Packed with a ton of night photography-specific features, I’m here to tell you why the Pentax K-1 is truly the king of night photography cameras.
I’m writing this piece in response to B&H Photo Video’s: “Night Photography Series: The Best Cameras for Night Photography.”
Their list included cameras from the older, budget-friendly Nikon D750 to Sony’s A7rIII. It even included FujiFilm’s GFX 50R medium format camera. For reasons unknown to me, they excluded the Pentax K-1/Pentax K-1 Mark II from their list.
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Pentax K-1 – Not to be Overlooked
Regardless of my loyalty to the brand, I find it unusual that Pentax cameras rarely receive any praise.
The Pentax K-1 Mark 1 has been my camera of choice since I bought it new in June 2017. It was the K-1’s specialization in night photography that prevented me from switching from Pentax to any other system.
As part of this ongoing torture test, my K-1 has spent plenty of time under the night sky.
The K-1 admittedly has a few drawbacks. In the last few years that I’ve been doing night and landscape photography, I have yet to find any significant flaws that impact my shooting, workflow, or the quality of my work.
About the Pentax K-1
Released in early 2016, the Pentax K-1 was the highly anticipated first digital full-frame camera in Pentax’s camera lineup. The camera has features like a rugged magnesium-alloy body, in-body image stabilization, and a 36.4
Like many Pentax cameras before it, it features Pentax’s almost mythical weather sealing.
What the spec sheet will not immediately tell you is the K-1 also comes with several features that are very specific to night photography. Some of which are exclusively found in the Pentax K-1.
I’ll highlight those features plus more to explain why I believe the K-1 is the only near-perfect choice for night photography.
Price
At the time of writing, the Pentax K-1 Mark II sells below $1,800. That price makes it one of the less expensive full-frame cameras on the market. By comparison, a refurbished Nikon D750s still sells for over $1,000, and other cameras on B&H’s list are well over $3,000 for the bodies alone.
Night photography is an expensive hobby. Sturdy tripods, fast lenses, tracking mounts, night sky filters, astro modifications, and pro-grade camera bodies can all empty your wallet very quickly.
If you throw in the cost of a tracking mount, then even a refurbished D750 easily equals or passes the price of the Pentax K-1. (More on tracking mounts later.)
Lenses for the Pentax K-1
There is no doubt that there are many more options for lenses available for Canon, Nikon, and Sony lens mounts. But Pentax hasn’t been completely forgotten.
Rokinon, Bower, and Samyang, for example, offer several wide-angle full-frame lenses for Pentax K-mount. Even Sigma’s excellent 35mm f/1.4 Art is available for Pentax K- Mount.
Irix offers its excellent and inexpensive Blackstone 15mm f/2.4 in Pentax K-mount.
Even Pentax’s native glass like the 15-30mm f/2.8, 24-70mm f/2.8, and D FA* 50mm f/1.4, are all extremely capable. They are fast lenses suited for night photography.
Despite what some critics say, there is definitely not a shortage of lenses for Pentax cameras. There just isn’t as large of a selection as Canon’s EOS or Nikon’s F mounts.
Pentax K-1 Image Sensor
The K-1 features a 36
At 36-megapixels, it boasts plenty of resolution for pixel-peepers and to make high-quality prints. It does mean file sizes are large, but not unreasonably so. Even those of us with laptops won’t have too much trouble using Photoshop to process images.
The image quality is also great at higher ISO numbers.
I won’t claim the sensor is entirely ISO invariant because I have not truly tested the claim. But I do know that I have produced some excellent 16”x20” prints with the above image shot at ISO 18,000.
The one issue I’ve had with the sensor is the white noise has been an issue for single, extremely long exposures. However, it is eliminated in-camera by shooting at a lower ISO and using shorter exposures to prevent the hot pixels that generally cause white noise to appear. (I rarely shoot exposures longer than 5 minutes.)
Weather Sealing
Almost e
I’ve put the Pentax K-1 through several torture tests by living in the desert. It has withstood several sand storms and has endured a sandstorm followed by heavy rain in Death Valley.
It has also seen a blizzard in Southern New Mexico without flinching.
