Within the movie period, photographers would wish decide about what sort of images they’d make when loading a digital camera. Coloration and black-and-white movie referred to as for various approaches to composition and publicity. Within the digital period, prepared entry to Uncooked processing has moved that decision-making course of to the modifying room, with exceptions. The Pentax Ok-3 Mark III Monochrome, introduced as we speak by Ricoh Imaging, is a type of exceptions.
Pentax Goes Black-and-White
The Ok-3 Mark III is the primary SLR we have seen with a 5-axis stabilized monochrome sensor, nevertheless it’s not a wholly new idea. Leica kicked off the black-and-white digital craze with its M Monochrom rangefinder method again in 2012, and sells the M10 Monochrom as we speak, whereas medium format digital camera maker Part One has a 150MP Achromatic again for its IQ4 system.
Leica and Part are notoriously costly manufacturers, nevertheless, and whereas Pentax cameras aren’t fairly as budget-friendly as they have been within the K10D period, they do not name for a second mortgage. The usual Ok-3 Mark III is positioned round $2,000 as a physique solely, and at $2,199.95 the Monochrome version is priced to personal.
We have not but tried Pentax’s model, nevertheless it follows the identical idea as others. Digital picture sensors begin out as black-and-white, they do not get the flexibility to “see” coloration till a Bayer RGB filter is added. It is a design alternative that cuts out some decision—the RGB overlay means the digital camera cannot see each coloration at each pixel web site, so interpolation fills in some lacking gaps. With a monochrome sensor, mild is captured at each pixel web site, for photos with richer tones and texture.
Black-and-white sensors additionally collect about twice the sunshine as coloration counterparts, and do not present any type of chroma noise, for distinctive image high quality in low mild. There are causes for photographers to commerce away the choice to make coloration images. On the flip facet, you will want to return to utilizing glass filters for coloration steadiness, and the next ISO ground requires impartial density filters. The Ok-3 Mark III’s 26MP sensor ranges ISO 200 as much as a staggering ISO 1600000.
Understated Exterior
Except for the change to the sensor, and corresponding adjustments to the picture processing engine, the Ok-3 Mark III guarantees efficiency very a lot in line the common model. You may get pleasure from some creature comforts you aren’t getting with a Leica Monochrom, like autofocus, and sports activities the identical all-weather, magnesium alloy physique.
The outside has some aesthetic adjustments, nevertheless, together with swapping out the inexperienced backlight for its high data show for a white one, and utilizing silver and grey typefaces as a substitute of ones exhibiting coloration. Monochrome is printed above the LCD as properly.
Ricoh expects the Ok-3 Mark III Monochrome to be in shops later this month as a physique solely, on the aforementioned $2,199.95 physique solely value. On this circumstances, lenses are all bought individually, and we count on many to choose Pentax Restricted primes. We hope to observe up with a overview to see how its monochrome sensor compares with its friends.
