile that uses what they call hybrid log gamma now this I'm not real sure about because my GH 5 introduced hybrid log gamma this is designed it's an industry standard so basically what this allows you to do is get an HDR or hide em hide dynamic range picture without having to do any color grading and then you can like directly put it on YouTube they support it there's televisions that support it now and it's really not part of my workflow and I haven't used it very much if somebody has and they want to expand on this please leave me a comment and tell me your thoughts on it that isn't as exciting to me is the fact that they are doing over sampling now which is very cool so basically what they're doing for the 4k image is they're taking a 5k readout and then down sampling that to the 4k right to the card and so the idea behind that is that you're gonna get a sharper image with more detail in it so that is an improvement and then also there are no frame rate improvements I'm I want to add to I mean it still shoots 24 and 30 frames a second and then I could think you can go up to 120 with 1080p if you're shooting just in 1080 the other big story on this is pixel shift multi shooting and so what this is this is not new this is something that Pentax has had for a while but it's a way that you can do multiple exposures and combine them together and post to get better color resolution in your image so the idea is that on a digital sensor each pixel represents either red green or blue and then they combine to make your image and so what they're doing now with pixel shifting is it allows you to take a series of four images with each one the pixels will shift and change color so you a pixel might be red in one shot it'll be blue in the next and then green in the next so on and so forth and so the idea is that you can kind of get this higher color resolution and bring that down now there are some caveats with this you'll have to be on a tripod nothing can be moving it's much like a lot of other multi exposure techniques that you might use on a camera so something like if you're doing high dynamic range bracketing or something like that but it will be interesting to see how this works people have spoken very highly of it on the Pentek systems and if you're doing landscapes and things that generally don't move where you can use a tripod this could be something that is very useful so that is the a7 r3 I think the big takeaway is one they have cleaned a bunch of stuff up the price did not go up and what's even cooler is if you were eyeing the a7 r2 the price has been reduced significantly somehow maybe the time to look into something like that in the next video if you saw the last one I did a vlog video my friend David Brooke over is in town he brought with him Stephen Sanders Saunders who is an excellent printer as well as rod Clark who owns a company called wine country camera that make filters and rod made it possible to bring down a phase one camera for me to play with and I have a couple more videos coming out with that I'm gonna do my review video next and the reason I'm gonna do that is you guys want to see images in the last video well I just shot the video so I didn't have any images yet but I am gonna show you some images and just to give you a little hint of what's to come the phase one it this particular camera with this back on it is one of those game-changing cameras it is amazing I'm using the phase 1 XF if you're not familiar phase 1 is a modular system much like most modern medium format systems so we all the parts are interchangeable which include things like lenses and then the backs the backs contain the sensor and this is the IQ 3 monochrome so this particular back that we were using that back is the game-changer and the problem with phase 1 is a lot of people look at two things and that's as far as they get they look at the price because they are astronomically expensive and I'm not disagreeing with that and then they look at the fact that it's a 101 megapixel camera and then they put two and two together and they think well why would I pay that for a hundred megapixels you don't need them in the etc well and while that is probably true for a lot of people they do not target those cameras at consumers they're usually for high-end documentation museums fashion photographers or photographers who can justify the cost on something like that but the big take away with that iq3 back it's black and whites monochrome and when when you consider the spectrum of light the human eye only picks up a small portion of that that's known as the visual spectrum and what comes into this sensor because there's no bear filter there's no color information you actually get an extended range of light that goes beyond what the human eye can see goes into infrared territory it's not an infrared camera but it is extending through that so you get 15 stops a light on that camera and what this allows you to do is to use filters over the lens to start shaping the tone that you're getting in your black-and-white image it is amazing and I will say this I have never been super super excited about digital black and white it's always been like unsaturated and then just kind of do your adjustments or whatever this thing is phenomenal it is a complete game-changer it allows you to get a better image to start out with too when you go into post and you're gonna make your adjustments with that it is mind-blowing I can't afford one but I have had the luxury of playing one for one for a few days and so I want to show you guys what that can do by showing you some images so that review video will be out this week so anyway if you have any questions thoughts on the a7 r2 Nick software or anything like that please leave me a comment until the next video I will see you guys then later\n"