It almost goes without saying – Pentax cameras are notoriously rugged and durable.
As long as you don’t change lenses, cards, or batteries, nothing is getting in unless you entirely submerge your camera.
For night photographers, clouds and sand storms usually mean a blocked Milky Way and a shaky tripod, so it isn’t a big concern.
It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
LCD Screen
Like almost all digital cameras, the K-1 features an LCD screen; the screen of the K-1 is a 1.04 million-dot screen.
Unique to the K-1, the screen swivels and tilts with the help of four stainless steel bars that allow the screen to tilt 90 degrees up, 44 degrees down, and 35 degrees left and right. This making viewing low or high-angle shots much more comfortable.
Part of the LCD’s usefulness to night photographers comes from its easily accessible brightness control.
It is the default setting on a programmable “FX2” button on the camera.
Photographers using the K-1 can quickly adjust the brightness of their LCD screen without going into the camera’s menu system.
At “-2”, the LCD is still bright, but no so bright that it causes your eyes pain when you’re checking your settings or histogram.
Ease of Use
Continuing with the ease of use, the K-1 features a “smart dial” on top of the camera with a mode dial to set what it controls.
The mode dial lets you assign the top knob to several other functions. These include changing the crop mode, turning on image stabilization, controlling exposure compensation, and even turning the built-in Wifi on or off, amongst other things, all at the tip of your thumb.
For night photography, setting the mode dial to the ISO setting means you now have a knob dedicated to aperture, shutter speed, AND ISO individually.
So, no pressing any extra buttons or digging through menus to make adjustments to the exposure triangle.
Camera Exterior Lighting
The first feature in the K-1, specifically made for night photographers, is the exterior lighting. If you’re like me, you know every button and dial on your camera so well that you can operate it with your eyes closed. But if you’re like me, you always put the lens on with the third try because you can never really get the red dots lined upright.
The K-1 has exterior lighting built-in! You turn it on with a small button next to the smart dial. One light illuminates the lens mount so people like me can change lenses without blinding themselves with a headlamp or trying to find that invisible red dot when everything is red under your night view headlamp.
The second set of lights is inside the SD card slots.
I personally find these lights unnecessary as I don’t change cards often in the field. But if you do need to and you can’t see the SD slots, these small lights can help. It’s the thought that counts.
The last set of lights is on the back of the LCD screen.
Using the swivel LCD, you can illuminate things like your tripod head or the back buttons of your camera.
They can illuminate your SD card case, just in case the previously mentioned lights aren’t enough to help you.
The last light that turns on when using this feature is the top LCD panel has a green light to show your settings and battery life if, for some reason, your rear LCD is off or not working.
The lights are customizable. Using the K-1’s “Illumination Settings” menu, which allows you to adjust the brightness of the top LCD and backside control lights.
The settings menu also allows you to choose which lights turn on when using the feature as you can disable the lens mount, SD slot, back panel, and top LCD lights individually.
It isn’t a terribly useful feature and I would get along fine without it.
But this feature has, at the very least, made changing lenses easier. It also allows me to check that my L-bracket is properly seated in my tripod head without turning on my bright headlamp.
Night Vision
This single feature is particularly useful for night photographers, in case the name, “night vision” in the camera menu didn’t tell you. What this feature does is it allows you to change your rear LCD view mode so that everything you see is tinted red and monochromatic.
To further assist you in retaining your night vision, the brightness of the rear LCD is adjustable even with night vision enabled. Just like the reason behind red headlamps and flashlights, the red tint helps preserve your night vision while you’re shooting in the dark.
After shooting in the dark for a while, I’ve found that the rear LCD and my histogram are still very easy to read even with night vision on and the outdoor view setting at “-2”. At this level, the screen is so dim that it is just barely visible under an actual light source. But at night, it’s still very viewable.
The only downside to this feature is that your instant-review images are displayed in the same red, monochromatic view.
That means for those using low-level lighting; we’ll have to turn night vision off to make sure we have our lights’ white balances set correctly.
As for your exposure, you’ll either have to know how to read your histogram or turn night vision off to get a rough idea of how your image looks.
Pentax K-1 Astrotracer
At this point, I feel like I’m beating a dead horse when it comes to talking about Pentax’s Astrotracer function. But it is an unbelievably useful dead horse that is unique to Pentax cameras.
You can learn more by reading about my previous article on Pentax’s Astrotracer function and how to use it.
As night photographers, a lot of us either own a tracking mount or at the very least, want one. I am not one of those people that wants one as I have not seen a real need for one.
To explain it simply, Astrotracer is a function built into the Pentax K-1 and K-1 ii (and several other Pentax cameras). It uses the camera’s sensor-stabilization system in conjunction with the camera’s GPS to shift and rotate the sensor to counter the Earth’s rotation relative to the night sky.
This function acts as a built-in tracking mount which has allowed me, personally, to shoot 1-minute exposures consistently with a 35mm lens.
My longest exposure with no trailing using a 35mm lens has been 4 minutes
Because of Astrotracer, I have also successfully shot images of the Milky Way at as low as ISO 200.
As I
Other Features Worth Mentioning
The K-1 has a few other minor features that may be useful for night photographers:
It can
The “Star Stream” function allows you to create 4K videos of star trails forming. Your foreground will stay motionless while the stars will streak across the sky by taking as many exposures as you tell it.
The K-1 also has a nifty little feature called “Horizon Correction.” This function uses the camera’s internal gyroscope to tell the sensor to rotate until your shot is level even if your camera is not. If your camera is off-level, the horizon correction can eliminate some work and the pixels you’d lose leveling your horizon.
Final Thoughts
The Pentax K-1 does not match the best in the industry in dynamic range, focus speed, or frames per second. It doesn’t have hundreds of aftermarket lenses to choose from. It doesn’t have 45, 50, or 60 megapixels.
But it does have a few practical and useful features tailored to night photographers without extra cost.
When the sun goes down, you don’t need 11 frames per second or a lightning-fast autofocus system. And 60+ megapixel photos are possible with a little extra field-work and a few clicks in Photoshop.
You don’t need the Sigma 12mm, 14mm, 18mm, 20mm, 24mm, 28mm, and 35mm f/1.4 or f/1.8 wide prime lenses. A single 35mm or 24mm will do the job.
And no camera has 15 stops of dynamic range at ISO 1600, 3200, 6400, or 12,800.
The playing field levels once the sun goes down. The K-1 is the only camera with several features tailored to night photography to make it easier, more accessible, and more affordable.
B&H Photo Video published their list of the best cameras for night photography, but those cameras were all fighting for second place.
So since 2016, the Pentax K-1 has, as far as I’m concerned, been the quiet king of night photography cameras.
Have I mentioned Astrotracer?
More on Pentax
Pentax 50mm f/1.4 D FA* Review
Pentax 85mm D FA* f/1.4 Astro Photography Review
kdk 1/13/20
- Pentax Astrotracer Guide – 2021 Edition: What it is and How to Use it - January 21, 2021
- What’s In My Camera Bag #3 – Milky Way Edition - September 22, 2020
- Learn to Shoot the Night Sky with Sigma Ambassador, Babak Tafreshi - August 16, 2020
[…] → Pentax K-1: The true best night photography camera. […]
You can set the file format to *.DNG which I find very handy. It saves time and trouble in post.
Correct! It’s a nice, universal file type that a majority of processing software supports.
The reasons listed above in your article is the exact reasons why migrated from Canon to Pentax. Price vrs Performance is a no brainer. I’m predominantly do landscape photography with a good splash of astro and the K1 gives me the confidence that it will perform regardless of the conditions etc. Good write up for a very underrated and under exposed (mind the pun) camera.
I’m glad you liked the article! I also switched from Canon to Pentax in 2017, mostly because of the low cost and because of the infamous weather-sealing.
One small correction: The only Pentax camera other than the two K-1 models to have Astrotracer built in, is the K-3II. All other models capable of supporting Astrotracer require the O-GPS1 accessory that attaches to the hotshoe. The K-3II has been discontinued for some time, of course, but I fully expect that its successor expected next year will also include built-in Astrotracer.
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